Antique Hiroshige, City Sparrows Walking the Tokaido Road, Hamamatsu Station, Japanese Print

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Hiroshige, City Sparrows Walking the Tokaido Road - Hamamatsu Station, Very Rae Print framed and matted behind glass.

Utagawa Hiroshige … Read more Hiroshige, City Sparrows Walking the Tokaido Road - Hamamatsu Station, Very Rae Print framed and matted behind glass.

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) City Sparrows Walking the Tokaido Road (Dōchū Hizakurige): Hamamatsu Station, 1845-49. Yoko-e Oban.

Print Dimensions: 15" wide x 10" high (inches)
Framed Dimensions: 20" wide x 14" high (inches)

This very unusual, rare print by Hiroshige is full of enigmas. The print comes from an aborted series of Tokaido Road prints illustrating the comic novels of Jippensha Ikku about the misadventures of two travellers on the Tokaido Road - the main highway between Kyoto and Edo in the nineteenth century. The two characters (seen in the print), are called Yajirobe and Kitahachi. The book is both a traveller’s guide to the journey via the fifty-three post stations and a series of comical vignettes. As they make their way, they leave behind a trail of crude jokes and plentiful puns. For example, they make fun of a daimyo procession, cheat shopkeepers out of money, and get cheated in turn. At one inn, they make fools of themselves because they do not know how to use the bathtub, they burn themselves and debate how to eat the hot stones that they have been served by an innkeeper and so on… comic events often ensue when Yaji or Kita try to sneak into bed with women, which happens at various inns along the road.

Signature below print is likely shopkeepers.

Print likely from the late-1830s. The series, City Sparrows Walking the Tokaido Road (Hizakurige dōchū suzume) was no doubt commissioned by the publisher Koshodo in the late 1830’s. Only one print is known to conform to that description: Outskirts of the Inn at Kumotsu in the MFA at Boston. Another print from the series, Stopover at Odawara, is in the collection of the British Museum London. The BM date this print to 1845 - 49, a full decade later than the MFA print and by a different publisher, Sanoki Kikakudo.

About Artist:
Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) is recognized as a master of the ukiyo-e woodblock printing tradition, having created 8,000 prints of everyday life and landscape in Edo-period Japan with a splendid, saturated ambience. Orphaned at 12, Hiroshige began painting shortly thereafter under the tutelage of Toyohiro of the Utagawa school. See less