Hyakkaen Park at Mukojima

The Mukojima Hyakkaen, founded in 1804 on the east bank of the Sumida, is a flower garden assembled around the literary culture of late Edo: hagi, plum, and bamboo planted in dialogue with poetry inscribed on stones and trellises. Koizumi's view likely renders the park's seasonal planting and trellised pathways with the careful registration his self-cut blocks required, and bokashi passages typical of his treatment of foliage and sky. The Hyakkaen survived where many Edo-era gardens did not, and its inclusion in One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo reflects Koizumi's attention to the layered survivals of pre-Meiji Tokyo within the modern city. Carved and printed by the artist himself between 1928 and 1940, the print joins the documentary topographic impulse of meisho-e to the sosaku-hanga insistence on the artist as sole maker, a position that set him apart from publisher-led shin-hanga workshops covering similar Tokyo subjects.