Mishima: Morning Mist (Mishima, asagiri), from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road (Tōkaidō gojÅ«san tsugi no uchi) c. 19th century

Editor: This woodblock print, "Mishima: Morning Mist" by Utagawa Hiroshige, part of the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road series, evokes a sense of the everyday grind. What’s striking is the contrast between the figures and the landscape. What do you see in this piece? Curator: I see a focus on the socio-economic realities of travel in Edo-period Japan. The print foregrounds the labor of those transporting the privileged, emphasizing the materiality of their existence – the sweat, the strain, the very real cost of movement across the landscape. How does this labor relate to the consumption of landscape imagery? Editor: It's interesting to consider how the beautiful landscape is, in a way, made possible by this labor. I hadn't thought about it that way. Curator: Exactly. It challenges the romantic view of travel, highlighting the means of production behind even seemingly simple images.