Sunset at Tsukishima

Ito Takashi (1894–1982) was a shin-hanga printmaker whose work was produced within the publisher-driven collaborative framework established by Watanabe Shozaburo in the early twentieth century. This print depicts Tsukishima, a district built on reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay, at the hour of sunset. The composition likely presents the water and low urban shoreline suffused in the warm orange-red tones of dusk, with color effects achieved through bokashi gradation applied across multiple woodblocks by a specialist printer (surishi). Tsukishima retained a working-class, quasi-industrial character through the prewar decades, and Ito's treatment captures the interplay of sky, reflective water, and built environment at a particularly atmospheric moment. The shin-hanga tradition in which Ito worked emphasized Western pictorial conventions—realistic perspective, nuanced light and shadow—while retaining the collaborative technical processes of woodblock production, including specialist carvers (horishi) working from the artist's original design.