Issued in 1859 by the publisher Uoya Eikichi, this Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) landscape print from Utagawa Hiroshige's One Hundred Views of Famous Places in the Various Provinces (Shokoku meisho hyakkei) depicts a Dutch ship at anchor off the coast of Tsushima, the strategically located island province between Kyushu and the Korean peninsula. The motif placed the modern, multi-masted European vessel within the vocabulary of Japanese landscape print convention, with the line of the coast, the curve of the bay, and a small group of native craft framing the unfamiliar foreign hull. For Edo viewers, Tsushima carried a long association with diplomatic and commercial contact with Korea, so the introduction of a Dutch ship reads as another inflection of the same theme: distant foreign worlds reaching into local Japanese geography. Hiroshige's composition uses a vertical [oban](/glossary/oban) format and strong [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations to set the ship as a stable, almost monumental presence at sea. The Harvard Art Museums impression preserves the saturated indigo of the water and the careful printing of the rigging and hull that the design's documentary impulse required.
Wakasa Kugushiko
1920
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
1934
Color woodblock print; oban
n.d.
Woodblock print; ishizuri-e, section of harimaze sheet
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Dutch Ship at Anchor off the Coast of Tsushima, from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places in the Various Provinces (Shōkoku meishō hyakkei), published by Uoya Eikichi was created by Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重) in Late Edo period, third month of 1859.
Dutch Ship at Anchor off the Coast of Tsushima, from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places in the Various Provinces (Shōkoku meishō hyakkei), published by Uoya Eikichi depicts landscapes.
