「上野六角茶屋」

「上野六角茶屋」 shows the hexagonal teahouse at Ueno Park, a gathering point for visitors in the newly established public grounds. The architectural subject gave Kiyochika a structured geometric form around which to organize his atmospheric light treatment. The hexagonal pavilion, roofed in the curved forms of traditional Japanese carpentry, would likely be rendered with the kind of precise tonal contrast between sunlit and shadowed surfaces that distinguishes Kiyochika's architectural views from those of earlier meisho-e printmakers. Surrounding trees would diffuse or frame the light, and visitors beneath or near the teahouse would give the composition human scale. This is among Kiyochika's views of the modernizing city that takes a familiar traditional structure — the garden teahouse — as its subject rather than the gas lamps, railway bridges, and new Western-style buildings that dominate other prints in his Tokyo series.