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Moon Pine at Ueno, from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo,
1857
Published by Uoya Eikichi 魚屋栄吉 (Kinshōdō 金松堂)
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1857
Asia, Japan, Tokyo
“Moon Pine at Ueno” is from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo, the last series Hiroshige worked on before his death. The series title promised one hundred different views of specific places in the capital city of Edo, present day Tokyo, and over the course of three years, the series grew to 118 prints; the large number of designs reflects the success of the series at the time. One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo overall was characterized by its high technical polish and for Hiroshige’s pictorial experimentation.
The print is from the first edition, in which the most demanding printing techniques were employed, including the addition of a light application green along the edge of the tree and the gradation of blue that intersects with the bottom of the branch. Later editions eliminated these subtle effects. The exacting registration of the blocks, resulting in the sharpness of the printing overall, also indicates that this sheet is from early in the run.
Also in regard to technique, this print demonstrates a particularly successful inclusion of the grain of the woodblock, in the upper portion of the print, to create a compelling visual pattern. Who decided to incorporate this effect, whether it was Hiroshige (who provided the design of the print), the block carvers (who translated Hiroshige’s design into relief carving, and chose the wood for this purpose), the printers (who best understood the results of the combination of woodblock, pigments and paper), or perhaps the publisher (who coordinated these various specialists’ efforts)—or some combination of all of them—is impossible now to know. Whatever the case, this detail demonstrates the effects possible with—and that directly speak to—the techniques developed in the nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock printmaking industry.
The print exemplifies Hiroshige’s innovative experiments with dynamic composition. In the foreground is depicted a famed tree with an extraordinary circular branch, through which Hiroshige frames a distant view of a daimyo estate—that of the Maeda clan, competitors of the ruling Tokugawa family, which may be indicating a more political theme than the print gives at first glance. In fact, the Moon Pine actually existed at a temple in Edo, an example of the sort of arboreal manipulation practiced in Japan in small bonsai, here realized on a monumental scale; the tree was destroyed in a storm in the Meiji era, but has since been recreated; see http://taito-culture.jp/topics/tsukinomatsu/. (The original tree also featured in one other print in the series, “Kiyomizu Hall Shinobazu Pond at Ueno,” which shows it in mid-distance within a broad view of the temple.) This compositional technique of juxtaposing near and far is one that Hiroshige often used in this series, using many different variations. At the same time, even in this dramatic composition, Hiroshige pays attention to small details: the red of the temple building in the bottom right corner well balances the red cartouches at the upper right and left center.
The print also shows Hiroshige’s experimentation in the vertical format. Most Japanese landscape prints previously had been horizontal in orientation, including those by Hiroshige himself and his older contemporary, Hokusai, and the shift to vertical in this entire series (and in one earlier series) seems to have spurred Hiroshige’s compositional innovation.
