KOIZUMI Kishio was a printmaker who, from the Taisho through the Showa periods, carved the ever-changing face of the modern city with an almost obsessive intensity. Although he studied under Tobari Kogan, his work stands apart from that of his contemporaries, distinguished by an extraordinarily realistic and meticulous commitment to documentation.
The crowning achievement of Koizumi’s career is One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo in the Showa Era (Showa Dai-Tokyo Hyakkei), completed over a span of approximately twelve years beginning in 1928. In this monumental series of one hundred prints, he captured Tokyo as it rose from the devastation of the Great Kanto Earthquake and transformed into a modern metropolis. Newly completed landmarks such as the National Diet Building, modern bridges, and bustling shopping streets are fixed in his prints with astonishingly fine lines and the rich colors of multi-block printing. More than landscapes, these works constitute an ambitious documentary—an attempt to record the pulse of a rapidly changing age through the traditional medium of woodblock printing.
Technically, Koizumi undertook an intensive study of classical carving methods, while integrating them with modern perspective and sophisticated treatments of light. His carving is extraordinarily fine, revealing an almost relentless attention to detail, from the textures of building façades to the clothing of passersby. Where Hiratsuka Un’ichi pursued the abstract power of black and white, Koizumi devoted himself to recreating the abundance and complexity of lived reality through color.
Created at a time when photography was becoming widespread, KOIZUMI Kishio’s prints represent a sustained pursuit of an urban sensibility that could only be expressed through printmaking. The one hundred scenes he carved now function like a time capsule, vividly reviving a “Tokyo of the past” that has since been lost.
The crowning achievement of Koizumi’s career is One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo in the Showa Era (Showa Dai-Tokyo Hyakkei), completed over a span of approximately twelve years beginning in 1928. In this monumental series of one hundred prints, he captured Tokyo as it rose from the devastation of the Great Kanto Earthquake and transformed into a modern metropolis. Newly completed landmarks such as the National Diet Building, modern bridges, and bustling shopping streets are fixed in his prints with astonishingly fine lines and the rich colors of multi-block printing. More than landscapes, these works constitute an ambitious documentary—an attempt to record the pulse of a rapidly changing age through the traditional medium of woodblock printing.
Technically, Koizumi undertook an intensive study of classical carving methods, while integrating them with modern perspective and sophisticated treatments of light. His carving is extraordinarily fine, revealing an almost relentless attention to detail, from the textures of building façades to the clothing of passersby. Where Hiratsuka Un’ichi pursued the abstract power of black and white, Koizumi devoted himself to recreating the abundance and complexity of lived reality through color.
Created at a time when photography was becoming widespread, KOIZUMI Kishio’s prints represent a sustained pursuit of an urban sensibility that could only be expressed through printmaking. The one hundred scenes he carved now function like a time capsule, vividly reviving a “Tokyo of the past” that has since been lost.
