View of Toeizan Temple at Ueno (Ueno Toeizan no zu)

An MFA Boston print of Tōeizan Kan'ei-ji, the great Tendai temple complex at Ueno, this design (Ueno Tōeizan no zu) belongs to Shūchō's [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) strand documenting the civic and religious landmarks of late-eighteenth-century Edo. Kan'ei-ji was founded in 1625 as the Tokugawa shogunate's official prayer temple, sited at Ueno hill to provide spiritual protection for the city in the northeast (kimon) direction by analogy with Kyoto's Mount Hiei Enryaku-ji; the complex grew through the Edo period into one of the most architecturally substantial temple grounds in the country. By the 1790s its precinct was also a celebrated cherry-blossom viewing site, drawing crowds in spring that turned the temple grounds into a popular destination. Shūchō stages the temple as architectural portrait with foreground figures, the wide horizontal of the design accommodating both the receding planes of the main hall and a populated foreground of visitors. The MFA's impression is at sc226090 and pairs with a closely related Tōeizan composition by the artist (sc217113).