Collected illustaraion of the Great Earthquake (Shin Hanga)

This illustrated work was created by Nakazawa Hiromitsu and published on October 25, 1923, just weeks after the Great Kanto Earthquake devastated Tokyo and the surrounding region. The album was published by Kanao Bun’endō, a well-known publisher of art and illustrated books during the Taisho period. It consists of 33 pages of black-and-white sketches and paintings by ten artists, including Hiromitsu, Niwa Reisuke, Hata Tsuneharu, Akagi Yasunobu, Mizushima Niou, Kato Gisuke, Akatsuka Tadakazu, Shimizu Yoshiomi, Shimizu Yoshiyasu, and Susukida Kiyoshi.

The album was not only a memorial to the tragedy but also a powerful form of visual reportage. The cover features a dramatic hand-drawn scene of people fleeing a blazing fire — one of the most terrifying realities of the 1923 quake. The title, 「関東大震災画帖」, is rendered in a bold, brush-style Kanji typeface, framed in a rectangular box at the top. This strong calligraphic lettering evokes the authority and seriousness of traditional Japanese documents, while visually anchoring the chaos below.

The typeface plays a crucial role in framing the narrative. Its structured and dignified form contrasts with the uncontrolled movement of the flames and figures, reinforcing the emotional and historical weight of the content. The design as a whole is an early example of how Japanese graphic art fused traditional aesthetics with modern social documentation, using both text and image to respond to a national crisis.