The Hot Springs of Tonosawa at Hakone

The Hot Springs of Tonosawa at Hakone is a landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige produced around 1855 and held by the Victoria and Albert Museum. The design takes the viewer into the mountains of Hakone, an area Hiroshige had treated repeatedly since his groundbreaking Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido more than two decades earlier. Tonosawa, one of the seven hot springs of Hakone, occupies a deep valley carved by the Hayakawa River; Hiroshige shows traditional ryokan inns clinging to the steep wooded slopes, with smoke rising from bathhouses and footbridges connecting visitors to the natural pools. The vertical emphasis of the composition allows him to convey both the precipitous topography and the contemplative seclusion that drew Edo period travelers to mountain hot springs. As a piece of late Edo ukiyo-e, the sheet exemplifies the way Hiroshige used the landscape print to advertise the cultural pleasures of internal travel, including the touristic onsen circuit that flourished alongside the Tokaido. Bokashi gradients in the river and on the slopes, together with the careful registration of architectural details, demonstrate the high standards Hiroshige expected from his publishers in this period. The Victoria and Albert Museum's collection of Hiroshige is substantial, and this Tonosawa view sits alongside many other Hakone designs that share a fascination with mountain weather and water. For modern viewers the print is both an aesthetic pleasure and a historical record of a still-operating hot springs town, capturing the Edo configuration of Tonosawa before later Meiji and twentieth-century rebuilding, and underscoring Hiroshige's lasting role as the chronicler of Japan's most beloved travel destinations.