Takawana (Tawanaka)

Takawana (Tawanaka), dated 1862 and held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, is an Edo ukiyo-e landscape print associated with Utagawa Hiroshige's enduring interest in the bayside districts of southern Edo. Takanawa, on the western shore of Edo Bay, was the point at which the Tokaido ran along the coast as travellers approached the city, and where the boats of fishermen and shippers mingled with the foot traffic of the great post road. The 1862 date places the impression in the early Bunkyū era, several years after Hiroshige's death in 1858, indicating that the design continued to be issued by publishers as the city moved through the closing years of the Tokugawa period. In this Utagawa Hiroshige landscape print the artist typically composes the Takanawa shore as a long, horizontal scene punctuated by sails, jetties and figures, with the bay opening into atmospheric distance. The Edo ukiyo-e idiom suits such subjects, where measured horizontality of water and shore is balanced by the verticality of masts and human figures. The Victoria and Albert Museum impression preserves the disciplined key-block work and restrained palette typical of Hiroshige's mature treatments of coastal Edo. As a landscape print, the design contributes to the larger Utagawa Hiroshige cartography of the capital's edges, where land and sea, travel and labour, were continuously in interaction beneath ever-changing skies.