Payne's Grey · 2026

“Pagoda a Kyoto”

The five roofs of a Kyoto pagoda, one above the other, lifting into a grey sky — weightless for all the timber holding them up.

Details

TitlePagoda a Kyoto

PlaceKyoto, Japan

Year2026

CategoryPayne's Grey

Dimensions21 × 29.7 cm (A4)

TechniqueInk and Payne's grey watercolour on Clairefontaine paper

Palette of the work

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This piece is part of my collection. Originals will soon be available to buy online — write to me in the meantime.

The subject

The Yasaka Pagoda, Kyoto

Above the sloping lanes of Gion rises a five-storey wooden pagoda — the Yasaka Pagoda, or Hōkan-ji — the last of its kind standing in Kyoto, and the sight every visitor climbs the hill to find.

Some forty-six metres of timber, it has stood in one form or another since the eighth century; the tower we see today was rebuilt in 1440 by the shogun Ashikaga Yoshinori. Five receding roofs, a tall central pillar, a frame joined without the nails a Western builder would reach for.

I drew it from the stepped street of Yasaka-dōri, where the pagoda closes the view between old wooden machiya houses — the classic Kyoto postcard, and deservedly so.

Everything here I kept in Payne’s grey: one cool, deep colour and the ink line, nothing more.

Name: Yasaka Pagoda (Hōkan-ji)
Where: Gion, Kyoto
Storeys: five
Height: ~46 m
Rebuilt: 1440

The Yasaka Pagoda closing the view down a Gion street — The Yasaka Pagoda at the end of Yasaka-dōri, between the machiya houses.Photo: Basile Morin — CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Yasaka Pagoda rising over the street in Gion, Kyoto — The pagoda above the lanes of Gion, in an old photograph.Photo: Adolph de Meyer — CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

A tower of wood that has outlasted six centuries — I wanted it grave and grey, rising out of the street.

Monochrome suits it: a quiet, upright, weather-darkened thing against a pale sky, with the little houses crowding its feet.

The grey is not a limitation here but the point — all the attention goes to shape, roofline and the fall of light.

See also · Payne’s Grey Hallstatt sul lago · Notre-Dame nella Luce · Alhambra, Granada