$1,000–$8,000. Common prints: $1,000–$2,500. Key value factors: As a pioneer of sosaku-hanga and influential art critic, Hakutei's prints carry historical significance. Early self-carved prints are most valued.
Produced circa 1914-1916 in ink and color on paper, this print offers another view of the Nihonbashi district, Tokyo's mercantile heart. The area around Nihonbashi bridge housed the city's major department stores, banks, and trading houses, making it a showcase for Japan's modernization. Hakutei's rendering of this commercial landscape carries a documentary quality, recording architecture and street life that would be devastated by the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake. The woodblock medium flattens the busy district into interlocking color planes, while Hakutei's Western art training allows him to construct convincing spatial recession. This print belongs to a group of Tokyo views that Hakutei produced during a particularly productive period in the mid-1910s, when the sosaku-hanga movement was crystallizing its identity.
Woodblock print
1928
Color lithograph
1930
Color lithograph
1948
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Nihonbashi was created by Ishii Hakutei (石井柏亭) in c. 1914–1916.
Nihonbashi depicts urban scenes, set at Nihonbashi.
Nihonbashi measures 38.3 × 25.6 cm.
