Shiba Park, Pagoda and Plum Trees. Series: Showa Tokyo Fukei Hangwa Hyaku zue Hampugwa. No. 11.

Kishio Koizumi (1893–1945) documented Tokyo's urban landscape in a series of prints produced during the early Shôwa period. This design, No. 11 in the series Shôwa Tokyo Fûkei Hanga Hyakuzu (One Hundred Views of Shôwa Tokyo Landscapes in Woodblock Print), depicts Shiba Park—the extensive grounds surrounding the Zôjôji temple in Minato Ward, one of Edo's most important religious precincts. The five-story pagoda of Zôjôji, long a prominent feature of the Tokyo skyline, provides a strong vertical element. Koizumi combines it with flowering ume (plum) trees, whose early-spring blossoming precedes cherry blossom by several weeks; this pairing carries deep associations in Japanese poetic and visual culture, linking the pagoda's permanence with the transience of the season's first blossoms. The series' documentary ambition—one hundred views of the capital—places this print within a tradition extending back to Hiroshige's Edo series.