Famous Places in Kyoto (Kyoto meisho no uchi)
Kyoto meisho no uchi
About This Series
Famous Places in Kyoto (Kyoto meisho no uchi) is one of Utagawa Hiroshige's principal contributions to the meisho-e of the imperial capital, issued in oban yoko-e format around 1834 by Eikyudo Tomekichi and comprising a canonical ten designs, although associated and related Kyoto views by the same hand extend the corpus considerably. The series followed the Hoeido Tokaido by only a year or two and clearly capitalized on the success of his journey prints, providing a complementary set of views drawn from the western terminus of the great highway. The roster gathers the celebrated Kyoto sites that Edo travelers and armchair tourists alike knew through guidebooks and classical poetry: Shijo Bridge with its summer riverbed pavilions, the cherry blossoms of Arashiyama, the maple leaves of Tsuten Bridge at Tofuku-ji, the moon over Gion, the autumn moon at Yodogawa, and similar destinations whose seasonal and temporal associations were as much a part of their identity as their topography. As a fukei-e designer who had not himself visited Kyoto at the time of the series's design, Hiroshige worked from existing visual sources, particularly the woodblock-illustrated meisho guidebooks of the eighteenth century, and translated their topographical notations into his own atmospheric vocabulary of low horizon, modulated sky, and quietly populated foreground. The series belongs to the Tenpo-era flowering of landscape print culture in which Hokusai's Fuji subjects had established a market and Hiroshige was rapidly claiming the meisho-e half of the genre as his particular territory. Modern scholarship reads the Kyoto meisho as evidence of how thoroughly Hiroshige had absorbed the conventions of fukei-e by the mid-1830s, and the prints stand among the more sought-after of his early mature series, valued for the calibration of bokashi work that fine early impressions preserve most fully and for the historical record they provide of a Kyoto on the cusp of its modern transformation.
Prints in This Series (9)
Frequently Asked Questions
Famous Places in Kyoto (Kyoto meisho no uchi) is one of Utagawa Hiroshige's principal contributions to the meisho-e of the imperial capital, issued in oban yoko-e format around 1834 by Eikyudo Tomekichi and comprising a canonical ten designs, although associated and related Kyoto views by the same hand extend the corpus considerably. The series followed the Hoeido Tokaido by only a year or two and clearly capitalized on the success of his journey prints, providing a complementary set of views drawn from the western terminus of the great highway. The roster gathers the celebrated Kyoto sites that Edo travelers and armchair tourists alike knew through guidebooks and classical poetry: Shijo Bridge with its summer riverbed pavilions, the cherry blossoms of Arashiyama, the maple leaves of Tsuten Bridge at Tofuku-ji, the moon over Gion, the autumn moon at Yodogawa, and similar destinations whose seasonal and temporal associations were as much a part of their identity as their topography. As a fukei-e designer who had not himself visited Kyoto at the time of the series's design, Hiroshige worked from existing visual sources, particularly the woodblock-illustrated meisho guidebooks of the eighteenth century, and translated their topographical notations into his own atmospheric vocabulary of low horizon, modulated sky, and quietly populated foreground. The series belongs to the Tenpo-era flowering of landscape print culture in which Hokusai's Fuji subjects had established a market and Hiroshige was rapidly claiming the meisho-e half of the genre as his particular territory. Modern scholarship reads the Kyoto meisho as evidence of how thoroughly Hiroshige had absorbed the conventions of fukei-e by the mid-1830s, and the prints stand among the more sought-after of his early mature series, valued for the calibration of bokashi work that fine early impressions preserve most fully and for the historical record they provide of a Kyoto on the cusp of its modern transformation.
The Famous Places in Kyoto (Kyoto meisho no uchi) series contains 9 prints, created by Utagawa Hiroshige.
The Famous Places in Kyoto (Kyoto meisho no uchi) series was created by Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重).
We currently have 9 of 9 known prints from the Famous Places in Kyoto (Kyoto meisho no uchi) series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
Want to rate prints from Famous Places in Kyoto (Kyoto meisho no uchi)?
Sign up to start rating