Tokyo Tower

Tokyo Tower uses a combination of etching, aquatint, drypoint, and roulette to render a subject that was, in postwar Japan, among the most potent symbols of national reconstruction and modernization. Completed in 1958, Tokyo Tower carried enormous cultural weight as an emblem of Japan's economic recovery and its negotiation with Western modernity — themes central to Ikeda's broader artistic project. The aquatint ground would have allowed for the large tonal fields and atmospheric gradation suited to depicting the tower's structural mass against sky, while drypoint and roulette provide textural detail. That the work also incorporates figures and abstract elements alongside the architectural subject suggests Ikeda treated the tower not as a topographical record but as a symbolic and compositional element within a more complex visual argument.