The Kyonghoiru Pavilion, Seoul — 京城 慶会楼

Kawase Hasui's view of the Gyeonghoeru Pavilion in Seoul—titled with the Japanese colonial place name 京城 (Keijō) and the Korean 慶会楼—depicts the royal banquet pavilion of Gyeongbokgung Palace, constructed in 1412 and rebuilt in 1867. The Gyeonghoeru is a large ceremonial hall built on an artificial island within a rectangular pond in the western portion of the palace grounds, its multi-story timber superstructure supported by forty-eight stone columns. Hasui visited Korea during the period of Japanese colonial administration and produced a small series of prints documenting Korean architectural landmarks. The pavilion's reflection in the surrounding pond—its stone-column base and tiered wooden eaves doubled in the water's surface—provided Hasui with a compositional device central to his landscape practice. The print extends the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition of documentary landscape beyond the Japanese archipelago, treating Korean palace architecture with the same formal attentiveness applied to Japanese subjects, recording the site's monumental form during a period of significant political and cultural transformation on the Korean peninsula.