Waseda University Osumi memorial auditorium

A view of the Ōkuma Memorial Auditorium at Waseda University, the brick-and-stone collegiate Gothic landmark completed in 1927 and named for the university's founder Ōkuma Shigenobu. Kawakami, an Aoyama Gakuin graduate who studied English literature, returned often to architectural subjects that registered the Westernizing surface of Taishō and early Shōwa Tokyo — brick facades, clock towers, gas lamps, tramlines — rendered with the same flat, signboard graphics he used for nanban figures. The auditorium's tall central tower and pointed-arch fenestration translate naturally into Kawakami's vocabulary: each architectural element becomes a discrete shape stacked frontally, with no perspectival recession and minimal interior detail. Where [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) contemporaries such as Hasui or Asano would render the same building with atmospheric [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) and softened light, Kawakami treats it as an emblem to be read at a glance. The print belongs to his ongoing inventory of Westernized Tokyo monuments, paired in spirit with his Ginza, gas-lamp, and tramway scenes.