Kiso no Oroku Combs

Created by Utagawa Hiroshige in 1843, Kiso no Oroku Combs is an Edo ukiyo-e woodblock print held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The image draws on a popular regional legend associated with the post-station town of Yabuhara along the Nakasendo highway in the mountainous Kiso valley. Oroku, the daughter of a local craftsman, was said to have devised the elegant hair combs made from the dense, fine-grained wood of the minebari tree that became one of the most sought-after souvenirs of the Kiso road. Travelers carried them home as proof of having braved the long inland route between Edo and Kyoto. Hiroshige treats the subject with the gentle storytelling instinct that distinguishes his figure work from his more famous landscape print series. The young woman is shown attending to her hair or arranging combs in a tatami-floored interior, framed by sliding doors and the modest furnishings of a provincial workshop. While Hiroshige is best remembered for landscape print compositions such as the Tokaido and Kisokaido station series, this design demonstrates his ability to fold local craft traditions, regional history, and the romance of travel into a single intimate scene. The V and A impression preserves the soft early Tenpo-era palette of muted blues, ochres, and warm pinks that gives the print its quiet domestic atmosphere. As an example of mid-career Hiroshige, the sheet shows how Edo publishers used famous-place subjects to market not only scenery but the human stories attached to roadside towns.