- Museum number
- 1980,1227,0.18.11
- Title
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Object: Sukiyabashi
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Series: Tokyo kaiko zue (Scenes of Last Tokyo)
- Description
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Colour woodblock print. Sukiyabashi bridge and boats over canal; buildings on bank. Unnumbered. Sealed, inscribed and signed.
- Production date
- December 1945
- Dimensions
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Height: 20 centimetres
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Width: 26.20 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- Smith 2002
Hiratsuka re-used a design he had contributed to 'One Hundred Views of New Tokyo (Shin Tokyo hyakkei)' in October 1930 (Kamon, Yasuo, Tozaka, Koji, and Asahi, Akira, 'Shin Tokyo hyakkei [A Hundred Views of New Tokyo]', Tokyo, 1978, plate 26). Visual scrutiny of the two versions suggest the blocks are the same, but noticeably worn in the 1945 version (Merritt, Helen, 'Modern Japanese Prints: The Early Years', Honolulu, 1990, p. 283, however, says that, 'According to Hiratsuka . . .', Maeda Masao re-carved the block). The effect of the later print is lighter and more sunlit, with green tints as in spring, rather than the more muted tones of the original. Though the scene in 1930 was almost a new one following the rebuilding after the 1923 earthquake, it is surprisingly little changed in Ernst Hacker's 1946 photograph (Smith 2002, no. 74). In Hiratsuka's print the busy area of Sukiyabashi (the bridge over the canal) is made strangely lonely. The building in the centre is the main office of Asahi Shinbun, one of Japan's biggest newspapers, completed in 1927 (for a lively account of the Sukiyabashi district, see Jinnai, Hidenobu (trans. Nishimura, Kimiko), 'Tokyo: A Spatial Anthropology', Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1995, pp. 186-8, where there is a photograph of almost the same scene in the late 1920s (fig. 76)). The bridge was demolished in 1957, and the canal filled in. For a more detailed discussion of the district, see Smith 2002, no. 74.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2002, 4 Sep-1 Dec, BM Japanese Galleries, 'Japanese Prints during the Allied Occupation 1945-1952'
- Acquisition date
- 1980
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1980,1227,0.18.11
