Outside Kioto

Mortimer Menpes

1901

Watercolor

Source: Japan, A Record in Colour, facing p. 22

This looks like Kinkakuji, the famous Golden Temple, which no one would visit Kyoto without seeing. It is a great example of what Menpes describes earlier, when he says that the "Japanese architect when building a house or a temple takes into consideration the surrounding scenery, and even the trees and the hills, in order to form a complete picture, perfect in balance and in form" (5). Notice how glancingly he has evoked the branches of the fir tree here, in something of a Japanese style. — Jacqueline Banerjee

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