James Baquet

    The Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige (also called Ando Hiroshige but known mainly as simply “Hiroshige”) (1797-1858) was born the same year as Lyell, and like that Scottish scientist, he was a traveler and keen observer. However, instead of science, Hiroshige’s talent lay in the area of art.

    The art of woodblock printing, or “ukiyo-e” (though some ukiyo-e may be simply paintings), is a painstaking process. The artist carves a piece of wood (in reverse) and makes a print from it. At first, prints were in one color, sometimes with other colors added by hand.

    By Hiroshige’s time, prints were often made using multiple blocks, one for each color. This allowed for easy reproduction, and the beautiful but inexpensive prints were collected by the rising merchant class in Edo (modern Tokyo).

    Hiroshige came along near the end of ukiyo-e’s two centuries of popularity. He produced over 8,000 works, mainly on the popular themes of the day: beautiful women, famous actors, historical and literary scenes, flowers and animals, and landscapes.

    Most notable for this author, though, were his works on travel themes. Perhaps the most famous of these is his “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido” (made in several editions, the first in 1833-34). This showed the stations along a road from Edo to Kyoto. At that time, the emperor lived in Kyoto, but the military ruler, the shogun, was in Edo. The road was built with 53 stations along the way, to facilitate rapid communication between the two cities.

    In 2001, the 400th anniversary of that road, I made the journey over 35 days, entirely on foot. I tried my best to reproduce photos of the scenes Hiroshige portrayed. Though much has changed, some of the sights were still there to be seen.

    In 1856, Hiroshige retired from the outside world and became a Buddhist monk. He died in 1858, just as modernization was bringing an end to the popularity of ukiyo-e. His influence lived on, however, and Western artists like Monet and van Gogh where known to be admirers of his work.

    Vocabulary

    Which word above means:

    1. backwards

    2. one who looks carefully

    3. cut into a picture using a knife

    4. make something easier

    5. person like a king

    6. a yearly celebration of something

    7. people who like or respect something

    8. requiring great care and/or hard work

    9. images of the countryside

    10. the process of moving from traditional to new ways of doing things