Meguro Fudô temple

Meguro Fudo, formally Ryusen-ji, is a Tendai Buddhist temple in southern Tokyo dedicated to Fudo Myoo and known for its stone steps, waterfall, and wooded precincts. Hasui's print likely depicts the temple's main hall or one of its torii-flanked approaches, possibly under rain or evening light, subjects he treated repeatedly across his temple and shrine compositions. The image would employ the deep registration alignment required for architectural subjects, with carved tile lines and lantern silhouettes rendered against fields of bokashi sky. Hasui frequently positioned figures small within such precincts to convey scale and quiet, a device inherited from Hiroshige but adapted to the more atmospheric palette of shin-hanga. Produced through the Watanabe workshop's division of labor between artist, carver, and printer, the work reflects Hasui's sustained interest in Tokyo's surviving religious architecture during the interwar decades, when many such sites were photographed and printed as cultural records before later wartime destruction.