Hijiri bridge

Hijiribashi, the Sage Bridge, spans the Kanda River near Ochanomizu and Yushima Seido. The reinforced concrete arch was completed in 1927, only shortly before Henmi and his collaborators launched One Hundred New Views of Tokyo, and the bridge stood as a visible emblem of post-Great Kanto Earthquake reconstruction. A sosaku-hanga treatment of the structure would emphasize the curve of the arch against the rail tracks and embankments below, often handled in a few broad color planes with the bokashi gradations reserved for sky and water. Henmi worked the block himself, leaving the marks of the chisel and the press of the baren legible in the print rather than concealed, in keeping with the movement's rejection of the divided ukiyo-e workshop. Bridges recur throughout the New Views project as armatures for organizing modern Tokyo's mixed cityscape, and the Hijiribashi sheet sits alongside views of more famous spans in placing reconstructed civic infrastructure on equal footing with traditional meisho.