Hanga
Sukiya-bashi Police Box by Hodaka Yoshida — Japanese Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock)

Sukiya-bashi Police Box

by Hodaka Yoshida

Medium:
Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock)
Image courtesy of
Saru Gallery

Description

This second impression of "Sukiya-bashi Police Box" represents either a variant state or a separately editioned printing of Hodaka Yoshida's Ginza 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 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.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Sukiya-bashi Police Box was created by Hodaka Yoshida (吉田穂高).