Night View of Saruwaka-machi

Moonlight floods the street of the three licensed kabuki theaters after the day’s performances: theater-goers drift home down the wide street, and each figure trails its own shadow across the moonlit ground. Those cast shadows are the astonishment — almost unknown in Japanese printmaking — set inside a Western-style one-point perspective: Hiroshige, at the end of his life, absorbing Europe’s optics as coolly as Europe would soon absorb his. Every figure casts a moon-shadow angled the same way; the theater towers step down the roofline in perspective toward the moon-bright end of the street. The theaters are dark. The moon stages the street.

Maker

Utagawa Hiroshige

Date

1856

Medium of the original

Woodblock print; ink and color on paper

Rights

Cleared for print

Catalogue number

PA-00398