The Artist - Nakazawa Hiromitsu (1874-1964) on Pilgrimage 

The thirty-three temples on the approximately 1,000 kilometer pilgrimage route correspond to Kannon's ability to take on thirty-three different forms. One hundred thousand pilgrims navigate the route in its entirety or in part each year.

Note: For a listing of all thirty-three temples go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saigoku_Kannon_Pilgrimage [accessed 1-4-23]. To access an interactive map of the route and its temples go to https://www.thetempleguy.org/p/saigoku-33-kannon-route.html [accessed 1-4-23] and scroll down towards the bottom of the page.

Goeika - The Waka Poem-Prayers of Each Temple
By the mid-18th century the retired emperor Kazan was also credited with authoring the thirty-three waka poem-prayers (junrei uta or goeika), consisting of thirty-one syllables, which appear at the end of each temple entry and are the major devotional liturgy of the pilgrimage. (Note that the temple information sheets (appendices) accompanying Nakazawa's album of prints reproduce the junrei uta for each temple.) Again, MacWilliams tells us that the historical reality does not align with the popular understanding: "[N]one of the thirty-three junrei uta...are authored by Kazan. Most of the junrei uta were written anonymously over the centuries by ordinary Saigoku pilgrims."

First issued in June 1925 and reprinted in January 1946, the 1925 album contained fifty-eight prints plus a table of contents and colophon (both printed on the same sheet of heavy brown cardboard, as shown below) and the reprinted 1946 album contained fifty-nine prints. In researching extant copies of prints from the two editions online, both in museum collections and offered for sale by art dealers, I have found that prints from the two editions are often conflated with each other. This collection does own what I believe to be a complete album of the 1925 original release* but, to date, I have not seen a complete 1946 release. In the below discussion I do my best to clarify the differences between the two releases, but additional research is necessary. 

* see the artist's home page Nakazawa Hiromitsu (1874-1964).

The Original 1925 Release

The 1925 release of this album by the publisher Kanao Tanejirō was one of the early manifestations of moving away from text-based sketch-tour guides in book form, in which illustrations played a secondary role (see this collection's book Kinai kenbutsu, Yamato (Nara) no maki) to more image-centric compilations of ōban-size single sheet woodblock prints accompanied by explanatory text.  As noted by Scott Johnson,

[T]he sketch-tour books led directly to the more widely known genre of shin-hanga landscape prints. Although the landscape print movement attracted new artists and publishers, many of the figures active in the 'sketch-tour' book genre became pioneers in shin-hanga landscape prints. The popularity of these single-sheet prints ironically prompted the demise of the 'sketch-tour' books themselves.3

The Second Edition 1946 Release

On January 18, 1946, five months after Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's unconditional surrender, the publisher of the original 1925 release Kanao Tanejirō reprinted the 1925 album, packaging it in a "book form" with a new cover illustration (as shown below) and adding an additional poem by the tanka poet, and proponent of free-verse, Kawai Suimei (1874-1965). This set of fifty-nine prints was a bold investment by Kanao coming at a time when the materials needed to complete this work, particularly paper, were in short supply and the few remaining woodblock publishing companies were struggling to find an audience for their prints. 

* Haikyūmoto Nihon Shuppan Haikyū Kabushiki Kaisha (Japan Publishing Distribution Company, Ltd.) was a quasi-governmental company (1944-1949), which consolidated over 200 independent publishers "as a national propaganda network", publishing under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry and the Japan Publication Cultural Association. Its moto was "building Japanese culture and the national defense." [sources: Japan Wikipedia page 日本出版配給 and website of Geographicus Rare Antique Maps https://www.geographicus.com/P/RareMaps/japanpublishingdistribution] 

