#65 Lumberyards at Kiba in the snow

Number 65 in the One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo series renders the lumber district of Kiba, in the low-lying eastern wards of Tokyo, under snowfall. Kiba's economy depended on the network of canals that allowed timber to be floated and stored across the waterlogged district, and the geometric piles of cut lumber stacked along the waterways provided Koizumi with strong horizontal and vertical compositional elements. Snow unifies the scene tonally, bleaching the pale washi surface across rooftops, lumber stacks, and frozen canal water alike. The subject belongs to a tradition of snow views — yukimi — with precedents in Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, but Koizumi's self-printed technique gives his snow passages a directness absent from collaboratively produced prints; he controlled the pressure and pigment density himself across every impression.