Book Description

The Jinbutso Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road, Gojūsan tsugi, 五十三次 is one of the most original of Hiroshige's huge production. It is a hot fantasy full of secret clues. The complete name of the series in Japanese is Tokaido Goju-san Tsugi Jinbutsu In English it is usually called Figure Tōkaidō or Jinbutsu or Jimbutsu (Figure) Tōkaidō because all the designs show people not just as tiny decorations but as important elements in the foreground of the design, like as if Hiroshige had already invented the zoom lens. Hiroshige's designs would have a huge impact on the later landscape and portrait photography. The "people" are mostly beautiful women and the audience for this series is men dreaming of women they could in theory meet when travelling in the "floating world", ukiyo-e, of the Tōkaidō road seeking adventure and pleasure. Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese: 歌川広重), also called Andō Hiroshige (in Japanese: 安藤広重;) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, considered the last great master of that tradition. He was born 1797 and died 12 October 1858. Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; flora and fauna; and erotica. The term ukiyo-e (浮世絵) translates as "picture[s] of the floating world". Hiroshige is best known for his horizontal-format landscape series The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, which is the subject of this book, and for his vertical-format landscape series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.