Tokyo, Temple de Kanda Miyojin
by Noël Nouët
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Robyn Buntin of Honolulu
- Image courtesy of
- Robyn Buntin of Honolulu
Description
This fourth print in Nouët's Kanda Myojin series — the French title rendering the shrine name as Miyojin — suggests a sustained, methodical study of the site across its seasonal and atmospheric variations. The shrine, located at the edge of the old Kanda district and overlooking Akihabara and the Sotobori canal system, offered multiple vantage points. A fourth composition may turn away from the main hall to depict secondary structures: the Ema-do hall, the drum tower, or the approach through the second torii gate on Hongo-dori. Nouët's printmaking practice — producing multiple views of a single major site, as he did most ambitiously in his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji — reflects both the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition and a European topographic impulse. Printed collaboratively with Japanese craftsmen, each block would have been carved from cherry wood and printed with pigments on absorbent [washi](/glossary/washi).







