Nigatsu Hall in Nara (Nara Nigatsudo), from the series “Collection of Scenic Views of Japan II, Kansai Edition (Nihon fukei shu II Kansai hen)"

Nigatsu Hall in Nara (Nara Nigatsudo), designed by Kawase Hasui in 1934 for the series Collection of Scenic Views of Japan II, Kansai Edition (Nihon fukei shu II Kansai hen), is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago. The print depicts the eighth-century Nigatsudo, a hall within the Todai-ji temple complex famous for its hillside platform and for the annual Omizutori water-drawing ceremony. Kawase Hasui frames the wooden structure from below, allowing its tiled roof and supporting posts to rise against a softly graded sky, while stone lanterns and steep stairs anchor the foreground. The artist's approach to historic religious architecture reflects the broader aims of the shin-hanga movement, which sought to renew traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking by combining careful direct observation with the collaborative production methods of the Edo period. Working with publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, Hasui designed the image while the workshop's carvers cut multiple blocks and printers applied the layered colors and atmospheric gradations characteristic of the series. The Kansai Edition continued the publisher's effort to issue large-format landscape sets that surveyed the country region by region, and Nara, with its temples and parkland, was a natural subject for a printmaker known for evocative renderings of religious sites. The print places more emphasis on the dignified mass of the building than on figures, a typical choice for Kawase Hasui, who tended to use a single small worshipper or none at all to evoke the contemplative quiet of a sacred precinct rather than the bustle of a guidebook view.