Saisho-in Temple, Hirosaki - Kawase Hasui Phone Case

Kawase Hasui walked north with a sketchbook the way other men carried prayer beads. In Hirosaki, deep in Aomori's snow country, he found the Saisho-in pagoda wearing winter like a second roof. Cinnabar brackets burn against drifts piled thick on every tier. Prussian blue shadows pool beneath the eaves. Japanese cedar trunks rise behind the tower, dark as ink sticks, their needles furred with frost. A lone visitor waits at the gate under an umbrella tipped like a paper moon set down to rest. Tsugaru lords raised these five tiers during the Edo period for their war dead. Publisher Watanabe Shozaburo turned Hasui's watercolor into this Japanese woodblock print and wed old ukiyo-e craft to Western light. The 1923 Kanto earthquake had burned Hasui's early sketchbooks to ash. Scenes like this rebuilt his eye, tier by tier. Named a Living National Treasure in 1956, the poet of travel now rides along on a this tough shin-hanga phone case. Cinnabar and snow country, cupped in your hand. A winter scene from Aomori that travels wherever you go