The Darkest Place Is under the Light House

“H death cannot be too much deplored,” read the note next to his name on a list of the famous who perished in the 1858 cholera epidemic (1). Utagawa Hiroshige himself, before his death at age 62, is said to have written in verse, “I leave my brush at Azuma and go on the journey to the Holy West to view the famous scenery there” (2). Metaphorical meaning and questionable authenticity aside, when interpreted in Western terms, the farewell becomes prophetic since the artist, long overlooked in his native Japan, was discovered and brought to light in the West. The low cost of production made woodblock prints, Hiroshige’s main medium, widely accessible—a print sold for the price of a bowl of noodles (3). The subjects, eloquent snapshots of the provinces, remained unknown to the cultured class in Japan, until his popularity rose in Europe and the United States. How the prints first found their way to Western artists, who appreciated and imitated them is legend. James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), who was very influential in introducing Japanese art to England, might have seen his first Hiroshige at a rundown Chinese tea house near London Bridge or on the wrapper on a pound of tea (2). Vincent van Gogh so admired Japanese prints that he copied some, among them Plum Garden at Kameido, on this issue’s cover. “I envy the Japanese artists,” he wrote, “for the incredible neat clarity which all their works have” (4). Hiroshige’s influence was greatest on the impressionists (Claude Monet, Pierre August Renoir, Mary Cassatt) and postimpressionists (Paul Cézanne, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin). His landscapes, “simple as breathing,” “easy as buttoning one’s waist-coat,” influenced Western painting away from representation toward light, color, and emotion (4). Hiroshige’s biography is pieced together from anecdotes as there are few authentic records of his life. He was born Ando Tokutaro in Edo, present-day Tokyo, a precocious child with an eye for the unusual and the detailed. Orphaned in his early teens, he managed to receive art instruction, first from amateur painter Okajima Rinsai, a friend and neighbor, and at age 15, from the art establishment. In the short course of a year, he was admitted to the Utagawa School as designer of color prints. According to Japanese custom, an accomplished apprentice was given a name that generally incorporated part of the master’s name. Apprentice of Toyohiro, Ando was named Hiroshige. The diploma, in Toyohiro’s own writing, read Utagawa Hiroshige. The artist later also used the names Ichiryusai and Ryusai. Hiroshige’s father, Gen’emon Ando, a hereditary retainer of the shogun, was a fireman, and when he died, Hiroshige kept his modest post, eking out a living until he could relinquish the post to another member of the family and devote himself to art. Then he set off to see and draw the provinces. A wanderer and bon vivant, he lingered on the road, pausing to