A Moonlight Night Scene at the Ishiyama Temple on the Shore of Lake Biwa

A Moonlight Night Scene at the Ishiyama Temple on the Shore of Lake Biwa, recorded on ukiyo-e.org, treats one of the eight canonical views of Lake Biwa, Ishiyama no shugetsu, the autumn moon at Ishiyama Temple, as an Edo ukiyo-e landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige. Ishiyama-dera, on a rocky promontory at the southern end of Lake Biwa, had been associated with the autumn moon in classical literature for centuries; Murasaki Shikibu was traditionally said to have begun the Tale of Genji while gazing at the moon from the temple's hilltop. Hiroshige composes the scene with the temple massed on its rock outcrop at one side of the print, the broad water of the lake stretched horizontally beneath, and a full autumn moon hanging in a sky deepened by bokashi. The light on the lake is suggested by silvery reserves of unprinted paper. A few small craft and a handful of pilgrims provide scale. The composition recalls Hiroshige's other Omi hakkei treatments and his sustained interest in pairing well-known sites with the seasonal conditions specified by the classical eight-view program. The Western collection reproduction on ukiyo-e.org preserves the print's place in the long history of Lake Biwa imagery, of which Hiroshige's contribution is one of the most influential.