Kikuzaka Street
- Date:
- 1939
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Format:
- Oban
- Publisher:
- Yoshida Studio
- Source:
- Japanese Art Open Database
From Yoshida's later career (1935–1950), these prints show his technical mastery at full maturity. Later-decade prints slightly trail peak-period 1920s works at auction, but jizuri impressions of desirable subjects still command strong prices. Standard jizuri Japanese landscapes follow the dealer benchmark of approximately $2,149; Sacred Bridge, Nikko (1937) sold for $800 at Schmidt's Antiques for a pencil-signed example.
Kikuzaka Street depicts a residential lane in Tokyo, the kind of quiet backstreet that persisted in the city even as modernization transformed its main thoroughfares. Yoshida's 1939 composition shows the characteristic rhythms of a traditional streetscape — wooden eaves, a curving path, the filtered light of an overcast sky. As the city around such neighborhoods was rebuilt in the years following the Great Kanto Earthquake, Yoshida's urban prints took on the quality of a considered visual record, attentive to the texture of ordinary life.
Woodblock print
1928
Color lithograph
1930
Color lithograph
1948
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Kikuzaka Street was created by Hiroshi Yoshida (吉田博) in 1939.
Kikuzaka Street was published by Yoshida Studio (1939).
Kikuzaka Street depicts urban scenes.
