Utagawa Hiroshige

The life of Utagawa Hiroshige,
scene by scene

1. 1809Edo

   In 1809, a twelve-year-old boy in Edo loses his mother and then his father within a single year. His name is Andō Tokutarō. His father, Andō Gen'emon, had been a low-ranking samurai in the fire brigade that guarded Edo Castle.

   The boy inherits his father's post. In a wooden city where fires broke out again and again, he becomes a fire warden drawing a samurai's stipend. In his spare hours, he starts learning to draw.

2. 1812Edo

   In 1812, the fifteen-year-old receives a new name from his teacher. The teacher is Utagawa Toyohiro, a painter of the Utagawa school. The boy takes the syllable "Hiro" from his master's name and becomes Hiroshige.

   For years he works at the usual jobs of a young print artist: pictures of actors, beautiful women and book illustrations. Real fame is still about twenty years away.

3. 1833Edo

   Around 1833, a new set of landscape prints starts appearing in the print shops of Edo. It is Hiroshige's Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, one view for each post station on the great highway from Edo to Kyoto. At first two publishers, Senkakudō and Hōeidō, issue it together. Soon Hōeidō carries on alone.

   The series sells very well and makes Hiroshige's name as a landscape artist. Spring Rain at Tsuchiyama is one sheet from this series.

   Painted around this timeSpring Rain at Tsuchiyama, from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō
4. 1841Kōfu

   In the fourth month of 1841 by the old calendar, Hiroshige leaves Edo and heads over the mountains to Kōfu in Kai Province. This is not a sightseeing trip. People in Kōfu have invited him to paint large curtains.

   Kōfu held a big Dōsojin festival at New Year, and its streets were hung with huge painted curtains. Neighborhoods asked painters to make them. For a festival in a town ringed by mountains, Hiroshige painted famous views of Edo.

   He keeps a diary of the trip. According to the diary, he reaches Kōfu on the evening of the fourth day.

5. 1856Edo

   In 1856, Hiroshige, nearly sixty, shaves his head and becomes a Buddhist monk, a sign of stepping back from worldly life. That same year he begins a huge new series, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

   The publisher is Uoya Eikichi. The series keeps going even after the artist's death and ends up with more than a hundred prints.

6. 1858Edo

   In the autumn of 1858, while cholera is spreading through Edo, Hiroshige dies. Whether the disease killed him is not certain. He is buried at Tōgaku-ji, a Zen temple in Asakusa.

   His fellow Utagawa artist Utagawa Kunisada designs a memorial portrait print. Above the shaven-headed Hiroshige runs his farewell poem. In it he leaves his brush behind on the eastern road and sets off to see the famous places of the western land. It is a traveler's goodbye.

7. 1887Paris

   In 1887, a Dutch painter living in Paris sets to work on two Japanese prints. He is Vincent van Gogh. He copies Hiroshige's Plum Park in Kameido and Sudden Shower over Ōhashi Bridge onto canvas.

   Van Gogh even paints imitation Japanese characters around the borders. Cheap paper prints from the shops of Edo had crossed the world and moved another painter's brush. Hiroshige's prints still hang in museums around the world, and on this site.