Street Scene at the End of the Year

Street Scene at the End of the Year, published around 1920 by the Hasegawa publisher in Tokyo, is among the more socially observed of Shoda Koho's [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) designs, a print in which the firm's atmospheric mode is applied to the bustle of late December commerce in a provincial Japanese town. The composition looks down a narrow street where a few small figures move between shopfronts and stalls, their bundles and parcels suggesting the seasonal errands of year-end preparation. Koho organizes the sheet with strong receding orthogonals along the eaves and the line of the gutter, a device that draws the viewer's gaze inward and gives the modest [chuban](/glossary/chuban) sheet an unexpected sense of depth. The palette is restrained, dominated by slate and warm umber, with the paper-screened shopfronts and small lantern boxes providing soft yellow accents that animate the otherwise cool tonal range. The Hasegawa carvers articulated the lattice of shoji screens and signboards with crisp keyblock work, while the printers used overlaid [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations to model the sky and the recessive street, layering washes that the studio became known for executing with notable refinement. The design participates in the broader shin-hanga interest in the textures of contemporary urban life, translating that interest into a quietly observant idiom rather than the more dramatic mode of later artists in the movement. The chuban sheet size used here was characteristic of the Hasegawa export catalogue, marketed both to foreign visitors and to a domestic audience receptive to the firm's atmospheric idiom. The impression documented in the Japanese Art Open Database (https://[ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org/image/jaodb/Koho_Shoda-No_Series-Street_Scene_at_the_End_of_the_Year-00036187-040508-F06) preserves the saturated yet airy tonal range that distinguishes strong impressions of this quietly evocative seasonal street view.