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- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Waseda University
- Image courtesy of
- Waseda University
Description
An unidentified woodblock print by Kobayashi Kiyochika, this work belongs to his Meiji-period production and reflects his sustained engagement with the graphic conventions of the [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) tradition as transformed by Western pictorial influence. Kiyochika studied both the Kanō painting school and the Western-influenced Shimooka photographic studio, and his prints synthesize these sources into compositions that use cast shadow, atmospheric haze, and spatial recession in ways largely absent from the Edo-period print tradition. Whether this print depicts a Tokyo street scene, a theatrical subject, or a historical episode, the technical production would have involved a collaboration between Kiyochika's brush-drawn hanshita design and the carved cherry-wood blocks of specialist craftsmen, with pigment applied to dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) using the [baren](/glossary/baren).