Hiroshige 53 Stations of the Tokaido Vertical E-Book

Cristina Berna

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 164

Beschreibung

The official title for this work is "Pictures from the Famous Places of the Fifty-three Stations". Hiroshige produced these prints in 1855 more than 20 years after his first horizontal Hoeido series published 1833-34, which is included as thumbnails for comparison. It is instructive to see Hiroshiges use of his now mature experience as he develops the vertical format for the narrative. He does designs as he would do a photograph. He set the standard for landscape photography, without a camera. The Tokaido series was the most popular print series ever made in Japan. Hiroshige returned to this theme again and again, with delightful results. It is possible to travel the same road today and some villages are still looking quite like they did back then. The postal stations were constructed between 1601 and 1624.

Leseprobe

About the authors

Cristina Berna loves photographing and writing. She also creates designs and advice on fashion and styling.

Eric Thomsen has published in science, economics and law, created exhibitions and arranged concerts.

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Contact the authors

[email protected]

Published by www.missysclan.net

Cover picture: print 5, 4th station Hodogaya

Inside: print 15, 14th station Yoshiwara: Floating Islands in Fuji Marsh (Yoshiwara, Fuji no numa ukishima ga hara), from the series Famous Sights of the Fifty-three Stations (Gojûsan tsugi meisho zue) 1855

Contents

Introduction

Utagawa Hiroshige

The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō: Vertical

No 1: Start: Nihonbashi

No 2: 1

st

station: Shinagawa-juku

No 3: 2

nd

station: Kawasaki-juku

No 4: 3

rd

station: Kanagawa-juku

No 5: 4

th

station: Hodogaya-juku

No 6: 5

th

station: Totsuka-juku

No 7: 6

th

station: Fujisawa-shuku

No 8: 7

th

station: Hiratsuka-juku

No 9: 8

th

station: Ōiso-juku

No 10: 9

th

station: Odawara-juku

No 11: 10

th

station: Hakone-juku

No 12: 11

th

station: Mishima-shuku

No 13: 12

th

station: Numazu-juku

No 14: 13

th

station: Hara-juku

No 15: 14

th

station: Yoshiwara-juku

No 16: 15

th

station: Kanbara-juku

No 17: 16

th

station: Yui-shuku

No 18: 17

th

station: Okitsu-juku

No 19: 18

th

station: Ejiri-juku

No 20: 19

th

station: Fuchū-shuku

No 21: 20

th

station Mariko-juku

No 22: 21

st

station Okabe-juku

No 23: 22

nd

station: Fujieda-juku

No 24: 23rd station Shimada-juku

No 25: 24th station Kanaya-juku

No 26: 25

th

station: Nissaka-shuku

No 27: 26

th

station: Kakegawa-juku

No 28: 27

th

station: Fukuroi-juku

No 29: 28

th

station: Mitsuke-juku

No 30: 29

th

station: Hamamatsu-juku

No 31: 30

th

station: Maisaka-juku

No 32: 31

st

station: Arai-juku

No 33: 32

nd

station: Shirasuka-juku

No 34: 33

rd

station: Futagawa-juku

No 35: 34

th

station Yoshida-juku

No 36: 35

th

station: Goyu-shuku

No 37: 36

th

station: Akasaka-juku

No 38: 37

th

station: Fujikawa-shuku

No 39: 38

th

station: Okazaki-shuku

No 40: 39

th

station: Chiryū-juku

No 41: 40

th

station: Narumi-juku

No 42: 41

st

station: Miya-juku

No 43: 42

nd

station: Kuwana-juku

No 44: 43

rd

station: Yokkaichi-juku

No 45: 44

th

station: Ishiyakushi-juku

No 46: 45

th

station: Shōno-juku

No 47: 46

th

station: Kameyama-juku

No 48: 47

th

station: Seki-juku

No 49: 48

th

station: Sakashita-juku

No 50: 49

th

station: Tsuchiyama-juku

No 51: 50

th

station: Minakuchi-juku

No 52: 51

st

station: Ishibe-juku

No 53: 52

nd

station: Kusatsu-juku

No 54: 53

rd

station: Ōtsu-juku

No 55: terminus: Sanjō Ōhashi (Kyoto)

References

Introduction

The official title for this work is “Pictures from the Famous Places of the Fifty-three Stations”.

Hiroshige produced these prints in 1855 more than 20 years after his first horizontal Hoeidō series published 1833-34, which is included as thumbnails for comparison.

It is instructive to see Hiroshige’s use of his now mature experience as he develops the vertical format for the narrative. He does designs as he would do a photograph. He set the standard for landscape photography, without a camera.

