Tokyo City

Tokyo City presents an urban view of the Japanese capital rendered through the layered tonal range characteristic of mezzotint, a copper-plate intaglio process in which a fully rocked plate yields the dense blacks that define the medium. At 57 × 69 cm, the sheet sits at the larger end of intaglio work, allowing Karasuma to develop architectural mass and atmospheric recession across the plate. The collage elements—likely applied via chine-collé or surface-mounted papers—introduce textural and tonal contrasts against the burnished mezzotint ground, while gold leaf provides reflective passages that draw on the kinpaku traditions of Japanese decorative painting. Hand-coloring further individualizes each impression, departing from the strict reproducibility of conventional editioned prints. The work was selected for the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025, situating it within the contemporary cohort of senior Japanese intaglio printmakers. The urban subject continues a meisho-e lineage of city imagery, updated through mixed-media intaglio rather than woodblock. The piece reflects the technical vocabulary Karasuma developed under Ikuta Koji within Tokyo's established mezzotint pedagogical tradition.