Tsukiji

Tsukiji refers to the district in central Tokyo built on land reclaimed after the 1657 Meireki fire, best known for the Tsukiji Hongan-ji temple — an unusual reinforced-concrete building completed in 1934 in a South Asian-influenced style by Itō Chūta — and historically for its market and waterfront. Hiratsuka's print likely takes one of these urban landmarks as its subject, rendered in the artist's reduced black-and-white woodcut vocabulary. Whether depicting the temple's distinctive domed silhouette or a scene of buildings, bridges, or boats along the Sumida-adjacent canals, the image would be carved as a key-block-only composition with strong contour and patterned interior cutting. Urban subjects appear throughout Hiratsuka's work alongside his more numerous rural landscapes and shrine prints, and demonstrate the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) movement's interest in modern Japan as a legitimate subject for the woodblock — extending the tradition beyond the historical genres of [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) into contemporary observation.