Ryounkaku seen from Asakusa Senso-ji

Ryōunkaku ("Cloud-Surpassing Pavilion"), the twelve-story brick tower built in Asakusa Park in 1890, was Tokyo's first Western-style skyscraper and a defining Meiji landmark until it was severely damaged in the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake and demolished. Koizumi's view from Sensō-ji -- the Asakusa Kannon temple -- juxtaposes the temple's tile roofs and pagoda silhouette against the modernist tower. The print is historically resonant on two counts: it records a vanished structure, and it captures the layering of old and new Tokyo that drove the Dai Tokyo Hyakkei project. If the sheet dates from after 1923, it would have been worked from sketches or memory, an exercise in commemoration rather than depiction. The architectural geometry of brick courses against curved temple eaves suited Koizumi's Western-trained handling of perspective and his self-cut keyblock precision.