Sukiya bridge

Sukiyabashi was a stone bridge spanning the outer moat of Edo Castle near Ginza, removed in the early Showa period when the surrounding moat was filled. The subject places the print within Hiratsuka's record of vanishing Tokyo landmarks, a theme he and other sosaku-hanga artists pursued as Meiji-era infrastructure disappeared in the prewar and postwar decades. The composition likely emphasizes the bridge's stonework against the surrounding cityscape, treated through Hiratsuka's mode of broad black areas and cleanly carved silhouettes. His practice of self-carving each block meant every contour shows the direct mark of the chisel, without the smoothing hand of a professional carver. The work joins a body of urban landscape prints in which Hiratsuka documented both surviving and lost structures across Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara, and other Japanese cities, often choosing subjects already overlooked by the more tourist-oriented shin-hanga publishers.