Trees

Trees engages a recurring secondary subject in Sasajima's work. Across five decades documenting Buddhist temple architecture, the artist gave sustained attention to the trees that surrounded the great compounds at Todai-ji, Horyu-ji, and the rural roadside shrines he visited — cryptomeria, pine, and zelkova that frame approach paths and mark sacred precincts. Removed from architectural context, a tree subject becomes a study in carved line and plane: trunk and bough reduced to chiseled shapes, foliage massed in a few colored areas, the cherry-block grain occasionally visible in the printed surface. The [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) discipline Sasajima absorbed from Onchi Koshiro required the artist to design, carve, and print every block by hand, and Trees passed through that complete circuit. The print belongs alongside the temple compositions as part of the same patient attention to natural and built forms shaped over generations of human use.