Zojoji Temple (増上寺)

Zojo-ji is a Buddhist temple in the Shiba district of central Tokyo, in present-day Minato Ward, the head temple of the Jodo Pure Land Buddhist sect for eastern Japan. The temple was founded in 1393 in a different location near the present Kojimachi by the priest Yuyo Shoso as a teaching seminary, and was relocated to its present site in 1598 at the order of the first Tokugawa shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu, as part of the broader Tokugawa program of organizing temples within the Edo urban plan and assigning Buddhist institutions to specific functions within the new shogunal capital. Across the Edo period, Zojo-ji served as one of the two principal funerary temples of the Tokugawa shogunal family (alongside Kan'ei-ji at Ueno), with six shogunal mausolea constructed in its precincts for the second shogun Hidetada, the sixth Ienobu, the seventh Ietsugu, the ninth Ieshige, the twelfth Ieyoshi, and the fourteenth Iemochi, and with extensive supporting halls, gates, and subsidiary structures sustained by ongoing Tokugawa patronage. The principal surviving structure from the Edo period is the great Sanmon main gate (Sangedatsu-mon), dating from 1622 and standing approximately 21 meters high and 19 meters wide, one of the largest wooden gates of the Edo period to survive in central Tokyo, the temple's main hall and most subsidiary structures having been destroyed in the air raids of 10 March 1945 and rebuilt in the postwar period from the 1950s onward. The shogunal mausolea were largely destroyed in 1945, with only fragments preserved. The temple is also distinguished by the presence of Tokyo Tower, the 333-meter steel-lattice broadcasting tower designed by Naito Tachu and completed in 1958, which rises directly behind the temple compound and which has become a recurrent secondary motif in modern depictions of Zojo-ji. The Daimon (Great Gate) at the southwestern entrance to the temple precincts (now rebuilt in concrete) and the surrounding Shiba Park (founded 1873 as one of the first public parks of Tokyo) form the larger ceremonial approach to the temple. For Japanese printmaking Zojo-ji and the surrounding Shiba district figure prominently across the meisho-e tradition. The temple is treated in Utagawa Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, his Famous Places in the Eastern Capital, and individual sheets, including the celebrated Zojo-ji Pagoda and Akabane in which the temple pagoda is seen across the snow-covered Akabane bridge, and Hokusai included Shiba in his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. The Meiji-period kaika-e treated the surrounding district under the modernizing conditions of the late nineteenth century. The shin-hanga revival of the early twentieth century returned to Zojo-ji repeatedly, with Kawase Hasui producing some of the most celebrated of all shin-hanga prints in his snow, rain, and twilight views of the Sanmon gate. The principal Hasui Zojo-ji sheets include Snow at Zojo-ji (Yuki no Shiba Zojoji, 1925, issued by Watanabe Shozaburo) in which a single solitary figure in a black coat carries a red umbrella against the great gate under heavy falling snow, Spring Evening at Zojo-ji (Haru no yu Zojoji, 1925) in which the temple appears under a soft spring twilight with cherry blossoms in the foreground, and later compositions through the 1930s and into the postwar period in which the Tokyo Tower appears in the background as a marker of the changed urban context. These designs became some of the most heavily reproduced of all twentieth-century Japanese prints, with Snow at Zojo-ji in particular entering the international visual canon of Tokyo and serving as one of the most recognizable single images of the modern Japanese print tradition. Tsuchiya Koitsu produced his own night and snow views of the Sanmon gate, Asano Takeji contributed Zojo-ji compositions, and the postwar sosaku-hanga circle treated the temple in various register. The visual character of Zojo-ji in prints is built on the great red Sanmon gate against the surrounding park and sky, the falling snow or rain over the gate and approach providing the principal atmospheric motif, the small foreground figures of pilgrims or the signature single umbrella-bearing walker of the Hasui compositions, the surrounding cherry blossoms in spring, the autumn maple in November, and after 1958 the silhouette of Tokyo Tower behind the temple roofs, with the contrast between the historic temple architecture and the modern broadcasting tower providing one of the most legible compositional motifs of postwar Tokyo. Contemporary visitors approach Zojo-ji via the Toei Mita Line to Onarimon Station, the Toei Oedo Line to Daimon Station, or the JR Yamanote Line to Hamamatsucho Station, with the Sanmon, the rebuilt main hall, the surrounding Shiba Park, and Tokyo Tower forming the contemporary pictorial landscape of the historical temple.

Hanga catalogues 4 prints depicting Zojoji Temple (増上寺), by 2 different artists.

Kawase Hasui and Shiro Kasamatsu are among the 2 artists who depicted Zojoji Temple in our collection.