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- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Waseda University
- Image courtesy of
- Waseda University
Description
This untitled woodblock print by Kobayashi Kiyochika belongs to a body of work that defies easy categorization, as no recorded title survives to identify its subject. Kiyochika's prints from the 1870s and 1880s frequently returned to the atmospheric conditions of Meiji Tokyo — gas lamps reflected in rain-slicked streets, factory smoke diffusing moonlight, lanterns casting pools of warm color against deep indigo skies. Whatever the specific subject, the print likely demonstrates his signature kosen-ga approach: carefully modulated [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradients built up through multiple impressions on [washi](/glossary/washi), Western-influenced chiaroscuro rendered through traditional woodblock means, and the quiet tension between old Edo spatial conventions and newly absorbed European pictorial logic.