Red Temple Gate

A red temple gate — most likely a torii or a Buddhist sanmon rendered in the vermilion lacquer that distinguished the most sacred Shinto and Buddhist structures — is presented in Asano's characteristic warm atmospheric style. The red gate in Japanese visual tradition carried powerful associations of sacred threshold — the passage from the ordinary world into the precincts of the divine — and its color was among the most saturated and emotionally charged available to the woodblock artist. Asano's rendering would have made the most of the vermilion's warmth against the green of surrounding vegetation or the blue of sky.