Eight Kyoto snow scenes

This sheet belongs to Kotozuka's set of eight snow views of Kyoto, a self-published series in which each design takes a single temple compound, garden, or street under heavy snowfall. Snow subjects suited his technique closely: large unprinted areas of washi serve as accumulated snow, while the carver's keyblock can be reduced to the dark accents of tiled roofs, tree trunks, and stone lanterns showing through the cover. The mood is built almost entirely with bokashi -- graded inkings on the sky block and lighter grey-blue gradations across the foreground -- rather than with strong color. Compositions in the series tend toward a low, centered viewpoint with architecture set behind a screen of snow-laden pine or maple, a structure inherited from Hasui's snow prints of the 1920s and 30s. Working outside the Tokyo publishers, Kotozuka oversaw the Kyoto carvers and printers himself, and the eight-scene format gave him a sustained pretext to record the specific buildings and gardens of his city through the seasonal lens that defined the late shin-hanga landscape.