Dusk at Byodo Temple (Byodoin no yu)

Dusk at Byodo Temple (Byodoin no yu), published in 1950, depicts the Phoenix Hall of Byodoin at Uji in the transitional light of dusk — the yu subject that softened the temple's famous gold-and-lacquer architecture into warm silhouette against the evening sky, its reflection elongating in the mirror pond as the day's last light faded. The dusk treatment of Byodoin offers a very different atmosphere from the daytime or reflected-daylight treatments: the buildings' elaborate decorative surfaces giving way to a simpler silhouette drama as the light fails, the pond's reflection becoming the composition's luminous center. The 1950 date places this among Hasui's late-career revisits to Heian landmarks.