Toyokuni was one of the first Japanese artists to include complex landscapes in his woodblock print designs, often as backgrounds to scenes of fashionable people. As a young man, the artist Hiroshige asked to be Toyokuni’s pupil but was turned down, apparently as Toyokuni already had too many students.

Purchased, 1959

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This woman with her elegantly layered gown (kimono) is rolling up a scroll painting with a landscape view. Behind her on the right, there is a box and soft cloth to store it in.

Vertical scroll paintings like this might be hung up in special display areas (tokonoma) in Japanese houses and changed according to the seasons.

Purchased, 1959

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Around 1800 Katsushika Hokusai began to experiment with horizontal landscape designs. Perhaps he was inspired by the wide views that are seen out of rooms in traditional Japanese buildings, where sliding walls open straight out onto verandas and gardens.

Purchased, 1949

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In a Japanese myth, husband and wife Jō and Uba lived a long and contented life together. They represent faithfulness and happiness in marriage.

Several symbols of long life are depicted here: a pine tree, cranes and turtles so old they have gathered long tails of seaweed on their shells.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

This dramatic wave dwarfs the fishermen in their boats and Mount Fuji in the distance.

Art historians have pointed out that the wave’s white crest looks almost alive with grasping claws. Notice how the shape of another wave mirrors that of the mountain.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

Mount Fuji dominates this dramatic view and there is no sign of human activity. The setting sun falls on the peak of the mountain whilst a summer storm flashes on its lower slopes.

The printer has applied blue ink onto the block for the sky, wiping some away again, a technique known in Japanese as bokashi.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

Three men measure the huge trunk of a tree with their outstretched arms. Hokusai has placed the tree almost centrally in the design, whereas a western artist at the time would probably have put it further to one side.

Later on western artists, such as Van Gogh and Gauguin, were strongly influenced by the compositions of Japanese prints.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

Mount Fuji is depicted by Hokusai in a few, simple brush strokes. These are mirrored by the shape of the fisherman’s lines, as he pulls back against the force of the rushing river.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

Travellers labour up a slope adjacent to Mount Fuji. As the pair of men at the top turn towards the great mountain, we follow their gaze. The subtle red streaks in the sky suggest that it is early morning.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

Hokusai often used strong diagonal lines in his landscapes to suggest depth and distance. Here the boat on the Jewel River looks as if it is about to float through the low clouds towards Mount Fuji.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

From a high point on the shore, we see inside a boat where the crew are getting ready in the early morning.

Hokusai sometimes put parts of large objects in the foreground of his landscapes, like the boat here, making the viewer feel closer to the scene.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

From the group of cranes on the left, our eyes are drawn across hillocks and morning mist to Mount Fuji. In Japan cranes are considered lucky, as legends say that they live for 1,000 years.

Purchased, 1954

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

The snowy summit of Mount Fuji is reflected in the still water of Lake Misaka. The reflection is off-set and does not match exactly so we have to look more closely.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

Under a darkening sky, ferry passengers crossing the Sumida River look towards Mount Fuji. On the left, one of the city of Edo’s (Tokyo’s) famous wooden bridges seems to lead directly to the mountain.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

In this view we can see the waves rolling in towards Seven-Mile Beach near Edo (Tokyo).

The design shows Hokusai experimenting with the possibilities of ‘Prussian blue’, a chemical ink, imported into Japan from Europe from the 1820s. Prints like this were called aizuri-e (blue-printed pictures).

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

Fishermen and their families lived on Tsukuda-jima, an island near the mouth of the Sumida River that flowed through the city of Edo (today’s Tokyo). Here Hokusai suggests perspective and distance through the diminishing size of the boats.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.

This temple to the east of Edo (Tokyo) contained 500 life-size sculptures of the Buddha’s closest followers (arhats).

Pilgrims visiting the temple to pray also got a good view of the city and Mount Fuji from the upper storeys of the wooden building. The lines of the planks on the balcony focus our eyes towards the mountain.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1960

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from the series Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces.

In this striking composition, Hokusai contrasts the rippling pool at the top of the waterfall with the columns of water crashing downwards.

The picnickers on the bank look as if they have chosen a dangerous spot to rest but they seem quite relaxed, warming their sake (rice wine).

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces.

The turns of the river rushing towards us create a sense of depth in the image.

The name comes from a legend that said that a hero in Japanese history, Yoshitsune (AD 1159-1189), had stopped at this waterfall to wash his horse.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Remarkable Views of Bridges in Various Provinces.

Bridges, like waterfalls, make interesting landscape views. The Kintai (meaning ‘brocade sash’) Bridge in western Japan, was so-called because its elegant arches looked like the ripples of a sash thrown
across the river.

It was a well-known landmark, built of stone and wood in 1673 at the order of a local lord.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Remarkable Views of Bridges in Various Provinces.

This unusual bridge is constructed of planks of wood laid over a line of boats permanently moored together.

Hokusai invites us to follow the strong diagonal lines of the bridge as if we are the travellers.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse.

