Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery

The Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery (Seitoku Kinen Kaigakan), completed in 1926 in the Meiji Jingu Gaien, is a Western-style stone building with a central dome housing oil and Japanese-style paintings depicting episodes from the life of Emperor Meiji. As a subject within Henmi's contribution to One Hundred New Views of Tokyo, the gallery represents the new monumental architecture of the imperial capital rather than its older temple and shrine fabric. Sosaku-hanga depictions of such buildings typically organize the facade into geometric blocks of color, exploiting the woodblock's affinity for flat planes and crisp edges; bokashi gradations are used sparingly, often only for sky or shadow. Henmi printed his own blocks in the jihanga manner, and the resulting surface tends to be quieter than commercial shin-hanga views of comparable subjects by Hasui or Hiroshi Yoshida. The choice of a Taisho-era civic monument is consistent with the New Views project's interest in cataloguing the Tokyo built since the Meiji Restoration.