This is a print of the Yasaka Pagoda in Kyoto done in a modern style. There are 2 variations of this print: one in black and white and one in a red pallete. Yasaka Pagoda exemplifies Inagaki’s admiration for the shrines and temples of his native city Kyoto. The Yasaka Pagoda was commissioned in the year 589 and continually reconstructed after its original design. It became a popular subject for woodblock prints in the years following World War II as a paradigm of truly Japanese architecture. Inagaki’s image of the pagoda is well known to western audiences as the frontispiece of Donald Keene’s pioneering “Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology from 1868 to the Present Day”, published in 1956. The print shows the coming together of old and new, with the pagoda poking between the modern power lines.

No margins; size is Ōban tate-e. From a Pennsylvania collection.