In this print series, Hokusai illustrates famous Japanese poems such as this one by Chunagon Yakamochi:

Long, long I gazed at the Magpies’ Bridge
Till at last the hoar frost glimmered white upon it,
And I knew the dawn was at hand.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse.

In a mountain hamlet winter’s loneliness
grows deeper.
Both people and grasses are withered
—so run my thoughts.

The poem sounds melancholy but the men around the fire seem to be quite happy.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse.

In the foreground servants relax and chat after a hard day. In contrast their master sits apart contemplating the view, attended by a maid.

Like the warder’s fires
At the Imperial gateway kept,-
Burning through the night,
Through the day in ashes dulled,-
So the love that fills my thoughts.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series Famous Places in the Eastern Capital.

This is the archway or torii of Sannō Shrine, a place of worship for followers of Shinto, Japan’s native religion.

In Hiroshige’s design the side walls slant inwards towards a vanishing point in the centre of the image, following western conventions of perspective. At this time, Hiroshige was one of the few Japanese artists experimenting with western composition.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series Famous Places in the Eastern Capital.

This is one of Hiroshige’s earliest landscape prints. He made his name with views of Edo (Tokyo), also known as the Eastern Capital. Susaki, to the south of Edo, was a favourite spot for watching the sun rise.

Hiroshige has included a brown border, probably to resemble the frame on a western print.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

In this famous series of prints, Hiroshige depicted the stopping places on the Tōkaidō or ‘eastern sea route’ that followed the coast between the capital city Edo (today’s Tokyo) and the former capital, Kyoto.

Some scholars believe that the artist actually travelled from Edo to Kyoto and back in about 1832 and that this inspired the series of prints.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

Waitresses from the tea houses at Kanagawa near Edo (Tokyo) encourage travellers to come in for refreshment.

Hiroshige designed this print series soon after the publication of Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, using the same landscape format which had proved popular with buyers of Hokusai’s prints.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

A traveller is mounting his horse outside this inn. Only wealthy travellers could afford to travel on horseback. They changed to fresh horses at different stopping places along the road. Poorer travellers walked, sometimes for hundreds of miles.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

The road zig-zags through a marshy area, creating a sense of depth and distance.

Almost hidden by a tree, a delivery man runs by some other travellers. Japan’s military dictator, the Shōgun, decreed that the lords who owned the stopping places on the road had to make sure  there were always runners ready to deliver messages and goods.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

Travellers arriving at the town of Ōiso protect themselves against the heavy rain under a black and yellow sky. In the fields there are stacks of straw from the rice harvest.

Tora, mentioned in the title, refers to a woman called Tora Gozen who lived in Ōiso over 800 years ago. A legend said that she turned into stone after the death of her lover and that the stone cried every year on the anniversary of his death, the 28th day of the fifth month.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

Hiroshige and the craftsmen who printed his designs were masters at depicting different weather conditions.

One can barely make out the archway at the entrance of the Shinto temple on the right, or some of the travellers, through the morning mist.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

We follow behind a horse clip-clopping along carrying two adults and a child who looks over to Mount Fuji. On either side of the road rice is growing in paddy fields.

The travellers and trees decrease in size as the road zig-zags into the distance, giving depth to the image.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

Travellers trudge through deep snow, huddled against the cold, with bare legs and little protection from their clothing.

The printer of the image has given volume to the snowy slopes and peaks by carefully applying grey ink onto the block used for printing the grey details.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

The sharp angles of the cliffs and the windblown pines contrast with the pure conical form of Mount Fuji in the distance and with the flat expanse of the sea. The travellers on the cliff road are dwarfed by the landscape around them.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

In this dramatic view, the road is shown from a high vantage point. The legs of three of the travellers cannot be seen which makes the path look even steeper and narrower.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

At the stopping places along the Tōkaidō route, people could hire porters or horses to take them and their goods from stage to stage.

Here Hiroshige presents us with a glimpse of one of these stations, with stretching porters and two horses. He shows the contrast between the merchant in his formal clothes and the porters in loin cloths and sandals.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

The man on the left sweats as he climbs the steep bridge. We can almost feel the wind that blows the kites into the air, but who is holding the kite string? And who has lost his kite?

Hiroshige was a master at involving viewers in his scenes through his depictions of human activity, times of day and weather.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

A traveller stops for a welcome cup of tea at an outdoor tea stall. To the right one porter bends to light his tobacco pipe in the fire, and another sits down, exhausted, on his back-pack.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

Ferrymen are ready to punt passengers across the river. The lines of trees in the distance are printed to evoke mist.

Purchased, 1954

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

The lines of fence poles and young pine trees lead our eyes round to the right, past the sails below to other boats in the inlet.

The inlet was once a lake but an earthquake and tidal wave in 1499 washed away the land separating it from the sea. Imagiri means ‘now broken’.

Purchased, 1958

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

The boat in the centre carries one of Japan’s powerful lords (daimyō). It has hangings
marked with circular symbols, the lord’s family crest.

