To Geki Theatre

Tōgeki denotes the Tōkyō Gekijō, one of the capital's Western-style theatres that defined the early-twentieth-century streetscape of central Tokyo. The print likely renders the theatre's facade or its surrounding plaza, with electric lights, motorcars, or pedestrians lending the modern atmosphere that distinguished sōsaku-hanga subject matter from earlier ukiyo-e meisho-e. Oda's training in yōga under Kawamura Kiyoo is evident in the perspectival drawing of architectural masses, while the mokuhanga medium retains the flat color planes and graphic outlines that connect his work to Edo printmaking. Compared with his lithographic treatments of theatre exteriors, the woodblock version emphasizes patterned shadow, restrained ink registration, and the textural grain of washi. As a founding member of the Nihon Sōsaku Hanga Kyōkai in 1918, Oda used such contemporary subjects to argue that the artist-conceived print could record modern Tokyo with the same authority that Hokusai and Hiroshige had brought to Edo a century earlier.