Kiga

Kiga, dated 1847 and held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, is an Edo ukiyo-e landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige associated with the hot-spring region of Hakone. Kiga was one of the small bath villages tucked among the mountains around Hakone, on the slopes above the Tokaido between Odawara and the lake. The print belongs to Hiroshige's interest in spa resorts as subjects, an interest aligned with the popular travel literature of the late Edo period in which onsen towns figured as desirable escapes from urban life. In this Utagawa Hiroshige landscape print the artist conveys the steep, wooded geography of the Hakone uplands through receding ridges and clusters of buildings nestled along streams. The Edo ukiyo-e idiom is suited to such terrain: clear contours of mountains, judicious use of greens and blues, and a strong line work that organises the composition. Hiroshige's eye for the everyday detail of travel is also visible in the small figures making their way between bath houses or along forested paths. The Victoria and Albert Museum impression preserves the design's careful palette and registration. As a landscape print, Kiga supplements the better-known Tokaido station views by extending Hiroshige's geography into the surrounding mountain districts. It speaks to a public increasingly hungry for images of regional destinations, and it shows the artist's willingness to extend the format of the meisho-e to less famous but evocative locales.