Meiji Memorial Picture gallery

The Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery (Seitoku Kinen Kaigakan) stands in the Outer Garden of Meiji Shrine in Tokyo, a stone neo-classical structure completed in 1926 to house large-format paintings depicting events from the Meiji emperor's reign. As one of the capital's prominent modern landmarks of the Taisho and early Showa periods, it falls within the subject range of Koizumi's One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo (Dai Tokyo Hyakkei), the series of self-carved, self-printed views he produced between 1928 and 1940. The print likely emphasizes the gallery's symmetrical massing and central dome against the surrounding gingko-lined plaza, a composition that suited the architectural draftsmanship Koizumi developed through his earlier Western-style painting training. Where shin-hanga contemporaries like Hasui favored older temples and weathered townscapes, Koizumi devoted attention to recently built civic structures, treating the modern city as a successor to the Edo meisho-e tradition. The print's restrained palette and clean linework reflect his commitment to documenting Tokyo's interwar character without romanticizing it, a stance that distinguished his series from concurrent shin-hanga production.