Kobe No. 2

Though Tanaka is primarily known for his etchings of traditional Japanese architecture, he also captured other aspects of a changing Japan. In this print, Tanaka illustrated the A.P. Dethlefsen House in Kobe, a city in Hyōgo prefecture located to the southwest of Kyoto. Built in 1895 and designed by British architect Alexander Nelson Hansell (1857–1940), this was one of many historical Western-style houses constructed in the Meiji and Taishō periods. Kobe was one of the port cities that first opened up to foreigners due to the signing of the Harris Treaty in 1858, and the city was required to secure a residential area for foreigners. The street was spared during the bombings of Kobe in World War II, and many of its historic buildings still stand today. By the 1970s, a mansion like the Dethlefsen House represented the past, equally subject to the potential of loss and destruction as the traditional structures he often depicted.