Artist: Utagawa Hiroshige II 二代歌川広重 (1826–1869) Title: Ueno Kiyomizudō 上野清水堂 — No. 10 (十) Series: Edo meisho shijūhakkei 江戸名所四十八景 — Forty-eight Famous Views of Edo Publisher: Tsutaya Kichizō 蔦屋吉蔵 (Tsutakichi seal, right margin) Date: 1861 (Bunkyū 1 / Man'en 2) Format: Chūban tate-e, 25 × 17 cm Technique: Woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and colour on paper Signature: Hiroshige ga 廣重画, in a blue tanzaku cartouche at lower right __________________________________________________________________ CONDITION Good impression and condition, minor trimming on the margins. The paper is firm and subtle. Please check the images! __________________________________________________________________ ABOUT THE PRINT The Kiyomizu Kannon-dō stands on the hill at Ueno, inside the precinct of Kan'ei-ji. It was built in 1631 by the priest Tenkai, founder of Kan'ei-ji, in imitation of Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto, and moved to its present position in 1694; the pine trained into a circle that stood before its stage — the "moon pine" — was one of the subjects Hiroshige recorded in his prints. tabi-mag Kan'ei-ji itself was founded in 1625 as the Tokugawa clan's guardian temple, sited to the northeast of the castle to shield it from the inauspicious direction, and deliberately laid out as an Edo answer to the great Buddhist complexes of Kyoto. The cherry trees were part of that programme: brought from Yoshino, they turned Ueno into the city's foremost blossom-viewing ground, the one Edo residents named first when they listed the places to go in spring. The Kiyomizu-dō is the reason this subject still matters. In 1868, only eight years after this print was published, the Shōgitai made their last stand at Ueno and the battle destroyed most of Kan'ei-ji. The Kiyomizu Kannon-dō was among the very few buildings left standing, and it survives today as a designated Important Cultural Property — one of the oldest structures in Tokyo. What the print records is the temple precinct as it looked in the final years before that. __________________________________________________________________ ABOUT THE SERIES Edo Meisho Shijūhakkei is a complete set of forty-eight chūban sheets, each pairing one of Edo's famous places with the seasonal feature it was known for; the publisher's seal and the censor's seal alternate from sheet to sheet, and two printing dates are documented — the twelfth month of Man'en 1 (1860) and the first month of Bunkyū 1 (1861). The publisher was Kōeidō, Tsutaya Kichizō. Hiroshige II — born Suzuki Chinpei, pupil and adopted son-in-law of the first Hiroshige — inherited the name in 1858 and, with it, the obligation to keep the studio's famous-places line running. This set belongs to the very last years of Edo: within seven years of its publication the city had a new name and a new government, and the pleasure districts it records were about to change beyond recognition. The chūban format made them affordable souvenirs at the time, which is precisely why they now read as an unusually candid record of where townspeople actually went. ___________________________________________________ Why this series is worth collecting? It is one of the best entry points into Edo landscape printmaking available today. The colour is genuine Edo colour. Published in 1860, the set predates the arrival of imported synthetic aniline dyes, which began changing the look of Japanese prints from the mid-1860s onward. What you get here are the traditional pigments and the traditional printing methods: indigo skies graded by hand, vegetable-based pinks and yellows, the soft register of a palette that disappeared within a decade. The subjects are the canonical ones. Hiroshige II was working the same ground his master had covered in One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, in the same manner, often at the same sites — Ueno, Nippori, Ōji, Tsukudajima. Many designs are direct descendants of prints that are now unobtainable or priced far beyond most collections. If you want the look and the view without the four-figure number attached to a first-generation ōban, this is where you find it.