Tokyo station

This print likely depicts the Marunouchi facade of Tokyo Station, the red-brick terminus designed by Tatsuno Kingo and opened in 1914. As a [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) artist based in Tokyo, Onchi engaged repeatedly with the modern urban environment, and the station building functioned as an emblem of Meiji-Taisho Westernization. The mokuhanga technique used here lets the artist hand-carve and print his own blocks, an approach that contrasts pointedly with the industrial subject. Onchi's urban scenes typically reduce architectural mass to flat color planes punctuated by sparse detail, owing as much to European modernism (he was familiar with German Expressionism and the work of Munch) as to traditional [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) conventions. The work fits within his broader commitment to autonomous, artist-driven printmaking that distinguished his circle from the [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) publishers active in the same decades.