Azuma Shrine (Azuma no mon) Print from Key Block c. 19th century

Curator: This is Utagawa Hiroshige’s key block print, titled "Azuma Shrine". Editor: It's strikingly delicate, almost ghostly. You can see the hand of the artist so clearly. Curator: Hiroshige, who died in 1858, gives us insight into the way shrines and sacred spaces were being constructed and understood at the time, often intersecting with ideas about commerce and travel. Editor: What resonates with me is the image's intersection of spirituality and the everyday. The shrine isn't isolated, but seamlessly integrated with the natural world. Curator: Precisely. He suggests the inseparability of spiritual life and the mundane realities of the socio-political landscape. Editor: It makes me consider how we today separate those spheres, and what's lost in that division. Curator: Reflecting on the ways these spaces were constructed and perceived, and what that might suggest about the people of that time, has been enlightening. Editor: Absolutely. Hiroshige invites us to reimagine not only the landscape, but our relationship with it.