Immediately after the earthquake, Hiratsuka Un'ichi (1895-1997) set out to record the immense desolation of the destroyed city. This series, entitled Scenes of Tokyo after the Earthquake (Tokyo shinsai ato fūkei), of which 50 copies were supposedly printed, is perhaps one of the most emotional sets of Japanese landscape art ever made.

More monumental and, in a way, more optimistic was the slightly later series One Hundred Views of New Tokyo (Shin Tokyo hyakkei), in which Hiratsuka was again involved.⁵

Eight artists set out in 1929 to create an ambitious series depicting the newly emerging Tokyo. Fukazawa Sakuichi (1896-1947), Kawakami Sumio (1895-1972), Fujimori Shizuo (1891-1943), Maekawa Senpan (1888-1960), Henmi Takashi (1895-1944), Suwa Kanenori (1897-1932), Onchi Kōshirō, and Hiratsuka Un'ichi each contributed 12 or 13 prints. The artists themselves cut the blocks and printed 50 sets. This group organized itself as the Takujōsha, or the Table Group. Although a publisher (Nakajima Jūtarō) is associated with the project, the participating artists made it clear that his role was incomparable to that of a traditional publisher. One can, however, wonder whether the publisher's involvement was still a commercial precaution against the risk of a huge financial failure. The prints took three years to complete.

The series was published as a whole, not step by step in portfolios as was the case with the earlier landscape set initiated by Ishii Hakutei, Prints of Landscapes in Japan (Nihon fūkei hanga). Only a few complete sets have been preserved, and they are now in institutional or private collections.

The set here pictures a modern view of Tokyo: it not only captures the architectural changes, but also shows the Shōwa era lifestyle with its latest fads and fashions. It was clearly less involved with the concept of meishō (famous places), and chose instead to depict factories, business districts, and venues for modern entertainment and leisure. It documents more than it seeks to reflect or evoke a sense of beauty. The significance of the series was of course enhanced by an event that none of the artists could have had in mind during its creation: the destruction of Tokyo during the Second World War.

Approximately around the same time, a single artist, Koizumi Kishio (1893-1945), set out to depict the city in a larger format (c. 39.1 x 29.8 cm) than the hundred views of his generally more famous colleagues. The series One Hundred Pictures of Great Tokyo during the Shōwa Era (Shōwa dai Tokyo hyakuzue) is a good example of Koizumi's personal interpretation of Tokyo, where he had made his home. However, where One Hundred Views of New Tokyo seems to exude a mild left-of-center attitude in line with the political antecedents of artists like Onchi Kōshirō (having been in close contact with the radical Takehisa Yumeji), Koizumi's series seems to be patriotic, at the very least, and perhaps expressing, in the words of Jim Ulak, 'thinly veiled endorsements for militarism',⁶ a militarism that would lead to the second flattening of Japan's capital within little more than two decades.

These two series from the Sōsaku hanga tradition were grand projects, in which the artists directly conveyed their feelings to the print by 'using the chisels as their brushes' following pure Sōsaku hanga doctrine, but it is difficult to gauge the impact these series had because of their restricted-edition size.

The Shin hanga print movement also produced a number of cityscapes. In 1926, Kawase Hasui started his series Twenty Views of Tokyo (Tokyo nijūkei). As the views show, although the prints do pick up elements of modernity, they are clad in veils of tranquility: Hasui wants to portray Japan in its serenity, a country in peace and not one torn by conflicting ideologies and social conflicts. One tends to consider the artists from the Shin hanga tradition as conservatives, but it may be that they just did what they were told by their publishers, in particular by Watanabe Shōzaburō, that is, to produce prints of the Japan that foreign clients wished to see. Watanabe's business had quickly become oriented towards a mostly American clientele, and their taste was the portrayal of the quaint Japan, the Japan of snowclad temples, of rain showers drowning the single traveler in a rickshaw, and the like.

The 1920s and 30s were an extremely complicated period. Many opposing ideologies and trends existed in society. On the one hand, there was nostalgia for Edo, exemplified by the early popularity of Kiyochika's landscape prints, but on the other, the eager attitude to adopt the modernity of a Western lifestyle. Numerous leftist movements, with their international orientation, were counteracted by a reactionary anti-Western movement that culminated in the militarist governments which took Japan to war. Characteristic of artists of both traditions, however, was that - whatever their ideological differences - their love for Japan and the core values that Japan stands for were never in doubt. Artists like Hiratsuka Un'ichi were very outspoken about their love for Japan, for its history and set of cultural values, despite political trends that could of course find no favor with them. If there ever was a period in Japanese history in which societal differences were reflected in prints, this was it.

It may be said that within the genre of landscape prints, the obvious contrasts between the Sōsaku hanga and Shin hanga printmaking traditions follow the expected lines of division: the Sōsaku hanga artists show a degree of engagement with their subject matter and are not solely interested in beauty, tranquility, and the idealized image of Japan, whereas the Shin hanga artists, perhaps led by the commercial guidelines set out by their publishers, avoid the intrusion of reality and ugliness and try to perpetuate the image of Japan that Hokusai and Hiroshige shaped a century earlier.

Notes:
5. Onchi Kōshirō et al., Shin Tokyo hyakkei, Tokyo, Heibonsha, 1978
6. Ulak, James T. et al., Tokyo: The Imperial Capital, Miami, The Wolfsonian, 2004, p. 33

Figures:
Kawanishi Hide 川西英(1894-1965)
Baseball at Kōshien stadium (Kōshien yakyū 甲子園野球)
Date: 1931
Signature: Hide
Publisher: Self-published

Kawanishi Hide 川西英(1894-1965)
Soccer in Higashi-yūenchi park, Kobe (Kōbe Higashiyūenchi shūkyū 神戸東遊園地蹴球)
Date: 1932
Signature: Hide
Publisher: Self-published