Stone lantern

The ishidōrō, or stone lantern, is a fixed feature of Japanese Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, and traditional gardens, typically composed of a base, shaft, lantern compartment with carved windows, and finial. Hiratsuka, who produced an extensive body of work depicting Buddhist and Shinto religious sites across Japan, would treat the lantern as an isolated sculptural object, foregrounded against either plain ground or a glimpse of garden vegetation. The compositional vocabulary — a heavy, rounded form weathered by time and lichen, set against negative space — suited his reductive black-and-white mokuhanga approach. The subject extends his interest in Japan's pre-modern artisanal stoneworking traditions, also reflected in his prints of stone Buddhas, pagodas, and temple foundations. The single-object focus, free of figural narrative, is characteristic of the way many [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) artists distinguished their work from the figure- and scene-driven imagery of both [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) and [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga).