Susaki, from the series "New Perspective Pictures (Shin uki-e)"

This color woodblock print from Hokuju's series New Perspective Pictures (Shin uki-e), dated to circa the 1810s and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts Susaki, the popular promontory in Fukagawa with its Benten shrine and panoramic bay view. The series title is significant: uki-e was the term used in Japanese prints for compositions structured around Western-style vanishing-point perspective, and the word Shin (new) advertised that Hokuju was offering a fresh take on this established sub-genre. The Susaki sheet shows the artist's most explicit engagement with European pictorial conventions: the embankment, buildings, and railings recede along ruled diagonals that converge toward a vanishing point at the horizon, producing a strong sense of three-dimensional depth that runs against the more decorative, flattened compositions of older ukiyo-e. Figures populate the scene at scaled sizes that reinforce the recession, with nearer figures larger and farther figures smaller in mathematically consistent proportions. The print is a key document of how Edo designers were absorbing and transforming Western pictorial science in the decades before Hokusai's Fuji series codified the new landscape style for a mass audience.