A dazzling reprint of Hiroshige's 120 Views of Edo (Tokyo today), one of the masterpieces of the Japaneseukiyo tradition and a paradigm of Japanese art nouveau and impressionist artists from Vincent van Gogh to James McNeill Whistler.

Urban lights and cherry trees

The Tokyo woodcuts that captured Europe's imagination

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) was one of the last great artists of the Japanese delukiyo-e tradition. The word literally means "paintings of the floating world" and refers to a genre of art that flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries and symbolised Japan's image in the Western world. Theukiyo-e scenes, which were in many respects hedonistic in nature, often depicted the lustrous brightness and attractions of Edo: beautiful women, actors and sumo wrestlers, urban life and spectacular panoramas.
Despite covering a wide variety of subjects, Hiroshigese became most famous for his landscapes. In fact, his masterpiece was a series of prints known as One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856-1858), which depicts various scenes of the city over the course of the seasons, from bustling shopping streets to splendid cherry orchards.
This reprint, bound in traditional Japanese style, is composed of one of the finest series of complete original woodcuts owned by the Ota Memorial Museum of Art in Tokyo. Each of the 120 illustrations is accompanied by a description that allows readers to immerse themselves in these beautiful and vibrant views that became paradigms of Japonisme and inspired Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Art Nouveau artists alike, from Vincent van Gogh to James McNeill Whistler.

About the authors

Lorenz Bichler studied sinology, japanology and modern art in Zurich and Beijing. He studied at Waseda University and Tokai University on a scholarship, and then worked as an assistant professor of politics in New York. She has been working as a freelance sinologist at the University of Heidelberg since 2004.

Melanie Tred worked at Gakushuin University in Tokyo before earning her PhD in the Far East at the University of Heidelberg. She worked as an assistant at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University from 1999 to 2004, since when she has been a lecturer at Heidelberg University in the Department of Far Eastern Art.

Publisher: Taschen