
Snow-covered street in Kyoto.
by Yuhan Ito
- Medium:
- Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock)
- Image courtesy of
- Saru Gallery
Description
This print depicts a quiet Kyoto thoroughfare blanketed in fresh snow, a meisho-e treatment of a familiar urban subject rendered in the restrained shin-hanga manner. The composition likely follows the convention Ito used in related winter scenes: a receding line of low wooden machiya townhouses, tiled eaves weighted with accumulated snow, lanterns or signage providing small accents of warmer color against an otherwise cool palette. Snow scenes of this type relied on the printer's skill with bokashi gradation to suggest overcast sky and the soft fall of light on white ground, with the unprinted washi itself often standing in for the deepest snow. Sparse figures, where present, are reduced to dark silhouettes carrying umbrellas, lending scale and a sense of muffled quiet. Ito's known output centered on landscape and scenic views produced through the publisher-driven collaborative system of carvers and printers that defined shin-hanga, and Kyoto subjects placed his work within an established commercial vein that publishers cultivated alongside Hasui and Yoshida. The print represents the genre's interest in atmospheric weather effects translated through traditional polychrome woodblock technique.
More Prints by Yuhan Ito
More Urban Scenes Prints

A Hundred Shades of Ink of Edo: Kiyonaga's Pipe (Edo zumi hyaku shoku: Kiyonaga no kiseru)
Woodblock print

View of Kabuki Theater from Matsuya (Ginza Matsuya yori Kabukiza), no. 3 from the series "Pictures of Ginza, First Series (Gashu Ginza dai isshu)"
1928
Color lithograph

Distant View of Mitsukoshi Movie Theater in Shinjuku from the Sixth Floor of Hoteiya (Hoteiya rokkai kara Shinjuku Mitsukoshi Musashi no kan enbo zu), no. 1 from the series "Scenery of Shinjuku (Gashu Shinjuku fukei)"
1930
Color lithograph

Spring Dusk at the Tōshō Shrine in Ueno
1948
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Featured in Collections
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Frequently Asked Questions
Snow-covered street in Kyoto. was created by Yuhan Ito (伊藤雄半).
Snow-covered street in Kyoto. depicts urban scenes and snow scenes.



