Silver Pavilion

Ginkaku-ji, formally Jisho-ji, is the Higashiyama-district Zen temple founded in 1482 by the retired shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, with the two-story Kannon Hall (Kannon-den) at its center. Despite the popular name, the building was never clad in silver leaf; Hashimoto's print likely depicts the dark wood structure rising from its setting of moss, raked white sand (ginshadan), and the conical kogetsudai mound. The composition probably uses the building's stepped roof line and the surrounding pond-and-garden landscape to organize a layered recession from foreground sand to mid-ground architecture to wooded hillside. Hashimoto's career-long focus on Japan's surviving religious and feudal architecture made the Higashiyama temples of Kyoto a natural subject, and his sosaku-hanga method — designing, carving, and printing every block himself — yields the firm geometric description of post-and-beam construction that characterizes his castle prints. The subject pairs with Kinkaku-ji and other Kyoto temple studies in his wider topographical project.