Teikichi Hikoyama emigrated in 1901 from Japan to San Francisco, where he created what may have been the first woodblock prints produced in California by a Japanese American artist. In 1921, he co-founded the pioneering East West Art Society with Chiura Obata and Matsusaburo (George) Hibi. Seeking to transcend nationalism in art, this multicultural group had a goal of “finding the way to a highest Idealism where the East unites with the West.

The concealed female figure lying across the mountain ridge in Hikoyama’s Mt. Tamalpais was inspired by a popular legend of the “Sleeping Maiden.” The heroine, a Native American princess abandoned by her lover, dies of heartbreak atop the mountain, which then assumes the form of her body. This romanticized story, which originated in Dan Totheroh’s play “Tamalpa” (1921), replaces the actual Coast Miwok who had been forced from their lands surrounding Mount Tamalpais with fictional characters.