Rain in Ginza (Ginza no ame)

Artist Tsuchiya Koitsu (Japanese, 1870–1949)

DateNovember 1933

Mediumwoodblock print; ink and color on paper

Dimensions39.5 x 27.5 cm (15 9/16 x 10 13/16 in.)

ClassificationsPrints

Credit LineHeald Fund for Asian Art and Asian Art Various Donors Fund

Terms

Object number1997.145

DescriptionThe artist (1870-1949) captures the tree-lined Ginza of 1933 and the essence of this important entertainment area. Lit up by the shop windows, street lamp, neon signs, and late-model cars, Ginza resembles New York's Fifth Avenue or Chicago's Michigan Avenue. Indeed, the image makes the illuminated city serve as a metaphor for the modernity. The sidewalk is crowded with pedestrians; two women are visible wearing kimono, which were then still more common than Western attire for nonworking wormen. Koitsu arrived in Tokyo at age fifteen to study woodblock-carving uner Matsuzaki, a carver for Kobayashi Kiyochika, one of the most important Meiji print designers. Koitsu worked with Kiyochika for nineteen years. Like the older artist, he designed Sino-Japanese War prints; he later worked as a lithographer. From 1932 on, he designed figurative landscapes and cityscapes for the New Print publishers Watanabe, Kawaguchi, and Doi. Between 1935 and 1945, collaborating with the same team he worked with on this print, he produced the series Views of Tokyo.
ProvenanceCarolyn Staley, Seattle

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