Willows in Niigata

Artist Oda Kazuma (Japanese, 1882-1956)

Date1931

Dimensionsoverall: 20 1/2 x 15 1/4 in. (52.1 x 38.7 cm)

Mediumlithograph

ClassificationPrints

Credit LineGift of the Artist

Object number

1949.146

Not on View

Label TextThe city if Niigata lies on the northwest coast of Honshu, Japan’s largest island, and faces the Sea of Japan. It was one of the five ports opened to the West in 1858 with the signing of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Japan and the United States. Today it is a city with a population of more than two million people. Based on traditional Japanese landscape images but executed in a western manner, Oda Kazuma’s 1931 lithograph shows a combination of traditional Japanese buildings and signs of the modern world—notice the utility poles and electric wires along the path. The focus, though, is on the willow trees lining the banks of a canal. Canals used to run throughout the city, though are now filled in and used for roads. Niigata is still known, however, as the “City of Willows.”