Beautiful night - moon and stars, Miyajima Shrine

This nocturnal view of Itsukushima (Miyajima) Shrine presents the sacred site on Hiroshima Bay under moonlight with stars visible in the sky. Hasui returned to Miyajima multiple times, exploring how the shrine's distinctive architecture—the great torii rising from tidal water, the lantern-lined corridors—reads under varying light conditions. Night printing required particular skill from Watanabe's workshop: deep indigo and black grounds for sky and water had to be applied evenly across the washi while preserving the soft glow of lanterns and the cold brilliance of moonlight. Stars were typically rendered as unpigmented paper showing through a dark printed field, demanding precise registration across multiple blocks. The composition likely situates the viewer at water level, with the shrine's reflection rippling below. The tension between architectural geometry and its distorted mirror image in the water is characteristic of Hasui's approach to nocturnal meisho-e subjects.