The Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kisokaido

Finished

“The Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kisokaido" by Eisen Keisai (1791-1848) and Hiroshige Utagawa (1797-1858) is a series of street pictures featuring the starting point, Nihonbashi, and 69 inns on the Kisokaido (a variant of Nakasendo). It was produced during the Tempo period (1830-44), when landscape paintings such as Meisho-e and Kaido-e developed as a genre of ukiyoe, and continued to be published for a long time.

Therefore, each figure in this series has multiple variations and different editions (variant figures) due to the additional printings. "The Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kisokaido" series, collected by Haruo Tanaka (1919-2012), a collector of ukiyo-e prints in Ena City, took about 30 years to complete and consists of 121 prints, each of which is characterized by its abundant variations. Some of the prints are mica-printed and others are gofun, indicating the prosperity of the Ukiyo-e publishing world at that time.

In this exhibition, 78 prints from the Tanaka Collection “The Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kisokaido" will be exhibited to compare the different prints, and five newly acquired prints will be unveiled for your enjoyment.

Schedule

Aug 31 (Thu) 2023-Oct 1 (Sun) 2023