Twilight in a Nara village offers a quieter, more intimate subject than Asano's typical temple and shrine compositions. The fading light of dusk across a rural landscape demonstrates his skill with subtle tonal transitions. This contemplative scene generally trades between $150-$500, and its pastoral calm provides an appealing contrast to the more monument-focused prints in his catalog.
Twilight in the Village, Nara, dated to the early 1950s, presents a rural or semi-rural scene in the old capital's environs in the particular atmospheric conditions of fading daylight. The Nara countryside — rice fields, traditional farmhouses, the presence of deer who roamed freely through the ancient city — offered Asano a pastoral subject distinct from the temple and shrine architecture for which his Nara compositions were best known. At twilight, the familiar landscape took on a dreamlike quality, the soft light dissolving precise forms into something more atmospheric and evocative.
Woodblock print
Teradomari no yau
1921
Color woodblock print; oban
![Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)" by Kawase Hasui](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d0960668-1e73-339a-b182-fb995a54bff0/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
1947
Color woodblock print; oban
March 1933
Color woodblock print; oban
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Twilight in the Village, Nara was created by Takeji Asano (浅野竹二) in ca. 1950s.
Twilight in the Village, Nara uses Bokashi, Nishiki-e, and Moku-hanga, on woodblock print.
Twilight in the Village, Nara was published by Unsodo (ca. 1950s).
Twilight in the Village, Nara depicts night scenes and village scenes, set at Nara.
