Spring Snow at Hamacho Park in Nihonbashi (Nihonbashi-ku Hamacho koen shunsetsu) from the series "One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo in the Showa Era (Showa dai Tokyo fukei hyaku zue hanga)"

Spring Snow at Hamacho Park in Nihonbashi (Nihonbashi-ku Hamacho koen shunsetsu), made by Kishio Koizumi in 1940, is among the late entries in his series One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo in the Showa Era (Showa dai Tokyo fukei hyaku zue hanga). The print, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, observes Hamacho Park — a public green space established along the Sumida embankment in the central Nihonbashi ward after the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake — under an unexpected fall of spring snow. Bare cherry branches still in bud are lightly dusted, while the snow on the grass and paths is thin enough to reveal the dark ground beneath, producing a subtle interplay of cool whites and earth tones. Koizumi worked entirely within the sosaku-hanga (creative print) ethos, personally carrying out design, block-cutting, and printing. The chosen subject is characteristic of his project: a quiet civic park, not a celebrated landmark, registered carefully as part of a living city. The phrase 'shunsetsu', literally 'spring snow', also carries strong poetic resonance in classical Japanese, and Koizumi exploits that overlap between seasonal cliche and direct observation. As part of the One Hundred Views of New Tokyo (Showa dai Tokyo fukei hyaku zue hanga), the print contributes to the series' broader purpose of cataloguing the reconstructed, modernised Tokyo that had emerged after the earthquake — including newly built parks, bridges, and ferro-concrete buildings — using the woodblock medium that had been so closely associated with the older Edo city.