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Utagawa Hiroshige - Series of the 69 stations of the Kisokaido: Station Shinmachi (12th print) (Shinmachi)
© Trustees of the British Museum
It is the first print by Hiroshige we see in this series, however it is not the first one he contributed. He shows us a view at 95km/70 mi from Nihonbashi between Shinmachi and Kuragano, the next station. It is a superb sunset with a orange sky and purple clouds. The thatched roofs (1) of the station can be seen behind the buff. The Nukui-gawa river, also known as Karasu river flows lazily towards the Benten bridge (2) with the cone-shaped Mt.Akagi (3) in the background. Everything is quiet. Even the travellers and peddlers do not seem to be in a hurry to reach the station before the night.
It is a print where the printers must have had fun with the colors. There were little variations in the various printings, with the main changes being the yellow of the sky getting to a darker orange as here.
(Source: The 69 stations of the Kisokaido, Sebastian Izzard, Brazillier 2008)
Bridge on the Tokaido road near mt.Fuji ca. 1875
And now ?
Shinmachi, meaning “New town” was the last station to be created on the Kisokaido road. The wooden Benten bridge on the print has now disappeared but it may have been very similar to the one in this 1875 picture taken near Mt.Fuji. Shinmachi is now a district of Takasaki and several old buildings remain such as an old sake brewery or the waki-honjin (secondary honjin), subject of Nishijima’s print (the honjin itself is long gone)...
The rive at Shinmachi - Location of Eisen's print
Waki-honjin at Shinmachi
Old sake brewery at Shinmachi
Nishijima Katsuyuki - Series of Kisokaido-Shinmachi
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