The two re-purposed landscapes in the 1946 release

The two landscapes included as end prints in the 1925 release  

Some Final Thoughts

This work by Nakazawa Hiromitsu is an overlooked wonder of 20th century Japanese woodblock print production. It is not only an artistic achievement but a statement of Japanese resilience in the aftermath of great destruction, the pilgrimage being undertaken a little over three months after the Great Kantō Earthquake devastated Tokyo and the second edition of the album being released just nine months after Imperial Japan's unconditional surrender following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

As I document each of the woodblock prints in the series I am struck by Nakazawa's lightness in depicting the temples, given the solemnity of the period after the Great Kantō Earthquake. Rather than focusing on the images of Kannon in each temple, he is almost whimsical in the scenes he chooses to represent each temple, sometimes focusing on the surrounding landscape rather than the temples themselves. When figures appear in the prints, much like Hiroshige and Hokusai landscapes, they are just going about their business - individual pilgrims making offerings, monks walking the grounds. And, on occasion, one of Nakazawa's traveling companions appears.

Unfortunately, the poetic and other inscriptions on the first seven prints remain untranslated. Their translation into English might well throw light on Nakazawa's thoughts and reasons for undertaking the seventy-eight day pilgrimage. 

As an artistic work integrating contemporary Buddhist scholarship and poetry with the painterly renderings in woodblock of Nakazawa's sketches, Saigoku sanjūsansho junrei gakan ("Picture Album of the Thirty-Three Pilgrimage Places of the Western Provinces") deserves further study. 

1 "Mochizuki Shinkō 望月信亨 (1869–1948) was a prolific scholar of Japanese Pure Land Buddhism whose work helped lay the foundation of modern Buddhist studies. His most well-known work is undoubtedly the ten-volume Bukkyō Daijiten 佛敎大辭典 (Encyclopedia of Buddhism), edited by Mochizuki and published in 1933." Source: Introduction to the Special Section on Pure Land Buddhism in China: A Doctrinal History by Mochizuki Shinkō Natalie Fisk Quli, appearing in Pacific World: Third Series, Number 20, Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2018.

2 Sasaki Nobutsuna 佐佐木信綱 (1872 - 1963) was a poet and scholar of Japanese literature. In 1937, he was awarded the first Order of Culture. He was a Doctor of Literature, a member of the Imperial Academy, and a member of the Japan Art Academy. Source: National Diet Library Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures. [accessed 1-4-24]]

3 "Sketch-tour Books and Print of the Early Books Twentieth Century" by Scott Johnson, appearing in Andon 37, June 1991, p. 3. 

4 Nakazawa Hiromitsu kenkyū, Hiromitsu Nakazawa, et. al.,Mitsui Kōkei, 2006, p. 46-48.

5 Maizuru was the site of an Imperial Japanese Navy base. From the inscription on the prints it must have housed censors in the Home Ministry of the imperial government who examined both material submitted by publishers for approval "as well as books lawfully confiscated by the ministry and local authorities. The practice of censorship were carried out 'to protect public order' 'annei' and the manners and morals 'fuzoku' in Japan. To achieve these ends, censors suppressed 'kinshi', deleted 'sakujo' or revised publications 'kaitei' they deemed a threat to social and political stability." [source: Library of Congress Japanese Censorship Collection https://www.loc.gov/collections/japanese-censorship-collection/about-this-collection/?loclr=blogint accessed 1/4/2024]

6 "Kawai Suimei (1874-1965) was born in Osaka... [and] began writing poetry in about 1891. In 1895 Suimei became the editor of the magazine Bunko (Library) and organized the Meiji poetry gorup Bunko-ha. Besides publishing some collections of "new style" poetry, in 1907 Suimei started the Shisōha group and began putting out the magazine Poet (Shijin), which attracted many young poets. He was a major figure in the movement for free verse - as opposed to the old-fashioned diction of new-style poetry..." source: [The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature, Volume 1, From Restoration to Occupation, 1868-1945, ed. J. Thomas Rimer and Van C. Gessel, Columbia University Press, 2005, p. 296.