Hongan-ji Temple at Asakusa in Edo (Tōto Asakusa Hongan-ji), from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei)

Hongan-ji Temple at Asakusa in Edo (Toto Asakusa Hongan-ji), about 1829, belongs to Katsushika Hokusai's series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei) and ranks among its most architecturally daring designs. The composition is dominated by the immense tiled roof of the Higashi Hongan-ji temple in Asakusa, sloping down across most of the picture in dark sweeping bands. Workmen perched on the ridge repair tiles while a kite trails on a long string into the sky and Mount Fuji rises in the distance, a small cone of blue serenity beyond the temple's enormous mass. The juxtaposition of close-up architectural geometry and the distant sacred peak distills the ambition of Fugaku sanjurokkei: to find Fuji from every conceivable angle of late Edo life, including the unlikely vantage of a rooftop in central Edo. Hokusai's use of Prussian blue, his sharp diagonals, and his playful kite motif are characteristic of the late 1820s ukiyo-e print revolution that he and his publisher initiated. As a foundational Edo ukiyo-e composition, the print influenced Hiroshige and later landscape designers across the nineteenth century. The Harvard Art Museums preserve a strong impression in which the registration of tile work, figures, and Fuji remains crisp. For collectors, this view ranks among the most distinctive in the series, illustrating Hokusai's gift for radical scale and angle in a Japanese woodblock landscape.