KAWAGOE-NO-SYOYA (store at Kawagoe)

"Kawagoe-no-syoya" depicts a traditional merchant store in Kawagoe, the "Little Edo" city in Saitama Prefecture that preserved an exceptional concentration of Edo-period kura (fireproof warehouse) architecture. Nishijima renders the store's characteristic kura-style facade — the heavy plastered walls and black latticed windows that made these structures fireproof — with his usual architectural precision and obvious appreciation for the quality of a building type that embodied commercial success combined with aesthetic seriousness. Kawagoe's kura streetscape was a natural subject for an artist devoted to traditional Japanese architectural heritage.