Tokyo Station [from "A Hundred Views of New Tokyo"] 東京駅口［『新東京百景』より］

A Hundred Views of New Tokyo is a collection of one hundred creative prints by eight artists, Koshiro Onchi(1891-1955), Kanenori Suwa(1897-1932), Un-ichi Hiratsuka(1895-1997), Sumio Kawakami(1895-1972), Sakuichi Fukazawa(1896-1947), Shizuo Fujimori(1891-1943), Takashi Henmi(1895-1944), Senpan Maekawa(1888-1960). A limited edition of fifty copies was distributed to the members of the "Sosaku Hanga Club" led by Jutaro Nakajima during the four times from 1929 to 1932. The Sosaku hanga(creative print) movement, which arose between the closing years of the Meiji era and the early years of Showa, gave importance to the individual qualities of the artist and advocated the expression of personal identity in prints. It was based on the principle that the artist should perform all the stages of the printmaking process personally, including the execution of the preliminary drawing or painting, the cutting of the block, and the actual printing. The group recognized the importance of the kind of creation expression that could only be obtained with prints and campaigned to have prints given their proper position as a category of fine art. "The Nihon Sosaku Hanga Kyokai" was organized in 1918 with the aims of elevating the status of printmaking and providing a greater knowledge of prints to the general public. All of the artists represented in this collection were members of this organization. Based on the principles of "creative printmaking," this print collection was designed to show the new Tokyo, which was just recovering from the Great Kanto Earthquake and going through major changes in the process of becoming a modern city, and to create a vision of Tokyo for future generations. There are views of ordinary people engaged in leisure activities as well as the new roads, bridges, and parks built as part of the recovery. These prints carry on the tradition of the "ukiyoe" landscape print, especially the series of famous views of Edo by Hokusai and Hiroshige. At the same time, they reflect the aspirations of the printmakers who came together to create them, skillfully plying their chisels in an attempt to capture the appearance of the rapidly changing city of Tokyo with a fresh point of view.