Views of the Eastern Capital (Toto no zu)
Toto no zu
About This Series
Utagawa Kuniyoshi's Views of the Eastern Capital, the Toto no zu, belongs to the family of meisho-e cycles that the artist produced in the 1830s and 1840s alongside his great warrior series, and it forms part of the larger project by which late Edo ukiyo-e designers continually reframed the city of Edo for an audience that consumed its own surroundings as visual material. The series is generally placed in the period of the late 1830s through the 1840s and issued through one of the mid-Edo publishers active in the Kuniyoshi network, with the exact dates and publisher to be verified against standard reference catalogues. Each oban tate-e sheet presents a specific Edo landmark, set within the conventions of late Edo fukei-e: strong foreground motifs framing a deeper recession, a palette built on imported Berlin blue, and small groups of figures whose costume and gesture mark them as residents or visitors of the moment. As an example of meisho-e the project sits in dialogue with Hokusai's earlier Fuji and bridge series and with Hiroshige's ongoing exploration of Edo views, and it shows Kuniyoshi adapting the genre's conventions to his own sense of dramatic framing and topographic specificity. Modern scholarship reads Edo meisho-e of this period as documentary, commercial, and ideological at once, since the prints functioned simultaneously as souvenirs, as substitutes for guidebooks, and as celebrations of the city's identity as a metropolis whose famous places had become as iconic as the classical sites of Kyoto. The Toto no zu sheets continue to circulate in international collections as examples of Kuniyoshi's quieter, more atmospheric mode and as records of a late-Tokugawa Edo whose visual fabric was about to be transformed by the dislocations of the Meiji period.
Prints in This Series (1)
Frequently Asked Questions
Utagawa Kuniyoshi's Views of the Eastern Capital, the Toto no zu, belongs to the family of meisho-e cycles that the artist produced in the 1830s and 1840s alongside his great warrior series, and it forms part of the larger project by which late Edo ukiyo-e designers continually reframed the city of Edo for an audience that consumed its own surroundings as visual material. The series is generally placed in the period of the late 1830s through the 1840s and issued through one of the mid-Edo publishers active in the Kuniyoshi network, with the exact dates and publisher to be verified against standard reference catalogues. Each oban tate-e sheet presents a specific Edo landmark, set within the conventions of late Edo fukei-e: strong foreground motifs framing a deeper recession, a palette built on imported Berlin blue, and small groups of figures whose costume and gesture mark them as residents or visitors of the moment. As an example of meisho-e the project sits in dialogue with Hokusai's earlier Fuji and bridge series and with Hiroshige's ongoing exploration of Edo views, and it shows Kuniyoshi adapting the genre's conventions to his own sense of dramatic framing and topographic specificity. Modern scholarship reads Edo meisho-e of this period as documentary, commercial, and ideological at once, since the prints functioned simultaneously as souvenirs, as substitutes for guidebooks, and as celebrations of the city's identity as a metropolis whose famous places had become as iconic as the classical sites of Kyoto. The Toto no zu sheets continue to circulate in international collections as examples of Kuniyoshi's quieter, more atmospheric mode and as records of a late-Tokugawa Edo whose visual fabric was about to be transformed by the dislocations of the Meiji period.
The Views of the Eastern Capital (Toto no zu) series contains 1 prints, created by Utagawa Kuniyoshi.
The Views of the Eastern Capital (Toto no zu) series was created by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳).
We currently have 1 of 1 known prints from the Views of the Eastern Capital (Toto no zu) series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.
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