Hiroshige Gallery (Guide)

Utagawa Hiroshige’s meisho-e (famous-place prints) fold the memory of roads and cities into a single landscape—an emblematic line within ukiyo-e landscape printmaking.

This gallery centers on public-domain holdings from The Met, with series such as the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, and Eight Views of Ōmi as its axes. The Tōkaidō series depicts the post towns along the road between Edo and Kyoto with the mood of travel, and is widely known as the work that established Hiroshige’s reputation. One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, produced late in his career, cuts the seasons and landmarks of the city with bold compositions; its emphasis on near–far contrast is often cited as an influence on later Western painting. Eight Views of Ōmi gathers scenic sites of the Ōmi region into eight themes, continuing the tradition of imaginative “matching” rooted in China’s Eight Views of Xiaoxiang.