Sukiya Bridge (Sukiyabashi)

Artist/Culture Hiratsuka, Un'ichi (Japanese, 1895–1997)

Date1945

Mediumwoodblock print; ink and color on paper

Dimensions20 x 28 cm (7 7/8 x 11 in.)

ClassificationsPrints

Credit LineMembers' Council Fund

Terms

Object number1987.79.5

DescriptionThe Citizenry seems on the whole to have been rather pleased with the rebuilding.... Everything had become so cheerful, all that white concrete replacing all that dark plaster and those even darker tiles Sukiya Bridge, west of Ginza, with the new Asahi Shimbun building reflected in its dark waters like a big ship, and the Nichigeki, the Japan Theater, like a bullring, was the place where all the mobo and moga, the modern boys and girls... wanted to have their pictures taken. (Edward Seidensticker, Tokyo Rising)
In this sunny depiction of the reconstructed area in the heart of downtown Tokyo, Hiratsuka reflects the then-prevailing attitude of the Tokyo citizenry. The gleaming white Sukiya Bridge (Sukiyabashi) and the modern architecture of the buildings clustered around it provided the-perfect background for snapshots of young people who identified with the modern and were hardly mourning the fading of the past. More than color, Hiratsuka's expressive block-carving technique-cutting away the wood with irregular strokes that move in various directions across the picture surface-enlivens this architectural view with the suggestion of transient sunlight. One can see that Hiratsuka was more excited by the structure given his design by the black lines of the key block than in the subsequent color blocks. In the years that followed, he turned increasingly to creating powerful surface patterns through his cutting of the block and to printing solely in black-and-white.

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