Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji Seen from the Eastern Capital (Toto Fujimi sanjurokkei)

Utagawa Kuniyoshi's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji Seen from the Eastern Capital, the Toto Fujimi sanjurokkei, is a Fuji series organized specifically around the vantage of Edo, the eastern capital, and is therefore both a homage to Hokusai's great Thirty-six Views and a topographic refinement of the genre to the network of viewing sites within the city itself. The project is generally placed in the early 1840s, and the publisher and exact dating should be confirmed against the standard reference catalogues, but the cycle sits squarely within the wave of Edo-centered Fuji projects that proliferated in the decade after Hokusai had made the volcano the central subject of the genre. Where Hokusai had ranged across the country, taking up Fuji from Suruga tea plantations and Sagami marshes alongside its appearance from Edo, Kuniyoshi narrows the conceit to the famous fujimi spots of the capital, the hills, bridges, embankments, and high vantage points from which residents could see the mountain on clear days. As fukei-e, the prints depend on the conventions of late Edo landscape: a strong foreground motif of human activity or local landmark, a middle ground that organizes the recession, and Fuji rising in the distance as the unifying constant. The series is also a document of Edo as a self-aware metropolis whose citizens enjoyed seeing their own viewing rituals depicted, and it reflects the late Tokugawa fascination with the cultural geography of the city. Modern scholarship places the Toto Fujimi sanjurokkei within the larger comparative analysis of Edo Fuji series, where it is read alongside Hokusai's two great Fuji cycles and Hiroshige's parallel work as evidence of how the volcano had become both a national emblem and a marker of urban identity. The prints continue to appear in collections of Kuniyoshi landscape and rank among his most accomplished topographic compositions.

The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji Seen from the Eastern Capital (Toto Fujimi sanjurokkei) series contains 1 prints, created by Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji Seen from the Eastern Capital (Toto Fujimi sanjurokkei) series was created by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳).

We currently have 1 of 1 known prints from the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji Seen from the Eastern Capital (Toto Fujimi sanjurokkei) series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.