Five Storey Pagoda

A five-story pagoda — gojunoto — is one of the most architecturally distinctive subjects in Japanese landscape, its stacked diminishing rooflines creating a rhythm of eaves against sky that has drawn artists since the Nara period. Ito Nisaburo's shin-hanga treatment of this classic subject would emphasize the pagoda's graceful proportions and its relationship to surrounding trees and sky, rendered with the refined color printing and atmospheric sensitivity that characterizes the best shin-hanga landscape work.