Kaiji (Temple by the Sea)

Kaiji, literally 'sea temple,' depicts a Buddhist temple complex set on or near the coast, joining the seascape and temple subjects that recur throughout Morimura's catalogue. The composition is likely organized around tiled roofs, a pagoda or main hall, and a torii or stone steps reading against an expanse of patterned water and sky, with each element pared down to the artist's signature interlocking geometric shapes. Mokuhanga technique allows him to print the sea as a deliberate woodgrain pattern or as flat banded blues — a contemporary equivalent to the wave conventions of Edo [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) — while temple architecture is articulated through carefully registered keyblock outlines and small accents of vermilion or gold. Coastal temples such as those of the Izu and Kii peninsulas have long figured in Japanese landscape printmaking, and Morimura's treatment continues that tradition while filtering it through his late-twentieth and early twenty-first-century idiom of stylized, almost diagrammatic clarity.