Genzo Temple, Miyazaki, Saitama Prefecture (Miyazaki Genzoji (Saitama ken))

Date:: July 1955
Medium:: Color woodblock print
Format:: Oban

Publisher:

Watanabe Shozaburo

Edition:

Published by Watanabe Shozaburo

Source:

Art Institute of Chicago

Typical Price

Temple and shrine subjects form the backbone of Hasui's rural Japan repertoire — steady, consistently popular categories that hold value across all market conditions. Snow at temple subjects command the highest premiums (Snow at Tosho-gu Shrine in Ueno achieved $3,200 at Artelino; Saishoin Temple in the Snow reached $3,000). Standard pre-war temple scenes without snow trade between $1,000–$3,500. Postwar lifetime editions (1946–1957) bearing the small 6mm J-seal represent authentic lifetime impressions but from the artist's final decade.

Pre-war lifetime edition (Watanabe seal): $1,000–$3,500
Postwar lifetime edition (J-seal): $400–$1,500
Posthumous/Heisei edition: $200–$600

Description

Genzo Temple at Miyazaki in Saitama Prefecture, published in July 1955, depicts a rural Buddhist temple in the farm village of Miyazaki in present-day Saitama city — likely Hasui's penultimate or final published landscape, as he died in 1957. The rural temple setting — thatched or tile-roofed hall, ancient cryptomeria, summer foliage, the quiet of a country precincts — represents the most intimate scale of Japanese Buddhist architecture: not the grand temple complexes of Nara or Kyoto but the local community temple that defined the spiritual center of village life. The July date suggests the lush full-summer foliage of deep green that would have surrounded the modest temple precinct.