One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
Night View of Saruwaka-machi
猿わか町よるの景 · Saruwaka-machi yoru no kei
Utagawa Hiroshige · 1856
What it is
Moonlight floods the street of the three licensed kabuki theaters after the day’s performances: theater-goers drift home down the wide street, and each figure trails its own shadow across the moonlit ground.
Why it matters
Those cast shadows are the astonishment — almost unknown in Japanese printmaking — set inside a Western-style one-point perspective: Hiroshige, at the end of his life, absorbing Europe’s optics as coolly as Europe would soon absorb his.
What to notice
Every figure casts a moon-shadow angled the same way; the theater towers step down the roofline in perspective toward the moon-bright end of the street.
The theaters are dark. The moon stages the street.
The record
- Artist
- Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川広重 (1797–1858)
- Series
- One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
- Date
- 1856
- Publisher
- Uoya Eikichi
- Medium
- woodblock print; ink and color on paper
- Source
- The Art Institute of Chicago · 1939.1429
- bokashi
Impression note. The moonlit street depends on a graded night sky and the pale wash of the moonlight zone down the street’s center; the balance of those tones, wiped by hand, differs between printings. Impression variance is real — printings differ in wiping and fading — and choosing the finest openly held impression is the curatorial act.
Public domain; faithfully reproduced.
Bring it home
Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm.
From the same series
One Hundred Famous Views of EdoSudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and AtakeUtagawa Hiroshige · 1857
One Hundred Famous Views of EdoPlum Estate, KameidoUtagawa Hiroshige · 1857
One Hundred Famous Views of EdoAsakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi FestivalUtagawa Hiroshige · 1857
One Hundred Famous Views of EdoMoon Pine, UenoUtagawa Hiroshige · 1857The road at your moment — Painted Earth’s ukiyo-e style pack.