The Mausoleum at Shiba

The Mausoleum at Shiba refers to the Tokugawa shogunal tombs adjoining Zojoji temple in Shiba, Tokyo — a complex of bronze-roofed mortuary halls, ornamented karamon gates, and stone lanterns built between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries to house six of the Tokugawa shoguns. Kazuma's print likely focuses on one of the elaborate gates or a row of stone toro along the approach. The vertical formal structures of the mausoleum complex suited his interest in massed dark forms set against muted ground tones. His Tokyo subjects from the 1910s and 1920s document a city already vulnerable to fire, earthquake, and modernization; the Shiba complex was destroyed in the 1945 air raids, giving prints like this one a documentary value beyond their original aesthetic intent. As a sosaku hanga artist, Kazuma chose subjects with civic and religious weight rather than the bijin-ga or theater motifs that still dominated commercial print production through publishers serving the export and tourist markets.