Untitled

This print is catalogued among Kiyochika's untitled abstract works, a designation that acknowledges both the absence of documentary evidence and the difficulty of assigning the composition to a recognizable subject type. His practice of depicting Tokyo's physical transformation during the Meiji era occasionally produced images that were as much about the quality of light in a modernizing city—gas lamps, electric lights, bonfires—as about the structures those lights illuminated. In works where the subject cannot be established, the light itself may be understood as the subject: a field of graduated ink across [washi](/glossary/washi) that records the behavior of illumination in a specific atmospheric condition. The printmaking craft required to sustain such effects, particularly the consistent [baren](/glossary/baren) pressure needed for even [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi), represents a high level of production skill.