Stone garden of Ryoan-ji Temple

The subject is the karesansui (dry landscape) garden at Ryōan-ji in northwestern Kyoto, whose fifteen rocks are arranged in five groupings on a rectangular bed of raked white gravel enclosed by an earthen wall. Translating this composition into mokuhanga presents a particular challenge: the print must register the parallel raked lines of the gravel and the rounded mass of each stone using a limited number of blocks. The contrast typically depends on a key block for the rock outlines and tonal blocks of grey or pale beige for the gravel field, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations sometimes used along the wall to suggest weathered plaster and tile. As one of the most reproduced Zen subjects in postwar Japanese printmaking, Ryōan-ji recurs across the work of many sōsaku-hanga artists; Nakagawa Isaku's treatment fits a broader twentieth-century tendency to render famous temple sites with restrained palettes and emphasis on flat planar geometry.