Daimyō and their followers had to make regular trips to the capital city, Edo (now called Tokyo), to show their allegiance to the military dictator (Shōgun).

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

A workman looks out across the river from the top of scaffolding on Yoshida Castle.

The printer of this image has carefully applied the blue ink to the woodblock before printing from it to give the impression of light shining off the water.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

People rush for cover during a rainstorm, including two men carrying a passenger in a sedan chair. The strong diagonal lines of the rain slanting one way and the trees and road the other, give a hectic mood to the scene.

A set of reproduction prints showing the different stages of printing this design is in a case nearby.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road.

Commissioned from the workshop of Yuji and Jiro Nagao, Tokyo.

The first tage of printing is the ‘key block’, the black (or sometimes blue) outline. Ink is applied to the wooden block then a piece of paper is rubbed down onto it, transferring the ink.

A separate woodblock is inked up for each successive colour. The design here was printed fourteen times to achieve the end result.

Purchased with the assistance of the Friends of Bristol Art Gallery, 2017

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from the series Famous Views of Edo in the Four Seasons.

Hiroshige designed a number of landscapes in this narrow, vertical format. The snowflakes here were formed by cutting marks with a chisel into the woodblock used to create the background.

There is a poem on the left:

Even on the waters of Sumida River
the snow that falls fails to melt
– Or could they be seagulls?

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series Famous Places in the Eastern Capital.

Hiroshige became known for his many designs of famous places in the capital city Edo (Tokyo). He depicted landmarks in different seasons and weather conditions, such as this five-storey pagoda in a temple at Asakusa in heavy rain.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road.

The inland road between the capital city Edo (Tokyo) and Kyoto was called the Kisokaidō. It was longer and more mountainous than the coastal route.

The artist Keisai Eisen collaborated with Hiroshige to produce 23 of the 70 designs in this series. In this view a small boy collects horse droppings to use as fertiliser on the fields.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road.

The publisher’s advertisement for the Kisokaidō prints described them as ‘a series of naturalistic views with landscapes and people’.

Eisen depicts people, such as the traveller coming towards us, in a lively way. The man to his left in white robes is a Zen Buddhist monk from the Fuke sect, wearing a basket hood over his head to symbolise his lack of ego.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road.

There is a pink glow on the horizon. It is either dawn or dusk. Some of the travellers wear straw coats to protect themselves against the cold weather.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road.

In this version of Eisen’s print, the sky is greyer, showing the different effects that could be achieved by printers using the same blocks. Here it looks as if it might snow again.

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road.

This view looks down onto a procession of followers of a powerful feudal lord (daimyō) passing through a valley. A woman is drying something, possibly plums, outside one of the thatched rest houses.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road.

The traveller on horseback gets a light for his tobacco pipe from a passer-by, whilst his servant lights his pipe from a fire on the road. The lantern on the horse and the fires light the darkness dramatically.

In Japan, after the harvest, rice stubble was burnt in the fields whilst waste rice straw and husks might be burnt on the road to reduce the risk of fire spreading to wooden buildings.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road.

The people look tiny against the strong curves of this hill emphasising the distance they have to travel. Hiroshige has simplified the land and trees to basic blocks of colour.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road.

The mountain pass at Wada village was considered the most difficult and dangerous part of the journey along the Kisokaidō route.

Hiroshige has exaggerated the steepness of the snow-covered slopes in this spectacular design.

from the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road.

A huge old pine tree is propped up over the road. Two wood cutters are resting by a bonfire after felling another tree.

Timber was the main industry of mountain areas such as this, centrally controlled by the shogunate, the government of the Shōgun (military dictator).

Purchased, 1949

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from the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road.

A path leads through a field of crops up towards the arches of a Shinto shrine. It is a spring day and a woman is taking refreshments to someone, pulling a child along behind her as she passes a traveller going in the opposite direction.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaidō Road.

On this mountainous section of road, the travellers include a porter carrying a load, and a white-clad Buddhist pilgrim with a portable shrine on his back.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

In this series of views of Edo (today’s Tokyo), Hiroshige switched to landscapes in a vertical format.

He often shows parts of large objects, people or animals right in the foreground to add more depth to the picture.

He enjoyed exploring the effects of moonlight, such as here on this snowy timberyard, with logs floating in the river awaiting processing.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

Hiroshige presents us with a breath-taking bird’s-eye view. We look down with an eagle over the snow-covered marshes on the outskirts of Edo (Tokyo).

The design shows the artist’s continuing inventiveness as he experiments with unusual compositions. A year later he died of cholera.

Purchased with the support of the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, 1963

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from the series One Hundred Famous Views in the Various Provinces.

Hiroshige II was a pupil of Hiroshige I, who took on his master’s name after Hiroshige’s death.

This image, with the large wave in the foreground and the smaller waves echoing the shape of Mount Fuji, shows clear influence from the work of both Hiroshige I and Hokusai.

Purchased, 1949

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