Kiyosumi Garden in Fukagawa

Kiyosumi Garden in Fukagawa is a strolling garden assembled in the late nineteenth century by Iwasaki Yataro, founder of Mitsubishi, on land previously held by feudal lords. Its central pond, stepping stones brought from across Japan, and tea pavilions provide the kind of layered foreground-water-architecture composition Koizumi favored. The print likely uses bokashi to shift the pond surface and registered linework to articulate the placed stones, lanterns, and clipped pines. Fukagawa, east of the Sumida, was an old commoner district Koizumi documented across One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo, the series he carved and printed himself between 1928 and 1940. The choice reflects his broad view of what defined the modern capital: not only neon-lit Ginza or the new bridges, but inherited Edo-era and Meiji-era public spaces. The sosaku-hanga commitment to the artist as sole maker distinguished him from Watanabe-published shin-hanga contemporaries treating similar subjects.