Ueno (上野)

Ueno is a district in northeastern Tokyo, in present-day Taito Ward, organized around the elevated wooded hill of Ueno-no-Yama on which the great Kan'ei-ji temple complex was established in 1625. The temple was founded by the priest Tenkai at the direction of the Tokugawa shogunate to provide a guardian temple for the northeastern, traditionally inauspicious, kimon (demon gate) direction of Edo, mirroring the role of the Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei as the guardian temple of the northeastern direction of the older capital at Kyoto. Tenkai modeled the layout of Ueno on the Mount Hiei monastic geography, with the principal halls distributed across the hill and the small Bentendo island on Shinobazu Pond at the southern edge of the temple grounds modeled on the Chikubushima island in Lake Biwa. Across the Edo period the temple complex grew to be one of the largest in eastern Japan, with the Kiyomizu-do (modeled on the Kiyomizu-dera of Kyoto), the Bentendo, the five-story pagoda, the Toshogu shrine of the Tokugawa, and the great main hall distributed across the wooded hill, and with the surrounding Shinobazu Pond, treated under its own entry, forming the southern edge of the temple grounds. Kan'ei-ji also served as the funerary temple for six of the Tokugawa shoguns, alongside Zojo-ji at Shiba. The temple complex was largely destroyed in the Battle of Ueno during the Boshin War on 4 July 1868, when the Shogitai loyalist forces, the last organized Tokugawa resistance in central Edo, were defeated by the new Meiji government forces under Omura Masujiro, and most of the surviving land was redeveloped in 1873 as Ueno Park, the first Western-style public park in Japan, designed by the Dutch military doctor and urban planner Bauduin and inaugurated as part of the early Meiji program of secularizing temple land and creating modern public spaces. Ueno Park houses the Tokyo National Museum (founded 1872 as Japan's first museum), the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (founded 1926), the Tokyo University of the Arts, the National Museum of Western Art (designed by Le Corbusier and inaugurated 1959, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the National Science Museum, and the Ueno Zoo (founded 1882 as Japan's first public zoo). The remaining historical buildings include the Toshogu shrine of the Tokugawa (rebuilt 1651), the surviving Kiyomizu-do (rebuilt 1631) and Bentendo, and the five-story pagoda (rebuilt 1639). The cherry blossoms of Ueno Park, planted from the Edo period when Tenkai brought cherries from Yoshino, have been celebrated since that period and remain one of the principal hanami sites in Tokyo. For Japanese printmaking Ueno figures across the entire meisho-e tradition. Utagawa Hiroshige treated Ueno in his Famous Places in the Eastern Capital and in One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, including views of the Kiyomizu-do, the Toshogu shrine, the cherry blossoms of the Ueno slope, the great main hall of Kan'ei-ji, the Shinobazu Pond, and the surrounding district under varied conditions. Hokusai included Ueno in passages of his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji and his minor Edo print sets. Meiji-period kaika-e treated the new park and its Western-style buildings under the changing nineteenth-century conditions, and the shin-hanga revival of the early twentieth century returned to Ueno repeatedly. Kawase Hasui produced views of the Kiyomizu-do, the pagoda, the Toshogu, and the surrounding park under varied seasonal and atmospheric conditions including snow, rain, and twilight, with his Ueno cherry blossom and snow sheets among the more reproduced of his Tokyo subjects. Yoshida Hiroshi treated the park in his individual sheets, and the sosaku-hanga circle including Onchi Koshiro and Hiratsuka Un'ichi contributed further compositions of the temple buildings, the park, and the surrounding district within the One Hundred Views of New Tokyo and other Tokyo cycles. The visual character of Ueno in prints is built on the cherry blossoms of the park slope along the principal Sanbashi avenue, the temple roofs and pagoda rising among the trees, the Kiyomizu-do veranda on its elevated platform overlooking the Shinobazu, the Toshogu approach and stone lanterns, and the seasonal phenomena of snow, rain, twilight, and the autumn foliage of the park's gingko avenues. Contemporary Ueno remains one of the principal cultural districts of Tokyo, with the museums, the park, the surrounding Ameya-Yokocho (Ameyoko) shotengai, and the connecting Yamanote, Ginza, Hibiya, and other rail lines making it a heavily visited central district, reached most directly via JR Ueno Station or the Tokyo Metro Ueno Station.

Hanga catalogues 39 prints depicting Ueno (上野), by 16 different artists.

Henmi Takashi, Hiratsuka Un'ichi, and Hiroshi Yoshida are among the 16 artists who depicted Ueno in our collection.