Kobe bridge

A second print of a Kobe bridge, distinct from the first either in subject—Kobe has multiple bridges spanning its rivers and harbor channels—or in viewpoint and time of day. Like the other Kobe-bridge print, this image is built from registered color blocks alone, without the unifying contour of a black keyblock that characterized most twentieth-century mokuhanga. The doubled subject reflects Yuzaburo's habit of returning to the same motifs across his career, examining them from different angles or under different conditions, in the manner of a painter producing variations on a series. Bridges in Kobe sit between the city's hillside and its harbor, and Yuzaburo treated them as compositional armatures: horizontal spans against vertical supports, the geometry of the steel or concrete structure against water or sky. The keyblock-free method makes the bridge legible through tonal contrast and overlapping color planes rather than line, and the result is the luminous quality that distinguished his work from contemporary sosaku hanga artists who retained traditional outline-and-fill construction.