73 The City Flourishing, the Tanabata Festival 1857

Utagawa Hiroshige created this woodblock print titled 73 The City Flourishing, the Tanabata Festival. It’s full of imagery that evokes the traditional festival, Tanabata, a celebration of the stars Vega and Altair and their symbolic connection to weaving and sericulture. The long streamers and decorations on bamboo represent the threads of weaving, while the Tanabata festival itself developed as a way for young women to pray for skill in weaving, an important domestic responsibility in the 19th Century. Hiroshige made this print in Japan, where the Tokugawa Shogunate, a military dictatorship, had imposed strict social hierarchies and economic policies aimed at preserving feudalism. Woodblock prints were extremely popular during this period, allowing artists to circulate commentary on contemporary life and culture. Hiroshige often made use of landscape backdrops like Mount Fuji, seen here, as subtle ways of referencing national identity. We can continue to analyze the political symbolism of the image by looking at historical records, like prints, diaries, and other texts, which enable us to build an understanding of the role art plays in social life.