[Garden of] Taj Mahal, No. 1 (Taji Maharu no niwa, dai ichi)

Garden of Taj Mahal, No. 1 is a luminous daytime view of the Mughal masterpiece created by Hiroshi Yoshida during his Indian travels, published in 1931 as part of his India and Southeast Asia series. The composition presents the Taj Mahal from the formal Charbagh gardens, with the monument's white marble dome and flanking minarets framed by rows of tall cypress trees and the geometric layout of the garden's pathways and water channels. The long central reflecting pool stretches from the foreground toward the mausoleum, its still surface capturing a shimmering reflection of the building that doubles the composition's visual impact.

Unlike the dramatic nocturnal version of this subject, this daytime print emphasizes the brilliant whiteness of the Taj Mahal's marble surfaces under direct sunlight. Yoshida captures the way the building seems to glow with an inner radiance, its surface reflecting and diffusing light in a manner unlike any other material. The surrounding gardens provide a lush green counterpoint to the pale monument, while the deep blue sky above establishes the intense light conditions characteristic of the Indian subcontinent.

Yoshida created multiple prints of the Taj Mahal from different viewpoints and under different lighting conditions, applying the same serial approach he had used with Mount Fuji and the Seto Inland Sea. This methodical exploration of a single subject through varying conditions reflects his fundamentally painterly approach to printmaking — an interest in how the same forms are transformed by changes in light, atmosphere, and time of day.

The technical challenge of rendering white marble in the woodblock medium is considerable, as the printer must suggest brilliant whiteness while maintaining enough tonal variation to convey the building's three-dimensional form and surface texture. Yoshida's printers achieved this through extremely delicate applications of pale gray and blue-gray pigments in the shadow areas, leaving the sunlit surfaces as nearly untouched white paper. The garden foliage required a contrasting approach, with rich, saturated greens built up through multiple printings.