Dawn over Nihon Embankment at Emonzaka in the New Yoshiwara c. 1839 - 1842

Curator: This woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige, "Dawn over Nihon Embankment at Emonzaka in the New Yoshiwara," circa 1839-1842, gives us such a peek into 19th-century Edo, now Tokyo, doesn't it? Editor: Absolutely! I’m struck immediately by this dreamy stillness despite the activity depicted. It's got a very quiet feeling, like peeking at the world before it fully wakes up. Curator: Yes! It’s a landscape alright, but what labor built this landscape, I wonder? The carefully printed sky gives way to the Yoshiwara district. Notice how the figures, almost like worker ants, carry these palanquins – those yellow boxes - containing who-knows-what...or who? The cost? The materials needed to support those materials are not nothing... Editor: I love that tension between the mundane and the sublime. The muted colors contribute so much to that dawn feeling. The dark blues hinting at the night just passed and how they give way to this luminous sky…It feels fleeting, poignant even. Is it the artist romanticizing reality, or reflecting on his transient world? Curator: Both, perhaps? Ukiyo-e, the "pictures of the floating world," often grappled with this very tension: ephemeral pleasures depicted through meticulous, often laborious means of production. The woodblocks, the pigments sourced, the printmaking process itself – they represent a huge undertaking to materialize such fleeting moments! This wasn't cheap labor... It was carefully and often expensively planned, produced, and brought into distribution. Editor: I’m especially drawn to the weeping willow. In art, those sorts of symbols feel very melancholic to me. The branches droop downwards and remind you that no moment, no matter how perfectly presented, can really last. Maybe the owners of the palanquins feel the same? Curator: Such a perfect summary. Thinking about the economics of dawn makes it harder for me to escape the melancholy, so thank you for pulling me from that darkness into a new light...I agree, fleeting, poignant… yes, perfectly captured, in more ways than one.