Park Scene

The print situates the viewer within one of Tokyo's public parks, the kind of ward-administered green space that became part of the modern urban fabric during the Meiji and Taisho eras. Koizumi's compositional habit in such subjects is to anchor the image with a specific path, bench, or stand of trees rather than a generalized vista, treating the park as a particular topographic place rather than generic landscape. Color is applied in flat, registered planes typical of mokuhanga, with subtle [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations in the foliage masses and sky. As with the rest of his hand-printed output, the slight unevenness of inking betrays the [baren](/glossary/baren) rubbed by the artist himself rather than a professional printer's mechanical regularity. Park subjects sit alongside the temples, bridges, and waterways that constitute Dai Tokyo Hyakkei (One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo, 1928-1940), Koizumi's sustained documentary survey of the capital's varied urban textures.