Early Spring in the Suburbs (Soshun kogai), from the series "New One Hundred Views of Tokyo (Shin Tokyo hyakkei)"

From the series New One Hundred Views of Tokyo (Shin Tokyo hyakkei), this 1925 color woodblock print captures the suburban outskirts of the capital in early spring. The Japanese subtitle Soshun kogai places the scene at the moment when winter recedes and the first green begins to appear on bare branches and garden plots. Fukazawa renders this transitional season with a palette that balances the grey-browns of dormant vegetation against pale greens and the soft blue of a late-winter sky. The suburban setting, neither fully urban nor rural, was a landscape particular to the Taisho and early Showa periods, when Tokyo's growth was pushing residential development outward along new rail lines. The series title links this print to Hiroshige's famous One Hundred Views of Edo, claiming equivalent ambition for the modern city.