Famous Views of the Eastern Capital / All works by Utagawa Hiroshige I 歌川広重 (Japanese, 1797–1858)

The city that we know today as Tokyo was officially established in 1603 (on the site of an earlier castle town). By the early 19th century, when these prints were made, it was one of several mega-cities around the world. City life, in all its ephemeral glory, was chronicled in the inexpensive, mass-produced color woodblock prints designed by artists of the school called ukiyo-e, literally “pictures of the floating world.”  / by MFA Boston