Kōgetsudai Sand Garden

The Kōgetsudai — the "viewing moon platform" — is the distinctive cone-shaped sand mound in the garden of Kinkaku-ji (the Silver Pavilion) in Kyoto, created to reflect moonlight and provide a geometric counterpoint to the raked sand garden surrounding it. Hashimoto's 1961 rendering focuses on this extraordinary landscape element, whose precise geometric form — a perfect cone rising from the flat gravel field — must have appealed enormously to an artist committed to discovering structure in the traditional Japanese aesthetic environment.