Summer Time

Summer Time likely depicts a warm-season scene drawn from contemporary Tokyo life, rendered in Matsushita Satoru's woodblock medium with the flat planes of color and deliberate line work characteristic of modern [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) (creative printmaking). The title suggests a leisure subject — possibly a park, a rooftop, a streetscape shimmering in heat haze, or figures in yukata during a summer festival — interpreted through the urban lens that defines Matsushita's contribution to the 'One Hundred Views of Tokyo' portfolio. Contemporary Japanese printmakers working in this portfolio often layered multiple blocks to build atmospheric depth, using gradated [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) printing to suggest heat, humidity, or the diffuse quality of summer light. The [oban](/glossary/oban)-format print situates the image within a tradition of [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) depicting Tokyo's seasonal character, updating that Edo-period genre for late-twentieth-century metropolitan experience. As one of one hundred prints produced between 1989 and 1999 by the Japan Print Association, the work contributes to a collective portrait of the capital at the threshold of a new century.