Five-storied Pagoda (Goju no to)

Date:: c. 1936
Medium:: Color woodblock print
Format:: Oban
Publisher:: Watanabe Shozaburo

Edition:

Published by Watanabe Shozaburo

Source:

Typical Price

Shotei produced a wide range of subjects throughout his career under publishers Watanabe and Daikokuya. Signed, sealed lifetime editions consistently outperform unsigned export-market copies.

Export editions or later printings: $100–$500
Signed lifetime editions: $500–$2,500
Premium impressions with provenance: $2,500–$8,000

Description

The five-storied pagoda — Goju no to — is the quintessential form of Japanese Buddhist architecture, its stacked tiers and tapering finial creating a vertical axis that oriented worshippers toward the sky. Shotei's circa 1936 treatment renders the pagoda emerging from surrounding trees, its architectural form both precisely observed and atmospherically softened by the [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) sky above. The subject was canonical in Japanese landscape art, but Shotei brought to it the intimate, quietly absorbed quality that distinguished his work from more monumental treatments.