Tsukishima

Dated 1929, this woodblock print depicts Tsukishima, the reclaimed island in Tokyo Bay that served as both an industrial port and a residential neighborhood. Tsukishima was built from landfill beginning in 1892 and developed rapidly into a distinctive community where dockworkers, fishermen, and factory laborers lived in dense wooden row houses close to their workplaces. Fujimori captures this working-class maritime district with the same attentive eye he brings to grander Tokyo landmarks, treating the humble waterfront as worthy of the same artistic consideration as Ginza or Nihonbashi. The 1929 date places the print in a period when Tsukishima still retained the character of a self-contained island community, before later land reclamation projects connected it more fully to the surrounding city.