The Plum Garden at Kameido Shrine 1857

Utagawa Hiroshige made this woodblock print, showing the plum garden at Kameido Shrine, as part of his series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo." The series was produced in the years directly preceding the Meiji Restoration, a period of intense social and political change when Japan opened its doors to the West and embarked on a rapid program of modernization. These prints, commissioned for a mass urban audience, display a selective view of city life. The vantage point, cropped composition, and bold color anticipate Western modernism. But they also reflect a very particular Japanese sense of place. Pleasure gardens such as this one were key social spaces in Edo, now Tokyo, and the prints acted as advertisements, encouraging people to visit. The trees themselves were cultivated by local people, a kind of community arts project that democratized cultural production. By depicting such sites, Hiroshige's work captures a specific moment in the social history of Japan, an urban culture on the cusp of transformation. Historians use a wide range of sources to understand the social and cultural contexts of artworks like this one. Tourist guides, newspaper advertisements, and even maps can shed light on the history of the city and its people.