The Sackler Wing Galleries for the Arts of Japan
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Poetry and Travel in Japanese Art
Japan’s Heian period court society (794–1185) encouraged careful concealment of emotions and cultivation of aesthetic sensibilities and classical learning. In this environment, the arts of poetry and calligraphy flourished. Guarded passions
spilled forth in thirty-one-syllable poems, and the literary forms of China’s past provided clever ways to describe Japan’s present. Poetry became the medium of emotion and erudition. Over time, portraits of beloved poets paired with their most
famous verses as well as representations of landscapes and persons commemorated in Chinese or Japanese poems, such as the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, entered into the basic visual vocabulary of the realm. Just as poetry functioned as both entrée and escape for the elites of early court society, the perils and promises of the journey to and from the military capital of Edo largely defined the lives of those enmeshed in the later military society of the Tokugawa regime. For over two centuries, the Tokugawa managed knowledge of and activity in Japan’s terrain, largely through enforced patterns of travel as well as
restrictions upon movement. The shogunal appetite for physical control, however, inspired an equal desire for mental forays into the sixty-odd provinces of the land, zealously abetted by masters of the print medium such as Hokusai (1760–1849) and Hiroshige (1797–1858).

Travel in Japanese Prints
Utagawa Hiroshige(1797-1858) and Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) were the leading ukiyo-e landscape artists of the late Edo period. During this era an improved system of roads, which facilitated both official travel and tourism, also stimulated the development of landscape prints, as travelogues and guidebooks often included pictures of famous sites and picturesque views. Both Hiroshige and Hokusai, who were extremely prolific,
created landscape prints, especially pictures of famous places (meisho-e), inspired by illustrated guidebooks.
Views of Famous Places in the Sixty-Odd provinces, consisting of sixty-nine views, is a late work by Hiroshige. The series was inspired by illustrated books of landscapes, particularly the eight-volume Sansui Kikan (Picturesque Views of Landscape) by the
Osaka painter Fuchigami Kyokk? (d.1833). Located about seventy miles west of Edo and towering over the land and sea at a breathtaking height of 12,388 feet, Mount Fuji was a commanding presence on clear days in the city. Thirty – Six Views of Mount Fuji, Hokusai’s superlative and most widely known achievement, both in Japan and abroad, was produced during the years between 1830 and 1833. Only eleven scenes are known from Hokusai’s series Fantastic Views of Famous Bridges published by Eijud? of Nishimuraya Yohachi, one of three great publishers. It portrays grand monumental bridges with an impressive sense of dignity, intimate bridges teaming with humanity, and awesome spiritual bridges in inaccessible natural surroundings.