Tasogare no Nihonbashi (Nihonbashi at Twilight), from the series Taishō shinkasai mokuhangashū (Collection of Woodblock Prints of the Taishō Earthquake)

In the aftermath of the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, Nishizawa Tekihō and his colleagues took to the streets of Tokyo to document the terrible toll of the disaster upon the city and its inhabitants. The famous wooden Nihonbashi Bridge seen in ukiyo-e was replaced with stone in the late nineteenth century, but as this print shows, it still did not escape the ravages of the earthquake. The dark silhouette of Mount Fuji can be glimpsed through the tangle of electric cables and ruined buildings. An auspicious motif in many woodblock prints, here the mountain takes on a more forbidding air as a portent of the earth’s devastating power.

In 1924, the Japanese publisher Hoshino Seki issued a set of thirty-six prints depicting scenes from the aftermath of the September 1, 1923 great Tokyo earthquake. He commissioned six artists to each produce six designs based on eye witness sketches and accounts, which the master carver Nagashima Kiichi and printer Tamura Tetsunosuke then translated into color woodblock prints for the portfolio.

An important part of the Portland Art Museum collection of Japanese prints (88.6.1-36), the Museum is placing this historic series online at this time to honor the victims of the March 11, 2011 earthquake in northeastern Japan.

To donate to the international relief effort, please click on one of the links below.

RED CROSS: http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_main

MERCY CORPS: https://www.mercycorps.org/donate/japan

2011 The Artist's Touch, The Craftsman's Hand: Three Centuries of Japanese Prints from the Portland Art Museum Portland Art Museum

2022; 2023 Human Nature: 150 Years of Japanese Landscape Prints Portland Art Museum