The outer garden of Meiji Shrine

The Meiji Jingu Gaien, completed in 1926, comprises the ceremonial precinct northeast of Aoyama, featuring the Seitoku Memorial Picture Gallery and the ginkgo-lined approach known as Icho Namiki. A print on this subject would likely register the Western-influenced landscaping that distinguished the Gaien from the heavily wooded Inner Garden — perhaps the symmetrical rows of ginkgo, the pale dome of the gallery, or visitors traversing the wide boulevard. As a meisho-e of modern Tokyo, the composition calls for crisp linework and flat color blocks suited to the geometric architecture, while bokashi gradations soften the sky and suggest the depth of foliage. Oda's training in Western-style painting under Kawamura Kiyoo and his absorption of Bonnard's flattened perspectival logic align with this sort of subject — a modernizing of the meisho-e tradition for a Tokyo whose monuments postdated the Meiji Restoration.