Great Buddha of Nofuku Temple

This print depicts the Hyogo Daibutsu, the seated bronze Great Buddha at Nofuku-ji in the Hyogo ward of Kobe — originally cast in 1891, melted down for metal during the Pacific War, and recast in 1991. As a Kobe artist, Kawanishi returned often to landmarks of his home city, and Nofuku-ji's open-air Buddha was one of the most recognizable. A sosaku-hanga treatment would frame the seated figure frontally or at a slight angle, flattening the bronze surface into broad planes of color rather than modeling its sculptural volume. Surrounding temple architecture — the worship hall, stone lanterns, perimeter walls — would be reduced to geometric shapes built from a small number of color blocks. Kawanishi's religious subjects fit within his broader project of cataloguing Kobe's civic and devotional fabric: harbor, hillside neighborhoods, shrines, festivals. The print belongs to the same impulse that produced his Kobe hyakkei (Hundred Views of Kobe) series, in which local landmarks were rendered with the saturated, Fauvist-inflected palette that defined his mature style.