John Westbrooke views a British Museum exhibition of “pictures of the floating world”
Looking at Utagawa Hiroshige’s work, you can glimpse an early Instagram influencer, touring Japan 200 years ago and documenting the beauty spots he found, in the long established medium of ukiyo-e woodblock prints.
He was born Ando Tokutaro in 1797 in Edo, now Tokyo, to a family with samurai connections. His father was a fireman at Edo castle and when he died his young son inherited his job, while also training as an artist under another named Toyohiro – half of whose name he took for himself. (He tried out various names when young). He became a river inspector, one of the fire department’s duties, which gave him the chance to travel, and travelling gave him the chance to paint.
Foreign travel was banned by the shogun government but the Japanese found plenty to see in their own country, whether famous places, special occasions or just the snowfall. Hiroshige visited many sights, but for some he relied on other travellers’ tales.
He spent a lot of time on the 300-mile cross-country Tokaido road between Edo (now Tokyo) and Kyoto, producing as many as 700 works; they made his name. Nihonbashi – Morning Scene shows a typical placid scene from daily life: a samurai lord crossing a bridge, at eye level, while fish sellers just below get of the way; vertical fences on each side containing the bustle of the two groups are echoed by a fire watch tower behind them.
The time of day and the weather feature a lot in his titles: some see his concern with depicting transient natural phenomena as a parallel with his English contemporaries Turner and Constable, and an influence on such later French painters as Monet.
So Cherry Blossoms on a Moonless Night along the Sumida River has three women, one carrying a lantern, in light still good enough to show off their hairpins and the richly coloured patterns of their kimonos. Women with umbrellas and headscarves walk along the white banks in Snow Viewing along the Sumida River. In summer the Kamo river in Kyoto shrinks for a few weeks, and in Enjoying the Evening Cool Hiroshige shows pop-up restaurant tables appearing on the riverbed.
(But the romantic-sounding Geese Alighting on Rice Fields and the Evening Bell When Parting Ways is actually a courtesan having a rest after the bell has marked the end of the last client’s session.)
Rain seems to have been a Hiroshige specialty, and why not: Tokyo gets twice as much as London. A barrage of fine black lines incised downward is a deluge, but if it’s diagonal, it implies wind as well, and people, often seen from above, scurry with umbrellas or mats held over their heads, sometimes with trees bent almost horizontal beside them, sometimes across wooden bridges open to the elements all around.
Mostly, though, the artist’s vision is of a calm, traditional Japan, drawn with realism, which was how the shoguns liked it. Pleasure Boats at Ryōgoku, a triptych with fireworks over a bridge in the central panel, is so detailed you can see ladies playing the shamisen stringed instrument among the big and small boats on the water.
He produced few grand gestures like his older contemporary Hokusai’s famous Great Wave – though the roiling waters in Rough Seas at Naruto might have owed something to it – and some of his work was reportedly suppressed by the government during World War II for being so painstakingly accurate it might guide enemy aircraft.
Evening View of the Eight Scenic Spots of Kanazawa depicts Edo Bay in moonlight with a flight of geese, a humped bridge, trees on a little peninsula. The Scenic Spots haven’t all been identified, and there are no onlookers in sight: the painter produced the work as a scroll for a middle-class samurai who didn’t necessarily want to see the common people, and later turned it into a triptych of woodblock prints.
But the work of a printmaker isn’t to be compared with a Western artist producing single landscapes, or even a Warhol run of a few hundred. Ukiyo-e print runs could be in the thousands and sold as cheap as noodles: the name translates as “pictures of the floating world”, though “fleeting” might be better, dealing with popular pleasures: stage stars and courtesans, birds, flowers, travel, beautiful women, often accompanied by poems.
Artists had to work with publishers (Hiroshige had 90-odd) and craftsmen. The blocks themselves – one for each colour in a print – needed replacement from time to time, and though Hiroshige was known as a colourist, the colours weren’t always the same, and details might be added or taken away in later editions. The earliest are more expensive but they aren’t always more “definitive”.
American gunboats forced Japan to open up to the world in 1853, and the inward-looking society dissipated. On the plus side, “Japonisme” reached the outside world, with ukiyo-e prints influencing the French Impressionists among many others. Whistler’s view of Battersea Bridge looks very Japanese. Van Gogh bought 400 wood-block prints and copied in oils Hiroshige The Plum Garden at Kameido from 100 Famous Views of Edo: both are on display here, along with the preparatory copy he drew on grid paper.
Hiroshige was arguably the last great ukiyo-e artist, in a line going back more than 200 years; he became a Buddhist monk in 1856 and died in 1858, probably of cholera. But British viewers in particular may find much to recognise and enjoy in his pictures of an old, traditionalist country, its towns busy with people, picturesque countrysides, and a lot of weather.
Hiroshige: artist of the open road will run until 7 September 2025 at the British Museum. Tickets £18 (over 60 half-price after noon on Monday, under 16 free with an adult, book these in advance).
https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/hiroshige-artist-open-road
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