The Tōkaidō series was the most popular print series ever made in Japan. Hiroshige returned to this theme again and again, with delightful results.

It is possible to travel the same road today and some villages are still looking quite like they did back then. The postal stations were constructed between 1601 and 1624.

Cristina and Eric

Utagawa Hiroshige

Utagawa Hiroshige (in Japanese: 歌川 広重), also called Andō Hiroshige (in Japanese: 安藤 広重;), was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. He was born 1797 and died 12 October 1858.

Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and erotica. The term ukiyo-e (浮世絵) translates as "picture[s] of the floating world".

Hiroshige is best known for his horizontal-format landscape series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, which is the subject of this book, and for his vertical-format landscape series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

The main subjects of his work are considered atypical of the ukiyo-e genre, whose focus was more on beautiful women, popular actors, and other scenes of the urban pleasure districts of Japan's Edo period (1603–1868).

The Edo period was a period with strong feudal control by the Tokugawa shogunate, with stability and economic growth, very closed to outside influence, although methods were imported and applied and a flowering cultural and artistic life.

The popular series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai (ISBN ES 978-8-411-744-935) was a strong influence on Hiroshige's choice of subject. Hiroshige's approach is more ambient, much more detailed, than Hokusai's bolder, more poetic, formal and focused prints.

Where Hokusai gives you an immediate experience just from looking at his prints, with Hiroshige you have to look more carefully, devote more time, to decipher the details and the meaning.

Subtle use of color was essential in Hiroshige's prints, often printed with multiple impressions in the same area and with extensive use of bokashi (color gradation), both of which were rather labor-intensive techniques.

Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji 1858, print 27: Futami Bay in Ise Province, 伊勢二見か浦 ISBN ES 978-8-413-731-148

For scholars and collectors, Hiroshige's death marked the beginning of a rapid decline in the ukiyo-e genre, especially in the face of the westernization that followed the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

The Meiji Restoration followed in 1868 after Commodore Matthew C Perry had forced Japan to open its ports to foreign in 1853. It meant an end to the shogunate, the feudal ruling system, restored the powers to the emperor who centralized government and industrialization.

Hiroshige's work came to have a marked influence on Western painting towards the close of the 19th century as a part of the trend in Japonism. Western artists, such as Manet and Monet, collected and closely studied Hiroshige's compositions. Vincent van Gogh even went so far as to paint copies of two of Hiroshige's prints from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

Hiroshige was born in 1797 in the Yayosu Quay section of the Yaesu area in Edo (modern Tokyo). He was of a samurai background, and is the greatgrandson of Tanaka Tokuemon, who held a position of power under the Tsugaru clan in the northern province of Mutsu.

Wind Blown Grass Across the Moon – by Hiroshige https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Wind_Blown_Grass_Across_the_Moon_-_Utagawa_Hiroshige_(Ando).jpg

Hiroshige studied under Toyohiro of the Utagawa school of artists. Hiroshige's grandfather, Mitsuemon, was an archery instructor who worked under the name Sairyūken.

Hiroshige's father, Gen'emon, was adopted into the family of Andō Jūemon, whom he succeeded as fire warden for the Yayosu Quay area.

Returning Sails at Tsukuda, from Eight Views of Edo, Utagawa Toyohiro between 1802 and 1828, Brooklyn Museum online, image: Opencooper https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Returning_Sails_at_Tsukuda_from_Eight_Views_of_Edo_-_Utagawa_Toyohiro.jpg

Hiroshige went through several name changes as a youth: Jūemon, Tokubē, and Tetsuzō. He had three sisters, one of whom died when he was three. His mother died in early 1809, and his father followed later in the year, but not before handing his fire warden duties to his twelve-year-old son. He was charged with prevention of fires at Edo Castle, a duty that left him much leisure time.

Not long after his parents' deaths, perhaps at around fourteen, Hiroshige—then named Tokutarō— began painting. He sought the tutelage of Toyokuni of the Utagawa school, but Toyokuni had too many pupils to make room for him. A librarian introduced him instead to Toyohiro of the same school.

By 1812 Hiroshige was permitted to sign his works, which he did under the art name Hiroshige. He also studied the techniques of the well-established Kanō school, the nanga whose tradition began with the Chinese Southern School, and the realistic Shijō school, and likely the perspective techniques of Western art and ukio-e.

Hiroshige's apprentice work included book illustrations and single-sheet ukiyo-e prints of female beauties and kabuki actors in the Utagawa style, sometimes signing them Ichiyūsai or, from 1832, Ichiryūsai. In 1823, he resigned his post as fire warden, though he still acted as an alternate. He declined an offer to succeed Toyohiro upon the master's death in 1828.

