Art of Ukiyoe

A Snowbound Vision Of a Glorious Edo Dawn

New Year, new day, new featured print.

Here we are, in the sky like a bird, looking down on the magnificent panorama of Edo in 1856. The day is dawning bright and cold and clear, freshly fallen snow still blanketing the rooftops and trees.

This is “Nihonbashi: Clearing After Snow,” the opening design from Hiroshige’s late-career masterpiece, “100 Famous Views of Edo.” It marks the auspicious start of a bold new year.

Nihonbashi, the bridge from which all distances in Edo-era Japan were measured, takes center stage. This is a view the master embraced dozens, perhaps hundreds of times, whether in total or in just a detail. Here we have it all – the busy fish market in the foreground, with dealers hawking giant tunas; the icy river with its barges and boats; the distant storehouses, their sizes exaggerated; the keep of the royal palace and, of course, the snow-covered cone of Mount Fuji, its size also increased for effect.

You could say that Hiroshige wrapped all of his greatest hits into this one magnificent print.

But there’s more.

This series was published by Sakanaya Eikichi. This example is a so-called “deluxe” version, with shaded bokashi in the title cartouche and extraordinarily fine printing. It’s printed on unusually heavy paper.

Most scholars argue that the “deluxe” state is, indeed, the first state. This follows the logic of the production arc of most Ukiyoe: the printing of the first examples tended to be of high quality, but that quality diminished as more and more prints were run off. The designs also became more simplified as production continue, with fewer color blocks, for example, especially as they wore out. Jim Dwinger, in “Hiroshige: Nature and the City,” (Ludion; 2024); and Amy G. Poster in the catalogue of the Brooklyn Museum’s famous collection of this series, both ascribe to this point of view.

But at least one expert colleague of mine feels differently, arguing that the “deluxe” version came after the first impressions, and was published because the first-round sold so well. This expert likens it to an elaborate box set of CDs, with many new or remastered tracks added as a bonus to entice those who had already purchased the release earlier. (Ok – I’m dating myself a little here.)