Pagoda Amidst houses

This print belongs to the heart of Sasajima's lifelong subject: Japanese Buddhist architecture set within its surrounding human landscape. A pagoda — likely a five-story tahoto or goju-no-to drawn from one of the Nara or Kyoto compounds Sasajima knew intimately — rises above clustered tile rooftops, its tiered eaves stacked against the lower geometry of dwellings. Sasajima typically reduced such scenes to broad black masses cut directly into the plank, allowing the grain of the woodblock itself to register through the pigment as horizontal striation. Houses are abbreviated to dark rectangles and angled roof planes; the pagoda is articulated in stronger, deeper carving. The composition reflects his [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) conviction, inherited from his teacher Onchi Koshiro, that the artist alone designs, carves, and prints every impression. Sasajima returned to pagoda subjects across five decades, treating them less as picturesque landmarks than as enduring structural meditations standing among ordinary rooflines.