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=Plum Estate, Kameido of One Hundred Views of Edo =

**Artist:** Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando), Japanese (1797 - 1858)

Introduction:
Japanese art in the Western cultures is generally associated with the ukiyo-e prints of the seventeenth century, some of the most recognized prints are of the artist Utagawa Hiroshige. Fifty-three Stations of The Tokaido and Hundred Views of Edo are his best known series. Hiroshige extended the tradition of the ukiyo prints and challenged the concepts behind traditional representation of the Japanese famous places. His incorporation of the western perspective with the use of traditional modes of representation created a rich and dynamic visual vocabulary for his series, which influenced a lot of western artists, such as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, and Whistler. Print 30 is an image of the Plum Estate in Kameido that is part of the Spring series of Hundred Views of Edo. This image is one of the best known pieces of Hiroshige, and was even reproduced by Vincent van Gogh. The eclectic nature of this print, the flat shapes, with the unique perspective of the tree is very reminiscent of the blossoming time of Edo and Japanese tradition.

Visual Description
The Plum Estate is a wood cut print that focuses on a branch of a plum tree. The background consists of washes of color; a reddish pink sky gradually fades into white, which in turn gradually transfers into the green of the ground. The back-middle ground shows 12 people on the other side of a fence. It appears as if they are milling around in their daily business. The middle ground stages several other plum trees, all of which are beginning to bloom. The blossoms resemble popped popcorn. Closest to the viewer is the focal point of the piece; the main tree. The branch in view swings in from the left at a downward angle, and swoops up with branches breaking to the right. Although most of the shapes appear flat and with generic shadows, the Plum Estates contains much depth by dealing properly with perspective, scale, and overlapping. Atop the rest of the design are small rectangles in greens and red, located in the upper right corner and near the lower left. They contain Japanese script, which is said to contain the artist's name and other information.

Formal Analysis
Print Number 30 out of 100: Plum Estate, Kameido. One Hundred Views of Edo is a series of landscape prints in the ukiyo-e tradition. They are depictions of Edo, modern day Tokyo. Utagawa Hiroshige produced these prints between the years of 1856 and 1858. He was commissioned to produce these series by Sakanaya Eikichi, a publisher who provided the financial backing for the work and its distribution. Ukiyo-e is a famous genre of Japanese woodblock print developed in the seventeenth century. The literal translation of ukiyo-e is “pictures of floating world”. Traditionally ukiyo refers to the Buddhist notion of transient nature of reality, but later in the seventeenth century this concept evolved into a more broad representation of every day life, with images of beautiful women, landscapes, kabuki actors, street scenes, or working people, along with advertisements for theater and entertainment. The reason for such range of use for ukiyo-e images is the ease in which these pictures could be mass-produced, thus they were used for advertisement, illustrations on the fans, postcards, or prints. “Meisho Edo hyakkei” literally translates “One hundred views of the famous places of Edo”. This is the format of the commission that Hiroshige took on in his visual and poetic exploration of Edo landscapes. “Meisho” stands for “famous places”, but traditionally it translates into “places with names”, which resonates more with the poetic attributes and characteristics of the places depicted. In the western world the famous places would signify power and w ealth, in the “meisho” the place itself is not so important as its serene and contemplative qualities. Thus the images usually would depict Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines. In the hundred and eighteen views of the city, Hiroshige reconfigures the notion of “meisho”, he explores places that might not be famous, but that are somehow important to the history and evolution of Edo and its topography. One hundred views of Edo are a journey of gardens, landscapes, street scenes, temples, or a study of different social classes in the fabric of the city. The images are very serene yet, dynamic, and quite unconventional, due to the use of flat shapes, reminiscent of the traditional rinpa print, in contrast with the use of western perspective, that Hiroshige uses so brilliantly. The images were also categorized by seasons, because the places that Hiroshige depicts under the notion of “meisho” are related to the seasons that they are best viewed in. Thus the Plum Estate at Kameido, one of the most famous images of the views of Edo, is captured in Spring. The image depicts the Sleeping Dragon Plum that is cropped in the foreground in the way that it captures the natural quality of its growth. This plum tree tends to grow with its limbs in the ground, where at a distance away the same limbs come up making very peculiar shapes. Hiroshige depicts the Sleeping Dragon Plum in Spring, when the blossoms are full, and it conveys the most meaning in the Japanese culture. The bright white double blossom of the plum tree is believed to keep the darkness away. The image of the Plum Estate is a detailed, cropped view of the space that focuses on the actual plum tree that divides the pictorial space into dynamic shapes. The blossoms dominate the space and give it the power of life. In Japanese culture blooming gardens become a focus of traditions and cultural practices. In the Heian Period, Japanese gained a lof of influence from China, one of those practices was flower viewing, which took place in the Spring, when the fruit trees are in their full blossom. The plum tree with its large white blossoms was originally the highest acclaimed by the Chinese, which carried through to Japan, and took symbolism of the early spring, while the cherry blossom is associated with the late spring. Plum blossoms were also believed to keep the evil sprits away, thus the trees were always planted in the northeast of the garden facing the direction of the evil source. Whether plum or cherry blossoms, the flowers on the fruit trees in Spring have a particular transcendental qualities that associate with the Buddhist beliefs and principals. The blossoms symbolize the transience of nature, the cycle of life and death and the rebirth that is most obviously observed in the seasons. Thus in Spring blossoming trees are symbolic of life and birth, following into the stages of bearing, and death, and reincarnation back to life. Another reason that Hiroshige used quite a few blossoming landscapes in his views, was the reference to the catastrophic earthquake that happened in 1855, that wiped out most of Edo, and took over hundred thousand lives. In this reading of the blossoming views, the city is back to its growth, its rejuvenation and reconstruction. Current Exhibitions of Hiroshige's prints include University of Michigan Museum of Art exhibit of Spring 2006, presented Hiroshige’s 53 Stages of the Tokaido as a part of a larger exhibit “Landscapes of Longing: Journeys through Memory and Place”, which was an inventory of spaces through the eyes of the artists that canonized and spiritualized the places they portrayed. The exhibit set off an exploration of images that have become formal associations of the particular sites, thus becoming depictions of certain cultural qualities that tie the image to the memory of the moment in time. Hiroshige’s views of Tokaido are that kind of the poetic imagery that has become iconic in the association with the Japanese culture. These idealized images of the Japanese landscapes portray the culture of Japan as the serene, spiritual, and meditative. This exhibit was a rare occasion to view all of the prints from the series of 53 Stages of the Tokaido. All the prints viewed together become a larger dynamic entity, like a poem itself, moving from one site to another creating a narrative of the spaces in the Japanese culture.

