red gate of Tokyo University

The Akamon, or Red Gate, stands at the western edge of the University of Tokyo's Hongo campus and dates to 1827, when it was erected for the Maeda clan's Edo residence on the occasion of a daimyo's marriage to a shogunal daughter. The structure is a vermilion-lacquered wooden gateway with copper-tiled roofs, a designated Important Cultural Property, and one of the surviving Edo-period daimyo gates in Tokyo. A mokuhanga depiction foregrounds the gate's saturated red against dark trunks and tile-grey roof — a chromatic problem suited to the woodblock medium, where flat planes of pigment register strongly. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) handling on the roof eaves and on the road surface softens what could otherwise read as a flat architectural diagram. The subject sits within Maeda's Tokyo cityscape work, where modern landmarks and surviving Edo monuments coexist; it also bears a coincidental tie to the artist's surname, the gate having been built by another Maeda household.