Nigatsudö

Nigatsudō (the "Second Month Hall") is the sub-temple of Tōdai-ji in Nara, elevated on a wooden scaffolding platform on the hillside above the main precinct. It is best known for the Omizutori fire festival held each March, in which monks swing burning pine torches from the veranda. Yoshida's print likely depicts the hall's dramatic timber architecture against a night or dusk sky, with the platform and its balustrade creating strong horizontal lines across the composition. The hillside setting would allow for depth through overlapping tree masses below the structure. Nara was a canonical meisho-e subject long before the shin-hanga period, and Yoshida's treatment would have brought his characteristic atmospheric sensitivity — soft gradations in the sky, precise articulation of the wooden construction — to this venerable subject.