Monash University > Library > Exhibitions > Fifty Books from Fifty Years >

44. Hiroshige of the Imperial and Royal Austrian Frigate Novara

Chosen by:
Associate Professor Alison Tokita,
School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts

Monash Rare Books includes an extensive collection of Japanese books, the Suetsugu Collection, of over 1000 titles, donated to us in 2000. It was the working library of a traditional Japanese Confucian scholar maintained and supplemented over several generations.

Tōkaidō – Hiratsuka, [186-], by Utagawa Hiroshige II (1826-1869)

This is an album of prints dating from the mid-nineteenth century. It contains pictures signed variously as Hiroshige and Ryūshō, two of the many names used over the career of Hiroshige II (1826-1869) who was active from 1844 to 1869. He was the successor to the famous ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858).

Like his master, Hiroshige II also produced popular series of prints of the fifty-three stages of the Tōkaidō highway. We can see in the bottom left-hand corner the artist’s signature, Hiroshige-ga, which dates it to the years he was using this name, between 1859 and 1865. In the top right-hand corner of the print is the title “Tōkaidō – Hiratsuka”, which is the seventh stage of the highway, a town near Mount Fuji, 62.6 kilometres from Nihonbashi. In the equivalent print of the same place by his master Hiroshige I the scene itself is almost identical, with the round-topped Mount Kōrai dominating the middle-ground, and the snow-capped iconic Mount Fuji just peeping into view behind it. Because the later one is laid out vertically (portrait format) and the older one is landscape, the same geographical features have been squashed up and a further mountain omitted. The major difference between the two pictures however is that whereas in the first Hiroshige’s picture the two human figures are humble messengers or carriers, the younger Hiroshige’s picture depicts what seems to be part of a daimyō procession heralded by the plumed pike carried in front. Presumably the daimyō or other important personage is in the palanquin (kago) being carried by two retainers, who all have two swords, the mark of samurai rank. A local person is performing an obeisance, the hat removed to show respect. In the Edo period, one of the means of social control by the Shogun was to enforce alternate attendance in Edo by the regional daimyō, who had to spend every alternate year in their domains and in every other year make the often difficult journey to Edo where their wives and families were in permanent residence.

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