
Evening twilight at Haneda Airport
by Kusaka Kenji
- Medium:
- Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock)
- Image courtesy of
- Saru Gallery
Description
Evening twilight at Haneda Airport translates the Tokyo airfield into Kusaka's characteristic semi-abstract idiom rather than rendering it as a literal meisho-e cityscape. The composition likely organizes the dusk hour through broad chromatic fields and tonal contrast — saturated indigos or violets against warmer residual light along the horizon — using bokashi gradients to suggest the transition between sky, runway, and reflected ground light. Kusaka's recurring egg and cloud motifs may appear here as luminous forms suspended over the lower planes, doubling as atmospheric phenomena and as the modernist shapes that define his graphic vocabulary. Printed by mokuhanga on absorbent washi, the work depends on the depth and evenness of pigment achievable with the baren rather than mechanical reproduction. The subject sits within the broader postwar sosaku-hanga interest in contemporary Japanese landscapes, but Kusaka treats Haneda not as documentary scenery but as a vehicle for his ongoing investigation of color, edge, and tonal balance — the same concerns that earned him recognition at the Tokyo, Ljubljana, and Sao Paulo print biennials during the 1960s, and that link this image to his wider abstract output held in collections including MoMA and the British Museum.
More Prints by Kusaka Kenji
More Night Scenes Prints
Evening in East Africa
Woodblock print

Evening Shower at Teradomari (Teradomari no yau), from the series "Souvenirs of Travel, Second Series (Tabi miyage dai nishu)"
Teradomari no yau
1921
Color woodblock print; oban
![Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)" by Kawase Hasui](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d0960668-1e73-339a-b182-fb995a54bff0/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)"
1947
Color woodblock print; oban

Evening Moon at Nakanoshima, Sapporo (Sapporo Nakanoshima no yuzuki), from the series "Collection of Views of Japan, Eastern Japan Edition (Nihon fukei shu higashi Nihon hen)"
March 1933
Color woodblock print; oban
Frequently Asked Questions
Evening twilight at Haneda Airport was created by Kusaka Kenji (日下健二).
Evening twilight at Haneda Airport depicts night scenes and airport.



