Three-tiered pagoda

Three-tiered pagoda addresses one of Hiratsuka's recurring subjects: the wooden architecture of Japanese Buddhist temples. The sanjū-no-tō, or three-storied pagoda, is found at numerous temple complexes across Japan, with notable examples at Kōfuku-ji, Yakushi-ji, and Hokki-ji. Hiratsuka's approach to such structures emphasizes their tectonic logic—the bracketing systems, tiled eaves, and tapering proportions translated into a hierarchy of black planes and white intervals. The vertical orientation typical of pagoda subjects suits the planar carving style he developed, where structural members read as crisp lines against the pale [washi](/glossary/washi). Hiratsuka treated temple architecture not as scenic backdrop but as autonomous form, a position he held across hundreds of related prints documenting pagodas, halls, and gates throughout his career. The monochrome approach carries an argument: by stripping color from a subject conventionally rendered in [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) polychrome, he forces attention onto the carpentry itself, the relationship of post to beam, eave to story. This pictorial argument runs throughout the temple work that anchors his contribution to sōsaku-hanga.