Influences
During his life time, Utagawa Hiroshige made over 5,400 prints. Many prints made their way into Europe, starting a new fascination with Japan. Many European artists got inspiration from Hiroshige’s wood block prints. Painters loved the bright rich colors of Ukiyo-e prints, as well as the sense of depth, and unusual perspectives and vantage points. Impressionist painters such as Monet and Van Gogh emulated the rich colors that were not common in paintings beforehand. Van Gogh even made painted copies of Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. He was fond of the contrast between the jagged braches of the plum tree and the softness of the people walking behind the orchard. Even non impressionists were influenced. Gustav Klimt and Ivan Bilibin both referenced Utagawa Hiroshige’s prints for their own work as well. Recently Hiroshige’s prints have had an influence on artists such as Roger Shimomura. Shimomura used the Ukiyo-e style to make paintings addressing issues of racism.

Artist Background
Hiroshige was born as Andō Hiroshige in Edo (current day Tokyo). Immediately he was marked as an artist, as he showed great skill at drawing though it is rumored that Hiroshige officially decided to become an artist after viewing masterworks of the artist Hokusai. He was not originally an artist, but instead followed the profession of his father which was firefighter for the local shogunate. It is however, more likely that he didn't enjoy the meager wages made by a fireman and sought out a form of employment that was better suited for his wants. Whatever was the inspiration to change his profession to artist, Hokusai futhered his ambition by becomming an apprentice at //ukiyo-e// master Utagawa Toyohiro’s studio. Hiroshige was then given the name Utagawa by Toyohiro. Utagawa Hiroshige then went on to produce great prints under the ukiyo-e style. Later in his life he produced the series of landscape prints known as the One Hundred Views of Edo, which includes Plum Estate. In 1856 He retired as an artist to become a buddhist monk. Unfortunately, Hiroshige died soon after the release of the prints in 1858, of cholera, most likely due to the cholera epidemic at the time. The series actually contains 118 prints and is the last work that Hiroshige was able to produce.

Kameido Shrine Today Kameido Shrine sits in the Heart of Tokyo, in the Sumida district. Unfortunately it was destroyed due to Allied fire bombs in 1945. It was rebuilt, but most of the original architecture did not survive. The plum orchard no longer exists, and the shrine is better known for its hanging wisteria garden, and large drum bridge. The Shrine was originally famous for a statue of Sugawara no Michizane, a famous scholar, poet and politician, made of plum wood.

Written Citations:
Forrer, Matthi, Suzuki Juzo, and Henry D. Smith. __Hiroshige__. Grand Rapids: Prestel, 2001. Schlombs, Adele. __Hiroshige (Basic Art)__. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2007. Smith, Henry D., and Ando Hiroshige. __Hiroshige One Hundred Famous Views of Edo__. New York: George Braziller, 2000.

Online Citations:
"Brooklyn Museum: Asian Art: Plum Estate, Kameido (Kameido Umeyashiki), No. 30 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo." __Brooklyn Museum: Welcome__. 16 Mar. 2009 .

"Hiroshige - 100 Views of Edo." __Ando Hiroshige__. 16 Mar. 2009 <http://www.hiroshige.org.uk/hiroshige/100_views_edo/100_views_edo.htm>.

"TASCHEN Books: Edo - Images of a city between visual poetry and idealized reality (1)." __TASCHEN Books: Home__. 16 Mar. 2009 [].>

"TASCHEN Books: Hiroshige. One Hundred Famous Views of Edo." __TASCHEN Books: Home__. 16 Mar. 2009 [].

"Roger Shimomura." __Roger Shimomura__. Greg Kucera Gallery INC. March & april 2009 [].

Hubbard, Sue. "Utagawa Hiroshige: The Moon Reflected, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham." __The Independant__ 1 Jan. 2008. March & april 2009 [].

A Visit to Tokyo's Kameido Tenjin Shrine." __Ukiyoe-gallery__. Ed. Thomas Crossland. March & april 2009 <http://www.ukiyoe-gallery.com/kameido.htm>.