Autumn Rain Shower at Yakushiji

The print depicts Yakushiji, the eighth-century Hossō-school Buddhist temple in Nara, with its East Pagoda (Tōtō) under autumn rainfall. Morimura's treatment likely renders the pagoda's distinctive mokoshi — the smaller decorative roofs that give Yakushiji's pagodas their characteristic six-eaved silhouette — as flattened geometric forms, while diagonal hatching or fine parallel lines convey the falling rain, a long-established convention in Japanese landscape printmaking. The autumn foliage suggests momiji rendered as concentrated patches of vermilion or rust against the temple's earthen tones, executed through registered color blocks rather than gradient bokashi. Morimura cuts his own blocks and prints by hand on washi using baren, retaining the tactile qualities of traditional mokuhanga while modernizing its visual vocabulary. The work continues his extended engagement with temple and shrine subjects across the Japanese seasons, situating him within the meisho-e (famous-place pictures) tradition while bearing his characteristic graphic clarity.