The Fifty-Three Stages of the Tokaido
Relief printmaker: Utagawa Hiroshige
Categories: Bookwork / Illustrated Books, Offset Books, Printmakers' Books, Relief Print Books
Reference no.:NL/Hiro.U/60.00 Place/Shelf:1A
| Book title: | The Fifty-Three Stages of the Tokaido |
| Published by: | Heibonsha |
| Year made: | 1960 |
| Place made: | Japan |
| Original: | No (facsimile) |
| Dimensions: | 300 x 215 |
| Binder: | commercial binding |
| Physical description: | stab binding, hard cover, slipcase |
| Medium: | text, illustrations |
| Further information: | |
| With introduction essay by Ichitaro Kondo and also translated into English by Charles S. Terry.
"The world-famed woodblock prints of Japan belong to a type of art known in Japanese as 'ukiyo-e', 'pictures of the floating world'. This somewhat whimsical name is eminently appropriate, for the subject matter of 'ukiyo-e' come for the most part from the very temporal world of commoners in old Edo, the capital of the Tokugawa shoguns. In one sense,... this was anything but a 'floating world', since it was a world of peace, of reasonable prosperity, and of political stability, but at the same time it was also a world of gaiety... The 'ukiyo-e' themselves were an intrinsic part of the world they depicted; they were produced by commoners for the enjoyment of other commoners, and they were completely subject to the fickle tastes of the time. The Hoei-do version of the Tokaido series brought Hiroshige instant fame... Having gained so much from the Tokaido series, he followed his initial success with nearly forty more albums on the same subject... Aesthetically, however, the Hoei-do version remained the best of all, and it is this which is reproduced on the following pages." (from the introduction essay) |
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| Relief printmaker: | Utagawa Hiroshige () |
All images are subject to copyright.
