Temple Path

Temple Path enters at the heart of Sasajima's lifelong subject. The sandō — the approach path to a Buddhist temple — was the threshold he returned to throughout five decades of work at Todai-ji, Horyu-ji, Kofuku-ji, Kiyomizu-dera, and countless smaller mountain sanctuaries. The path organizes a temple visit into a slow procession past torii or sanmon gates, stone lanterns, and flanking trees before arriving at the main hall. Sasajima's compositions of this kind typically reduce the path to a strong directional element: a band of stone or earth flanked by parallel masses of foliage and architectural silhouette, modeled with bokashi gradations and the chiseled line that characterizes his sosaku-hanga practice. As the artist who designed, carved, and printed every block himself in the manner taught by Onchi Koshiro, Sasajima translated the experience of the approach — the measured pace, the framing trees, the anticipation of arrival — into a flat printed surface.