For ukiyo-e fans, this album probably needs no introduction. Beautifully produced, with a clean design and truly unprecedented quality of scans of Hiroshige Utagawa’s work, it is a must-have for any Japanese art lover. Lots of inspiration and knowledge about Edo, art and customs of that period.
Hiroshige Utagawa, or rather Hiroshige Andō, is, along with Hokusai, one of the most famous Japanese ukiyo-e artists. His series One Hundred Famous Places in Edo is a masterpiece in its genre. This album collects all 119 works that were scanned from the first series of prints preserved at the Ota Memorial Museum of Art in Tokyo.
The book opens with a short foreword by Kenji Hinohara (the director of the museum) and a concise biography of Hiroshige Utagawa. The main part consists of full-page reprints sorted by seasons. Make sure to read the descriptions! They offer precise explanations of the context for the scenes, descriptions and locations of the presented elements and other information necessary to understand the works. The publisher has included essays about the artist’s career and the Edo series, the history of ukiyo-e and a chronological timeline of the works. And at the very end of the album there is a real gem for travelers: a map of Tokyo with marked points corresponding to the appropriate prints.
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