Pagoda at Toji Temple, Kyoto

Toji's five-story pagoda, completed in 1644, is the tallest wooden tower in Japan at approximately 55 meters and a defining element of the Kyoto skyline visible from the city's southern approaches. Kotozuka's print almost certainly depicts the pagoda rising above the surrounding trees, likely with Toji's famed cherry tree—one of the largest weeping cherries in Japan—incorporated into the composition if timed to spring. The pagoda's extreme vertical emphasis against a horizontal landscape ground is a compositional challenge that Kotozuka would have handled by extending the composition's vertical format and allowing the upper tiers to dissolve into sky. The warm ochre and dark bracket-green of the pagoda's exterior, combined with the distinctive curved silhouette of each eave tier, would be rendered through separate color blocks for the architectural surfaces and the shadow passages under each level's eave overhang.