Yasukuni Jinsha Shrine

Yasukuni Shrine in the Kudan district of Tokyo was founded in 1869 to enshrine the spirits of those who died in service of the modern Japanese state, and is approached through a sequence of large torii, including a monumental steel daiichi torii at the entrance. Tokuriki's print likely shows the main approach with its gate, the haiden, or worship hall, in middle distance, and groves of cherry trees that bloom along the precinct in spring. As a meisho-e of a shrine site, the work fits within his extensive treatment of Japanese religious architecture, though the subject extends beyond his characteristic Kyoto temples to a Tokyo institution central to modern national identity. The print's compositional logic—a strong vertical or diagonal axis along the approach, flat washi grounds for sky and gravel, and concentrated detail in the gate's joinery—is typical of twentieth-century shin-hanga shrine views, executed in mokuhanga with bokashi softening the transitions between tonal fields.