Yoshihige Utagawa

polychrome woodcut. The print was part of a book entitled “The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido as Landscapes in a Vase”, Tokaido gojusantsugi hachiyama zue), originally published in 1848 and reprinted in the Meiji period (1868-1912), to satisfy the great requests of the public. Yoshihige's illustrations depict the Fifty-Three Stations as potted landscapes of the Tokaido, the coastal road that connected Edo (now Tokyo), the seat of the shogunate, with Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan. Okabe, the place evoked in this print, is the twenty-fifth station of the Tokaido. The work was commissioned to Yoshihige by Kimura Tosen, a passionate author of saikei and bonkei, or rather those miniature landscapes built inside trays.

21x13 cm