As an ukiyo-e publisher of the 21st century, UKIYO-E PROJECT has been producing contemporary woodblock prints featuring iconic figures of today through traditional genres such as yakusha-e (actor prints), bijin-e (beauty prints), and musha-e (warrior prints).

However, since the summer of 2020, we decided to widen our repertoire and launch Vestiges of Edo, a landscape series that would feature various areas of Japan where the beauty of Edo culture still remains to this day.

Vestiges of Edo in Tsukuda plays on the unique characteristic of woodblock prints that enables us to express the passage of time by using the same blocks but different coloured inks. As a result, four versions depicting the four seasons were produced from a single landscape, which was only rendered possible thanks to the expertise and savoir-faire of both woodcarver and printer.

With Vestiges of Edo at Bell Tower, the second of this series, we conveyed the transition of a midsummer day with Noon and Evening. Both versions are aizuri, which is a genre of ukiyo-e that uses only different shades of blue, and whose rise in popularity paralleled that of landscape prints back in the Edo period.