A Tower at Nara

A Tower at Nara depicts one of the pagodas associated with the ancient capital, most likely the five-storied tower at Kofuku-ji or the comparable structure at Yakushi-ji, both standing landmarks of Japanese temple architecture dating from the Nara and Heian periods. The subject places the print within the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition of famous-place pictures, but Kawano treats the architecture in the reductive idiom of [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) rather than the topographical detail favored by [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) landscapists such as Hasui. The tiered roofs are typically rendered as stacked geometric forms outlined in firm keyblock lines, with the wooden bracketing simplified into rhythmic notation. Color is held to a few broad fields, and the surrounding trees or sky are often suggested with flat tone or visible woodgrain rather than naturalistic modeling. Architectural subjects form a smaller but consistent strand of Kawano's output alongside his better-known figural prints, and works of this kind show his ability to translate historic monuments into the graphic, hand-carved language of the creative print movement.