Low Tide at Susaki

Low Tide at Susaki is an 1840 landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 to 1858), the Edo ukiyo-e designer whose treatments of Japan's coasts and inland waterways helped define the meisho-e tradition for nineteenth-century audiences. Susaki was a low-lying promontory in the Fukagawa district of Edo, jutting into the bay south of the Sumida River's mouth and known for its tidal flats that emerged at ebb tide. The site attracted seasonal visitors who came to gather shellfish on the exposed sands, and it was associated in popular culture with both leisurely beach excursions and the nearby Susaki Benten shrine. Hiroshige composes the scene with the broad, flat geometry that suits the subject, allowing the receded waters to expose a wide foreground of pale sand against which small figures of clammers and walkers register against the horizon. The bay opens out to the right with the silhouettes of distant landmasses and the masts of small craft punctuating the middle distance. As a landscape print, Low Tide at Susaki demonstrates Hiroshige's interest in the everyday geography of Edo and his ability to treat unromantic subjects, such as a muddy shore at low water, with the same compositional seriousness he gave to mountains and famous waterfalls. The 1840 date places this work in the productive middle phase of his career, after the success of the Hoeido Tokaido of the early 1830s and before the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo of his final decade. Throughout this period Hiroshige produced sustained series on Edo neighborhoods, each print attempting to fix a recognizable location and its seasonal mood. This impression is preserved in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.