Tokyo tower

Tokyo Tower depicts the Eiffel-inspired broadcasting tower completed in 1958 in Shiba, near Zojoji, which Kasamatsu also depicted in his prints. The subject is unusual within the shin-hanga vocabulary, which leaned heavily on traditional architecture and rural landscape; Tokyo Tower marks Kasamatsu's willingness, in the post-war period, to absorb modern urban iconography into the medium. The composition likely silhouettes the tower's red-and-white lattice against an evening or twilight sky, using bokashi for the atmospheric gradient and reserving the unprinted washi or restrained color for the structure itself. By the time Kasamatsu produced this work he was largely self-publishing in the sosaku-hanga manner, having broken with the traditional publisher-led shin-hanga workflow. The print thus sits at an interesting hinge in his career — a modern subject rendered in mokuhanga technique by an artist trained in the Meiji-era atelier system, and it documents the changing skyline of his native Tokyo.