Autumn moon over Ishiyama temple

Ishiyama-dera, in Otsu on the southern shore of Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture, is one of the temples of the Saigoku Kannon pilgrimage and the traditional setting for the Autumn Moon at Ishiyama view in the classical Eight Views of Omi (Omi Hakkei) cycle. The temple is also associated with Murasaki Shikibu, who is said to have begun composing The Tale of Genji while gazing at the moon there. Hiratsuka's print invokes this layered cultural memory of moon, temple, and waka tradition, rendered in the reductive black-and-white woodcut idiom in which he worked across most of his career. The composition would set the moon as a reserved disk of unprinted washi against densely carved foliage and temple roof, the tonal scheme reversing the soft graded skies typical of shin-hanga moon pictures.