A Perspective View: The Two Deva Kings Gate of Kinryuzan Temple (Ukie: Kinryuzan niomon no zu)
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Image courtesy of
- Art Institute of Chicago
This ukie (perspective picture) applies Western single-point linear perspective to the Niōmon gate of Sensōji Temple at Asakusa, whose formal name is Kinryūzan. The Niōmon houses paired guardian figures (Niō) that protect the temple precinct. Ukie emerged as a specialized genre in mid-eighteenth-century Edo as artists engaged with European spatial conventions encountered through Dutch trade at Nagasaki. Hokusai renders the gate's massive timber structure with converging orthogonals receding toward a vanishing point, creating a sense of architectural depth unusual in Japanese pictorial tradition. The composition likely employs a restrained palette dominated by blacks, warm ochres, and gray washes to describe weathered wood and stone, with the sky providing a pale ground. The print demonstrates Hokusai's experimental absorption of foreign pictorial technique within a distinctly Japanese architectural subject.
1821
Color woodblock print with metallic pigments; surimono shikishiban
1822
Color woodblock print; shikishiban, surimono
1822
Color woodblock print; shikishiban, surimono
c. 1832
Color woodblock print; oban
伏見稲荷
Woodblock print
c. 1832/38
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
Uji Byodoin no ichibu
1921
Color woodblock print; oban
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
A Perspective View: The Two Deva Kings Gate of Kinryuzan Temple (Ukie: Kinryuzan niomon no zu) was created by Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎).
A Perspective View: The Two Deva Kings Gate of Kinryuzan Temple (Ukie: Kinryuzan niomon no zu) depicts temples & shrines.