Nara (奈良)

Nara is a city in the northern Yamato basin of central Honshu, the principal city of Nara Prefecture and the historical capital of Japan from 710 to 784, during the period now known as the Nara period. The capital, known then as Heijo-kyo, was laid out on a Chinese grid plan modeled on the Tang capital at Chang'an as the first permanent imperial capital of Japan (preceding capitals having been relocated with each new emperor), and the surviving institutions of the city, including the great Buddhist temples of Todai-ji, Kofuku-ji, Yakushi-ji, Toshodai-ji, Saidai-ji, and the smaller temples of the original urban grid; the Shinto Kasuga Taisha shrine on the wooded slopes of Mount Mikasa; and the broad Nara Park preserving substantial portions of the original imperial grounds, constitute one of the most important concentrations of early Buddhist monumental architecture in East Asia. Todai-ji houses the bronze Great Buddha (Daibutsu) of the Birushana figure, originally cast in 752 at imperial command during the reign of Emperor Shomu and rebuilt several times after fires in the medieval and early modern periods, the present figure dating principally to the seventeenth-century reconstruction completed in 1709, and contained within the great Daibutsuden hall which is one of the largest wooden buildings in the world. The wild sika deer that wander freely through Nara Park, traditionally considered messengers of the Kasuga deity since the establishment of the Kasuga shrine in 768, are one of the recognizable features of the city, with approximately 1,200 deer documented in the park. After the relocation of the capital first to Nagaoka in 784 and then to Heian-kyo (Kyoto) in 794, Nara declined to a provincial center and pilgrimage town, retaining its importance as the seat of major Buddhist institutions but losing its political centrality. The Historic Monuments of Ancient Nara were designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998. For Japanese printmaking Nara appears in the late Edo meisho-e tradition, in the printed travel guides to the Kansai region, and in the shin-hanga revival of the early twentieth century. Utagawa Hiroshige treated Nara in his Famous Views of the Sixty-Odd Provinces, including views of Kasuga Taisha and the surrounding deer park, and individual sheets of Todai-ji and the Daibutsu appear across the late Edo and Meiji periods. Hokusai included Nara subjects in his printed-book sets, and Hasegawa Sadanobu of the Osaka kamigata school produced Kansai-region sheets that include Nara views. The shin-hanga revival brought a sustained engagement, with Kawase Hasui producing views of the temples and Nara Park including snow and twilight compositions, and Yoshida Hiroshi, Tsuchiya Koitsu, Asano Takeji, and Tokuriki Tomikichiro contributing further compositions of the Daibutsu hall, the Kasuga lanterns (with the celebrated Mantoro lantern festival providing one principal motif), the five-story pagoda of Kofuku-ji, and the seasonal phenomena. Tokuriki Tomikichiro included Nara in his Kyoto and Kansai-centered creative-print series. The visual character of Nara in prints is built on the broad sweep of Nara Park with its wandering deer, the dark roofs of the Daibutsuden of Todai-ji rising above the trees as one of the most distinctive silhouettes of any temple architecture in Japan, the stone lanterns of Kasuga Taisha in their lines through the cedar forest leading to the shrine, the five-story pagoda of Kofuku-ji on the western edge of the park, the cherry blossom and autumn maple of the temple precincts, and frequently the diffused atmospheric conditions of the Yamato basin including morning fog and evening haze. The deer figure as the principal foreground motif in many Nara compositions. Contemporary visitors reach Nara from Kyoto and Osaka by frequent direct trains on the JR and Kintetsu lines in under an hour, with the major temples and Nara Park preserving the principal sites of the historical and pictorial geography, and the Nara National Museum holding significant collections of early Buddhist art and the surrounding shrine and temple treasures.

Hanga catalogues 44 prints depicting Nara (奈良), by 14 different artists.

Fumio Kitaoka, Hiratsuka Un'ichi, and Hiroshi Yoshida are among the 14 artists who depicted Nara in our collection.