Garden of Tenryu temple

Tenryū-ji sits at the base of Arashiyama in western Kyoto and is the head temple of the Tenryū branch of Rinzai Zen. Its Sōgen-chi pond garden, attributed to the fourteenth-century monk Musō Soseki, is among the earliest surviving examples of the chisen-kaiyū-shiki pond-with-circuit tradition and uses the wooded slopes of Arashiyama as shakkei, or borrowed scenery. Hashimoto's print likely takes the pond as its central motif, with rocks at the far shore and the dark wooded ridge behind serving as the upper register. Unlike the karesansui at Daitoku-ji, Tenryū-ji's water-garden allowed him to work with reflection — a register he handled by mirroring carved shapes at reduced saturation across the pond's surface. The print belongs to his sustained engagement with Kyoto's principal Zen monasteries; together with his Ginkaku-ji and Daitoku-ji subjects, the Tenryū-ji garden situates Hashimoto's sosaku-hanga practice within the postwar effort to translate Japan's classical landscape vocabulary into a modern, single-author print medium.