Clear Sky after Snow at the Old Castle Keep

The old donjon of Edo Castle — by Kiyochika's time a roofless stone platform — rises above a blanket of fresh snow in this early and celebrated work from 1877. Kiyochika renders the clearing sky with subtle gradations of pale blue, the snow picking up cold light while deep shadows gather in the rubble-strewn moat below. The composition exemplifies his kōsen-ga approach: Western chiaroscuro embedded in the oban nishiki-e format, produced at the very outset of his Tokyo meisho series.