It was not until 1829–1830 that Hiroshige began to produce the landscapes he has come to be known for, such as the Eight Views of Ōmi series. He also created an increasing number of bird and flower prints about this time. About 1831, his

Edo, print 30: The Plum Garden in Kameido, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo ISBN ES 978-8-413-732-046. This print was copied as an oil painting by van Gogh, see Van Gogh Landscapes, ISBN ES 978-8-413734-408.

Ten Famous Places in the Eastern Capital appeared, and seem to bear the influence of Hokusai, whose popular landscape series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji had recently seen publication (ISBN ES 978-8-411-744-935).

An invitation to join an official procession to Kyoto in 1832 gave Hiroshige the opportunity to travel along the Tōkaidō route that linked the two capitals. He sketched the scenery along the way, and when he returned to Edo he produced the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, which contains some of his best-known prints.

Hiroshige built on the series' success by following it with others, such as the Illustrated Places of Naniwa (1834), Famous Places of Kyoto (1835), another Eight Views of Ōmi (1834). As he had never been west of Kyoto, Hiroshige-based his illustrations of Naniwa (modern Osaka) and Ōmi Province on pictures found in books and paintings.

Hiroshige's first wife helped finance his trips to sketch travel locations, in one instance selling some of her clothing and ornamental combs. She died in October 1838, and Hiroshige remarried to Oyasu, sixteen years his junior, daughter of a. farmer named Kaemon from Tōtōmi Province

Edo, print 63: Suidō Bridge and the Surugadai Quarter, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, (Iris Day) ISBN ES 978-8-413732-046

Around 1838 Hiroshige produced two series entitled Eight Views of the Edo Environs, each print accompanied by a humorous kyōka poem. The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō saw print between about 1835 and 1842, a joint production with Keisai Eisen, of which Hiroshige's share was forty-six of the seventy prints ISBN ES 978-8-413730-660. Hiroshige produced 118 sheets for the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo over the last decade of his life, beginning about 1848.

Hiroshige lived in the barracks until the age of 43. Gen'emon and his wife died in 1809, when Hiroshige was 12 years old, just a few months after his father had passed the position on to him.

Although his duties as a fire-fighter were light, he never shirked these responsibilities, even after he entered training in Utagawa Toyohiro's studio. He eventually turned his firefighter position over to his brother, Tetsuzo, in 1823, who in turn passed on the duty to Hiroshige's son in 1832.

Hiroshige II was a young print artist, Chinpei Suzuki, who married Hiroshige's daughter, Otatsu. He was given the artist name of "Shigenobu".

Thirty-six Views, print 3: Sukiyagashi in the Eastern Capital, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji ISBN ES 978-8-413-731-148

View of the Whirlpools at Awa triptych, 1857, part of the series "Snow, Moon and Flowers”https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Utagawa_Hiroshige._The_swirls_of_the_Naruto_Strait_in_the_province_of_Awa._1857.jpg

Hiroshige intended to make Shigenobu his heir in all matters, and Shigenobu adopted the name "Hiroshige" after his master's death in 1858, and thus today is known as Hiroshige II. However, the marriage to Otatsu was troubled and in 1865 they separated. Otatsu was remarried to another former pupil of Hiroshige, Shigemasa, who appropriated the name of the lineage and today is known as Hiroshige III. Both Hiroshige II and Hiroshige III worked in a distinctive style based on that of Hiroshige, but neither achieved the level of success and recognition accorded to their master.

Suō Iwakuni, Hiroshige II, 1859 .https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hiroshige_II_Su%C5%8D_Iwakuni.jpg

Other students of Hiroshige I include Utagawa Shigemaru, Utagawa Shigekiyo, and Utagawa Hirokage.

In his declining years, Hiroshige still produced thousands of prints to meet the demand for his works, but few were as good as those of his early and middle periods. He never lived in financial comfort, even in old age. In no small part, his prolific output stemmed from the fact that he was poorly paid per series, although he was still capable of remarkable art when the conditions were right — his great One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (名所江戸百景Meisho Edo Hyakkei) was paid for up-front by a wealthy Buddhist priest in love with the daughter of the publisher, Uoya Eikichi (a former fishmonger).

In 1856, Hiroshige "retired from the world," becoming a Buddhist monk; this was the year he began his One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. He died aged 62 during the great Edo cholera epidemic of 1858 (whether the epidemic killed him is unknown) and was buried in a Zen Buddhist temple in Asakusa.

