Ohara Sanzen-in Temple

Sanzen-in is a Tendai monastery in the Ohara valley north of Kyoto, founded in the ninth century and known for its moss-covered grounds and the small stone jizo figures dispersed beneath the cedars. Tokuriki returned to Ohara repeatedly, and this print takes the temple as a meisho-e subject in his ongoing survey of Kyoto-area religious sites. The composition likely places the Ojo Gokuraku-in hall — the temple's older Heian-period worship space — among the trees, with the moss garden in the foreground rendered in saturated greens. Bokashi gradations would model the shadow within the cedars and the depth of the moss, while flat color zones define the temple's wood and tile. Multiple cherrywood blocks pressed onto washi by baren build up the layered greens that Sanzen-in is known for. As with many of his Kyoto-region temple prints, Tokuriki carved and printed the work himself in the sosaku-hanga manner while retaining the disciplined registration and color separation of shin-hanga production.