Forty-Eight Famous Views of Tokyo: Tsukiji Hotel

This view of the Tsukiji Hotel, from Ikkei's 'Forty-Eight Famous Views of Tokyo' series of around 1871, depicts one of the new Meiji-era foreign buildings that became almost obligatory subjects in the topographic print series of the early 1870s. The Tsukiji Hoteru-kan, designed by the American architect Richard Bridgens and built by the Japanese contractor Shimizu Kisuke II, had opened in 1868 in the foreign settlement at Tsukiji as the principal Western-style hotel of the new capital — a two-story wooden building with a central tower and verandas, executed in a somewhat eclectic Western style that became one of the most recognizable images of bunmei-kaika ('civilization and enlightenment'), the slogan under which the Meiji government promoted Western institutions and architecture. The building burned down in 1872 in the Great Fire of Ginza, which makes Ikkei's print one of the small but historically valuable group of contemporary depictions of the structure during its brief existence. The composition emphasizes the building's flag-flying tower and its foreign-style railings and verandas, with Japanese and Western figures arranged around the entrance. The print is held by the Edo-Tokyo Museum.