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Ando Hiroshige Kinryuzan Temple, Asakusa (Asakusa Kinryuzan) from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo Price A$150 (unframed)) Status New reproduction Condition Excellent Size 225mm x 340mm Availability For sale

As usual, a bright print with auspicious over-tones has been selected to begin a new season -winter. The color scheme is kohaku, red on white, which is reserved for propitious occasions. The snow immediately signals the season and is depicted here with particular skill: above, indivi-dual snowflakes drift down through the gray sky, while below, on the roof of the distant temple gate and on the ground leading to it, the fallen snow is suggested by texture alone, through a pattern of small embossed dots (karazuri).

The place is the entrance to Asakusa Kannon, the oldest and most venerable Buddhist temple in the city. Formally known as Kinryuzan Sensoji, Asakusa Kannon is far older than Edo itself. The temple history dates its origins to the year 628, when two brothers (or three, depending on the version) discovered a tiny gold image of Kannon in their net while fishing on the Sumida River. The image was enshrined here, and over the centuries the temple became the object of a widespread popular following that remains strong today. As with all popular temples in the Tokugawa period, Asakusa Kannon was also a major entertainment center, a tradition that reached a peak in the early twentieth century, when many movie houses and vaudeville theaters were located nearby. Since its total destruction in World War II, Asakusa has yielded its primacy as a popular entertainment district to the newer Yamanote areas of Shinjuku, Roppongi and Shibuya, but its appeal as a reli-gious site is undiminished.

Framing the view is the famous Kaminarimon, or Thunder Gate, of which we see the threshold stone below (set off by a faint blue gradation), a huge lantern above and a slice of the gate itself to the left. The left-hand detail reveals two stakes of a green railing, above which is a finely carved net-doubtless intended to keep out pigeons. Out of sight behind the net is an image of the thunder god for whom the gate is named, paired on the right with a wind god. The gate will be immediate-ly recognizable to anyone who has visited con-temporary Asakusa, but in fact this particular gate was destroyed by fire in 1865, and reconstructed only after an interval of close to a century, in 1960. The huge lantern hanging in the center of the gate today bears the name Kaminarimon, but in Hiro-shige's view, it is marked Shinbashi (of which there appears here the lower part of the hiragana "n" above the character hash/, "bridge"), the home of its donors, whose individual names are written in a circle around the bottom of the lantern, above the gilt decorations with the Buddhist man// (swas-tika) mark.

In the distance is the great Niomon, or Gate of the Two Kings, named after the huge guardian deities housed on either side. To the right is a five-story pagoda, and beyond, out of sight, is the Main Hall. All of these structures were destroyed in 1945 and were rebuilt in ferroconcrete after the war: the Main Hall in 1958, the gate in 1964, and the pagoda (now to the left of the gate) in 1973.

The 300-yard stretch between the two gates then as now housed a long row of souvenir and toy shops known as the Nakamise ("middle shops"). In Hiroshige's day, however, they were mostly temporary structures that were folded up at night, and none are in sight on this snowy winter's day. There are people in the picture, but they seem to be avoiding our gaze, moving away and clinging to the sides of the path. This enables a sense of recession without relying on the linear-ity of buildings, and creates an underlying mood that is restrained, even aloof.

A similar indirection is apparent in the snow-covered trees that obscure two-thirds of the face of the distant gate. This is not Hiroshige's invention, as one would suspect from the absolutely straight and clear view we see today: a highly accurate 1:5,000 army survey map of 1883 shows that there was in fact a bulge in the approach to the temple in front of the Denpoin abbot's quarters and the adja-cent Jinushi Inari Shrine. While perhaps exaggerat-ed, Hiroshige's composition accurately reflects the preference for indirection that was designed into the temple layout from the start.

Smith H.D and Poster A.G., Hiroshige, One Hundred Famous views of Edo., George Braziller Inc., 1st edn., 4th reprint , 1986