Eitai Bridge

Eitai-bashi spans the Sumida River near its mouth in eastern Tokyo, a much-rebuilt crossing that historically connected Nihonbashi to Fukagawa and was reconstructed in steel after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. Fujimori's print treats the bridge as a geometric structure within the cityscape rather than a romantic emblem—the steel truss form, with its repeating diagonals and verticals, suits the sosaku-hanga preference for clear linear carving and flat color planes. The composition likely views the bridge from one bank or from the river itself, with the Sumida rendered through bokashi gradations and the architecture in firm blocks of color. The Sumida and its bridges had been a subject for ukiyo-e printmakers since Hiroshige's Hundred Famous Views of Edo, but a sosaku-hanga handling reframes the same geography through the modernist concerns of the 1920s and 1930s, when the city's reconstructed infrastructure became a recurring subject. The print belongs alongside Tsukishima as part of Fujimori's documentation of working waterfront Tokyo.