Why is Hiroshige’s work so delightful? While his close predecessor Hokusai has more drama in his draughtsmanship, Hiroshige’s pastoral visions conjure a sense of timeless continuity that appealed to his contemporaries as much as to present-day teens who love the merch. His is a world in which everything has happened before, and will happen again. People race for shelter from a sudden shower of rain; a finely dressed lady adjusts her slipping belt. Human life seems small and predictable against his vast mountains and limpid lakes.
The tranquillity is achieved in part through colour gradation, similar to millennials’ beloved ombré, and known in Edo-period Japan as bokashi, a technique carried out by his printers using a bamboo-bound lacquer tool called a baren (there’s a film in the exhibition if you’re interested). Hiroshige creates an illusory world that is both real and decorative. He offers reportage – in the preface to One Hundred Views of Fuji, published in 1859, he promised ‘views I had before my eyes… entirely true-to-life landscapes’ – but at the same time he winnows away all unpleasantness, so that we can for a moment believe the world is an elegant place.
This was a powerfully useful fantasy, because late-Edo Japan was in crisis. When Hiroshige was at the height of his powers in the 1830s, the Tokugawa shogunate’s long policy of isolationism (sakoku) was wearing increasingly thin: there was famine, a resurgence in oppressive social rules, and the intimidating presence of foreign warships along the coast, leading up to the incursion of Commodore Perry’s Black Ships into Edo harbour in 1853. No wonder the poise and gentleness of Hiroshige was so desirable, with huge print runs of his subtle, engaging works such as ‘Listening to Insects at Dokan Hill’ (c.1840).
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