Bell Tower in Okayama - 岡山のかねつき堂

The kanetuki-dō (かねつき堂) in Okayama—literally a bell-ringing pavilion—is here depicted in what may represent a different printing state or color variant of the same composition as the related Okayama bell tower prints in Hasui's catalogue. The Japanese title confirms the subject: a small public structure housing a suspended bronze bell used to announce time in pre-modern Japanese urban life. Such pavilions were modest in form but acoustically significant, their sound organizing daily rhythms across entire neighborhoods. Hasui's rendering likely emphasizes the weathered timber of the structure against a graded sky, with subtle variation in the warmth or coolness of the palette indicating time of day. Each impression from Watanabe's workshop represents a fresh collaboration between Hasui's original design and the printers' real-time decisions about pigment saturation and baren pressure on the washi surface.