Foreigners Riding Along the Coast at Takanawa in the Eastern Capital (Tōtō Takanawa kaigen), from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Various Provinces (Shōkoku meishō hyakkei), published by Uoya Eikichi

Issued in 1861, only a few years after Japan's treaty ports opened to international trade, this landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige depicts foreign visitors on horseback riding along the coastal road at Takanawa, a stretch of shoreline just south of central Edo that had long been a celebrated viewing spot for Edo Bay. The composition, drawn from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Various Provinces (Shokoku meisho hyakkei) and published by Uoya Eikichi, places the unfamiliar foreign riders against the familiar topography of Takanawa, a juxtaposition that gave Edo ukiyo-e audiences a chance to study the new arrivals within a setting they already knew through countless earlier prints. Hiroshige uses a deep, low horizon to open the bay across the right side of the sheet, with sails dotting the water and a haze of bokashi gradation softening the distance. The riders, in foreign coats and broad-brimmed hats, are observed with the same documentary curiosity Hiroshige brought to travelers along the Tokaido, treating them as one more category of figure populating a famous place. As an Edo ukiyo-e landscape print, the work belongs to the genre called Yokohama-e in spirit, even as its title roots it firmly in the meisho tradition. The Harvard Art Museums impression preserves the strong outline block and saturated indigo of the sea, hallmarks of Edo printing in this late phase of Hiroshige's career.