View of Yoyogi

The Yoyogi district in central Tokyo provided Maeda with a recurring local subject through the mid-Showa decades, when the area held a mix of military land, modest housing, and undeveloped parcels that have since been entirely overwritten by post-Olympics urbanism. A view rather than a snowscape suggests this design treats the district under ordinary daylight conditions, perhaps with rooftops and tree lines forming the principal structural elements. Sosaku-hanga's emphasis on the artist's direct hand at every stage produced compositions that read more graphically than the finely modulated atmospheric prints of the shin-hanga publishers; flat fields of color, visible carving lines, and the texture of the cherrywood block surface tend to remain perceptible in the finished impression. Maeda's Yoyogi prints together register a particular Tokyo neighborhood across a moment of transition that has since become impossible to recover from photographs alone.