Sukiya-bashi Police Box

This second impression of "Sukiya-bashi Police Box" represents either a variant state or a separately editioned printing of Hodaka Yoshida's Ginza [koban](/glossary/koban) subject. In Hodaka's practice, multiple impressions of an architectural image often differ in the choice of accent colors — a different shade for the signboard, a re-cut shadow block, or an additional overprint adding texture to the wall. The principal key blocks defining the structure's silhouette and openings would remain stable across impressions, ensuring the building reads as the same recognizable Sukiyabashi landmark in each. Comparing the two impressions side by side reveals how Hodaka used the woodblock matrix as a flexible compositional system rather than a fixed reproductive tool, a [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) sensibility he carried into the family studio. The sheet also extends the documentary strand of his architectural prints, recording a specific piece of postwar Tokyo street furniture in the same craft language his father and brother used for landscape and figure subjects.