THIRTY-SIX VIEWS OF YEDO, "FUKAGAWA HACHIMAN"

Thirty-six Views of Yedo, Fukagawa Hachiman is a landscape print from one of Utagawa Hiroshige's Edo-focused vertical series, which followed the success of his earlier Tokaido sets by turning the same vision back onto the shogunal capital. Fukagawa Hachiman, properly Tomioka Hachimangu, was a major Shinto shrine in the Fukagawa district east of the Sumida River, celebrated for its festivals and for the bustling temple town that surrounded it. Hiroshige treats the subject as a study in shrine architecture and crowd life, with the heavy hipped roofs of the Hachiman precinct rising in the middle distance and small figures of worshippers and visitors animating the approach. The vertical oban format encourages a strong vertical reading, with foreground trees or torii framing the view and the sky reduced to a slim band at the top. As an Edo ukiyo-e meisho-e composition, the print contributes to the late-period vogue for surveys of famous Edo places that anticipated the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. The Harvard Art Museums impression preserves the warm wood tones of the shrine architecture and the deep blues that signal seasonal weather.