Kagurazaka shopping area in Tokyo

Kagurazaka is a sloping street running up from Iidabashi toward Ushigome in central Tokyo, historically lined with ryotei restaurants, geisha houses, and small shops, and by the late Taisho period mixing those older establishments with modern commercial frontages. As a subject within the One Hundred New Views of Tokyo series that Henmi co-launched in 1928, the slope offers an oblique perspective rather than a frontal monument, with shop signs, lanterns, and pedestrians providing rhythm down the incline. [Sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) depictions of such streetscapes generally favor flat blocks of color punctuated by inked [sumi](/glossary/sumi) outlines, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) reserved for sky or distant haze. Henmi cut and printed his own blocks rather than employing a workshop, so the sheet would carry the slight irregularities of hand-pulled jihanga production. The choice of a daily commercial neighborhood, rather than Asakusa or the Ginza, is in keeping with the series' programmatic interest in the lived districts of the modernizing capital.