Slope (Image of Gojo-zaka)

This painting, which depicts Gojo-zaka (Gojo Slope) in Kiyomizu district in Kyoto, was presented at the First Exhibition of Seiko-sha, the painting school founded by Suisho Nishiyama (1879-1958). The slope predominantly occupies the center of the painting, with an empty lot and a temple and its stone fence on the left and houses on the right. People dressed in Japanese and Western clothes walking on the slope, a bike, rickshaws, and electric poles all contribute to reproduce an ordinary daily scene from the Taisho era. The curious mixture of Japanese and Western elements scattered all over the painting, including the air balloon and the Western-style mansion in the distant view, makes this painting worthy of prolonged viewing. The artist's playfulness is also found in the way his signature is placed in a designed tag in the left-hand foreground, despite the fact that this is a Nihon-ga.