Hiraizumi Konjikido (Konjiki Hall at Hiraizumi)

Hasui started the drawing of this print on May 14th, 1957, at which point he was already seriously sick,and delivered the draft to the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo on the 31st. The coloring was finished on September 3rd of the year, however before the first impressions were published, the great master of shin-hanga departed to another world on November 27th. Being the last work (zeppitsu) of Hasui, the first impressions were distributed to the Hasui's friends and acquaintances on the hundread-day of death memorial service.
The Konjiki Hall print Hasui presented in 1935 (lot 269) sets up the temple under the bright moonlight. The place appears to be isolated without human interfering - a architecture built by human hands transformed to a holy realm of buddism. Continued the same compostition, in this work Hasui depicted a lonely monk climbing the stairs to the temple on a snowy day. Hasui must have chosen such scene on a sentivie note - the frigidness of snowy winter is associated to death in Japanese aesthetic and Konjiki Hall is known for its furneral serives. It is difficult to speculate his feelings towards death, but the seranity of snow, the neutral hue of the picture, and the lonely figure amongst nature become conceivable implications to the artist's inner peace.