Sanjo Ohashi Bridge

This print depicts the Sanjo Ohashi, the bridge spanning the Kamo River in central Kyoto and historically the western terminus of the Tokaido highway. The site was already a fixture of Edo-period [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) — Hiroshige included it in his Famous Views of Kyoto series — and held particular meaning for Yoshikawa, whose Kyoto upbringing shaped a sustained attachment to the city's landmarks. The composition would employ the bridge's wooden balustrade as a strong horizontal element with the Higashiyama hills providing background recession, and would use [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations in the river water and sky to establish time of day. Printed with [sumi](/glossary/sumi) ink and natural mineral pigments on [washi](/glossary/washi) paper, the work exemplifies Yoshikawa's contribution to early-twentieth-century Kyoto landscape printmaking. His antiquarian concern for architectural and topographical accuracy distinguishes the print from contemporaneous [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) treatments of the same subject, in which mood often takes precedence over documentary specificity.