Flying fish and Ichimochi, from an untitled series of fish

Flying fish and Ichimochi, from an untitled series of fish, is a circa-1835 woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige and an excellent example of the fish-and-flower (kacho-e) work that complemented his better-known landscape print production. The untitled fish set, often associated with kyoka poetry circles that commissioned and circulated such designs, paired species of fish with one another or with vegetables and aquatic plants, creating elegant compositional studies that doubled as natural-history images and poetic objects. In this design, the silver-blue body of a flying fish (tobiuo), with its outsized pectoral fins extended like wings, sits in striking contrast with an ichimochi, sometimes identified as a kind of croaker or red-fleshed sea fish, whose warmer red-pink tones offset the cooler tobiuo. Hiroshige composes the two species with a feel for both anatomy and design: scales, fins, and gills are precisely delineated, while the placement of the bodies, often crossing or overlapping along a diagonal, generates a dynamic rhythm characteristic of Edo ukiyo-e print design. This impression is held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The set is now prized by collectors and curators for its combination of zoological observation and abstract pattern, and it shows that Hiroshige's role in Edo ukiyo-e was broader than landscape alone: he was an all-purpose pictorial designer comfortable moving among views, figures, birds, and fish within the same shop and the same year.