Lobster (Ise ebi) and Prawn (Ama ebi), from the series A Shoal of Fishes (Uo-zukushi)

Within Utagawa Hiroshige's prolific output of landscape prints, the series A Shoal of Fishes (Uo-zukushi) stands as one of the great achievements of kacho-e, the bird-and-flower category that extended easily to fish and shellfish. This sheet pairs a spiny Ise ebi, the Japanese spiny lobster prized as a New Year auspicious food, with a slender ama ebi prawn. Hiroshige treats each crustacean as a study in texture and color: the armored carapace of the lobster is rendered in rich vermilion and brick reds, with each segmented joint precisely outlined, while the prawn is built up from translucent pinks and pale ochres that suggest the soft, almost luminous flesh of the live creature. The composition floats the two animals on an undifferentiated ground, in the manner of Chinese still-life painting, and is paired with a poem inscribed in cursive script at the upper margin. Although produced under the Edo ukiyo-e system of designer, publisher, blockcutter, and printer, this Uo-zukushi sheet shows how flexibly that system could accommodate subjects far removed from the meisho landscape print. The Harvard Art Museums impression preserves the saturated reds and the careful gradations that mark fine printings of the series.