Gasoline Service

From the Showa Shokugyo Emaki, this print documents the petrol-station attendant, a profession that emerged with the rapid motorization of postwar Japan. Wada Sanzo composes the scene around the uniformed worker in attendance on a parked vehicle — peaked cap, fitted tunic, hose in hand — flanked by the tall pumps and the painted signage of a roadside service stand. The graphic vocabulary is characteristic of his occupational designs: clean contour drawing, broad areas of unmodulated colour, and a foreshortened spatial setting that pushes the worker forward in the frame. The mokuhanga process registers each colour from a separately carved block, and the smooth machine forms of the pumps and automobile read crisply against the more textured washi ground. Within Wada's series, the print stands as a pointedly modern entry, sitting alongside designs of streetcar conductors, mechanics, and bus drivers to chart how new infrastructures generated new occupations. The image extends his long-standing interest in the dignity of labour into the unmistakably contemporary world of the Showa-era street.