Sakurada Gate

A second treatment of the Sakurada-mon, the masugata gate at the southwestern corner of the Imperial Palace moat. Returning to a subject across multiple compositions was common practice in twentieth-century mokuhanga, where artists tested different vantage points, seasons, or block-cutting strategies on the same motif — Hasui revisited Tokyo gates repeatedly through the 1920s and 1930s in just this way. Maeda's second Sakurada Gate likely shifts angle, time of day, or color register from the first impression, perhaps trading a frontal view for an oblique one, or substituting evening tones for daylight. The historical weight of the site — Ii Naosuke was assassinated outside this gate in 1860 — is not pictorial in the print itself, but the durable architectural form carries an implicit chronological depth. The pairing also reflects Maeda's dual position between [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) publisher commissions and [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) self-carved work, where serial exploration of a single motif was an artistic, not commercial, decision.