Eitai Bridge

The Eitaibashi spans the Sumida River near its mouth, connecting Nihonbashi to Fukagawa. Originally a wooden span from 1698, it was rebuilt as a steel arch after the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake destroyed the previous truss. A print on this subject would likely register the curvature of the new arch against the harbor, with hatobune and small craft moving on the water below. Bokashi gradation across river and sky carries the atmosphere, while the bridge's dark silhouette anchors the composition. As a meisho-e of post-earthquake Tokyo, the print documents the city's reconstruction and the entry of modern engineered infrastructure into the meisho-e repertoire — an extension of the Edo-period tradition that Oda, a published ukiyo-e scholar, would have approached with deliberate awareness of his predecessors Hokusai and Hiroshige, who treated the same crossing in earlier centuries.