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- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Waseda University
- Image courtesy of
- Waseda University
Description
An unidentified Meiji woodblock print by Kiyochika, this work is part of a substantial oeuvre that documented the visual culture of a Japan in rapid social and material transformation. Kiyochika's prints from the 1870s and 1880s are especially valued for their records of Tokyo neighborhoods — Nihonbashi, Shimbashi, Ueno, Asakusa — in the immediate aftermath of Meiji-era modernization, when traditional wooden townscapes stood alongside new brick buildings, telegraph poles, and gas streetlights. In prints depicting such hybrid urban environments, Kiyochika often used the meeting of old and new materials as a compositional counterpoint, letting warm lantern glow compete with cold electric or gas light. Whether this print participates in that urban documentary tradition or depicts a different subject cannot be confirmed from current records.