Bungo Yabakei Ko Rakan-ji, Meiji period, dated 1897

Dated 1897, this print depicts Rakan-ji, a Buddhist cliff temple in the Yabakei gorge of Bungo Province (present-day Ōita Prefecture, Kyushu), a site celebrated since the Edo period for its dramatic geology. The gorge's sheer basalt formations, carved by the Yamakuni River, provided Kiyochika with a vertical landscape structure suited to his late meisho-e work. The temple, founded in the eighth century and containing stone relief carvings of rakan (arhats), is likely rendered with careful attention to rock texture and the interplay of forest shadow and open sky. Unlike his earlier atmospheric Tokyo kosen-ga prints, this landscape reflects the broader documentary travel-print tradition while retaining Kiyochika's characteristic sensitivity to light falling across stone and water. The 1897 date places it in his later career, after the productive burst of Sino-Japanese War imagery.