Kaneiji Chokushimon

This print frames the Chokushimon, the Imperial Messenger Gate of Kan'ei-ji, the great Tendai temple founded in 1625 by Tenkai in Ueno, Edo, as a Tokugawa funerary complex. Most of Kan'ei-ji's original buildings were destroyed in the Boshin War of 1868, and the surviving Chokushimon — an elaborately carved karamon with a curved cusped gable — has become one of the temple's most photographed remnants. Morimura focuses on the gate's distinctive silhouette, translating its bracketing, lattice doors, and sweeping copper roof into faceted blocks of color and crisp keylines printed from cherry blocks onto [washi](/glossary/washi). Surrounding pines or seasonal foliage are rendered as patterned masses rather than naturalistic foliage, in keeping with his geometric vocabulary. The subject extends his Edo and Tokyo temple series — alongside views of Sensoji, Zojoji, and Yanaka — and demonstrates the contemporary mokuhanga interest in lesser-known historical structures rather than only the canonical Kyoto monuments.