Sanjo Bridge, Kyoto

Sanjo Ohashi spans the Kamo River and historically marked the eastern terminus of the Tokaido road from Edo. Nakazawa's treatment likely emphasizes the geometry of the bridge's wooden balustrades and stone pylons set against the water and the Higashiyama hills beyond. His Western-painting background informs the perspective: rather than the elevated diagonal viewpoint of Edo-period meisho-e, he adopts a level eye, treating architecture as a structural problem in the manner of the Impressionist urban landscapists he absorbed through Kuroda Seiki's teaching at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. The print sits within his project of applying yoga sensibilities to woodblock printing — preserving the paper's grain and the pigment's transparency while organizing the image by tonal mass rather than crisp outline. Sanjo Bridge appears across the work of nearly every shin-hanga and sosaku-hanga landscapist of the period; Nakazawa's contribution differs in its painterly restraint, declining the dramatic weather effects favored by Hasui or Yoshida.