Hydrangea at Takahatafudo

Takahatafudo, formally Kongoji, is a Shingon temple in Hino, western Tokyo, whose hillside grounds bloom with thousands of ajisai each rainy season. Morimura's print likely centers on the temple's five-story pagoda or its tiled gate emerging through dense banks of hydrangea, the blossoms rendered as clustered hexagonal cells in graduated blues, violets, and pale greens. Each flowerhead would be carved as a small repeating motif and printed in successive impressions to build tonal depth, while temple woodwork is handled in flatter, more architectonic planes. This combination of rigid geometric structure and softly massed organic ornament is a hallmark of Morimura's mature style. He frequently returns to seasonally specific temple subjects — cherry blossoms at Daigoji, autumn maples at Tofukuji, plum at Kitano — treating each shrine or temple as a stage on which a single plant performs its annual role. The Takahatafudo print belongs to this [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) adjacent strain of his oeuvre, where architecture and flora are weighted equally rather than one being mere setting for the other.