Just before his death, he left a poem:

Teppōzu Akashi-bashi, Hiroshige III, c. 1870 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hiroshige_III_-_Tepp%C5%8Dzu_Akashi-bashi.jpg

"I leave my brush in the East And set forth on my journey. I shall see the famous places in the Western Land."

(The Western Land in this context refers to the strip of land by the Tōkaidō between Kyoto and Edo, but it does double duty as a reference to the paradise of the Amida Buddha).

Despite his productivity and popularity, Hiroshige was not wealthy—his commissions were less than those of other in-demand artists, amounting to an income of about twice the wages of a day laborer. His will left instructions for the payment of his debts.

Hiroshige produced over 8,000 works. In his early work he largely confined himself to common ukiyo-e themes such as women (美人画bijin-ga) and actors (役者絵yakusha-e).

Then, after the death of Toyohiro, Hiroshige made a dramatic turnabout, with the 1831 landscape series Famous Views of the Eastern Capital (東都名所Tōto Meisho) which was critically acclaimed for its composition and colors.

A dark night printing of the view sometimes dubbed "Man on Horseback Crossing a Bridge." From the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō, this is View 28 and Station 27 at Nagakubo-shuku, depicting the Wada Bridge across the Yoda River. ISBN ES 978-8-413-730-660. Until Berlin Blue shades and dark prints were very expensiv to make.

This set is generally distinguished from Hiroshige's many print sets depicting Edo by referring to it as Ichiyūsai Gakki, a title derived from the fact that he signed it as Ichiyūsai Hiroshige. With The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1833–1834), his success was assured. These designs were drawn from Hiroshige's actual travels of the full distance of 490 kilometers (300 mi). They included details of date, location, and anecdotes of his fellow travelers, and were immensely popular.

In fact, this series was so popular that he reissued it in three versions, one of which was made jointly with Kunisada. Hiroshige went on to produce more than 2000 different prints of Edo and post stations Tōkaidō, as well as series such as The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō (1834– 1842) and his own Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1852–1858). Of his estimated total of 5000 designs, these landscapes comprised the largest proportion of any genre.

He dominated landscape printmaking with his unique brand of intimate, almost small-scale works compared against the older traditions of landscape painting descended from Chinese landscape painters such as Sesshu. The travel prints generally depict travelers along famous routes experiencing the special attractions of various stops along the way.

They travel in the rain, in snow, and during all of the seasons. In 1856, working with the publisher Uoya Eikichi, he created a series of luxury edition prints, made with the finest printing techniques including true gradation of color, the addition of mica to lend a unique iridescent effect, embossing, fabric printing, blind printing, and the use of glue printing (wherein ink is mixed with glue for a glittery effect).

Hiroshige pioneered the use of the vertical format in landscape printing in his series Famous Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces. One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (issued serially between 1856 and 1859) was immensely popular. The set was published posthumously and some prints had not been completed — he had created over 100 on his own, but two were added by Hiroshige II after his death.

Hiroshige was a member of the Utagawa school, along with Kunisada and Kuniyoshi. The Utagawa school comprised dozens of artists, and stood at the forefront of 19th century woodblock prints.

Particularly noteworthy for their actor and historical prints, members of the Utagawa school were nonetheless well-versed in all of the popular genres.

During Hiroshige’s time, the print industry was booming, and the consumer audience for prints was growing rapidly. Prior to this time, most print series had been issued in small sets, such as ten or twelve designs per series. Increasingly large series were produced to meet demand, and this trend can be seen in Hiroshige’s work, such as The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

Keisai Eisen was influenced by and worked with Hiroshige. Oiwake, from The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō, 1830s ISBN ES 978-8-413-730-660.

In terms of style, Hiroshige is especially noted for using unusual vantage points, seasonal allusions, and striking colors. In particular, he worked extensively within the realm of meisho-e (名所絵) pictures of famous places. During the Edo period, tourism was also booming, leading to increased popular interest in travel.

Travel guides abounded, and towns appeared along routes such as the Tōkaidō, a road that connected Edo with Kyoto. In the midst of this burgeoning travel culture, Hiroshige drew upon his own travels, as well as tales of others’ adventures, for inspiration in creating his landscapes.

For example, in The Fifty-three Stations on the Tōkaidō (1833), he illustrates anecdotes from Travels on the Eastern Seaboard (東海道中膝栗毛Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige, 1802–1809) by Jippensha Ikku, a comedy describing the adventures of two bumbling travelers as they make their way along the same road.

Hiroshige’s The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1833–1834) and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–1858) greatly influenced French Impressionists such as Manet and Monet. Vincent van Gogh copied two of the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo which were among his collection of ukiyo-e prints.