The Fountain Outside the Art Museum at the Second Exhibition for the Promotion of Domestic Industry

This print records a scene from the Second National Industrial Promotion Exhibition (Dai-ni Naikoku Kangyō Hakurankai), held at Ueno Park in Tokyo in 1881. The subject is the Western-style fountain installed before the exhibition's art museum building, a structure designed along European neoclassical lines that embodied the Meiji government's determination to signal Japan's modernity to domestic and international audiences. Kiyochika renders the fountain as a focal point, likely set against a sky rendered with subtle bokashi gradation. The combination of Western architectural forms, manicured grounds, and Japanese visitors in a mix of Western dress and kimono captures the cultural hybridity of Meiji public space. As a topographical record of a specific, ephemeral event, the print belongs to Kiyochika's broader project of documenting Tokyo's transformation rather than to the sentimental meisho-e tradition of fixed famous places.