Title : Distant View of Mount Akiba at Kakegawa (Station #27)

Artist : Utagawa Hiroshige

Date : c. 1833 - 1834

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Source : Honolulu Museum of Art
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Description : Station twenty-seven on the Tökaidö, Kakegawa is located in what is currently Shizuoka Prefecture. Here Hiroshige has created a playful scene in which a kite flies beyond the borders of the picture, infusing the image with a sense of energetic movement. Framing devices such as the black outline around each of Hiroshige’s Tökaidö prints published by Hoeidö were originally adopted from the Western practice of framing a composition, and were an innovation introduced to Japanese art largely through woodblock prints. In this case, it also indicates that the prints were intended to be released as a bound album once the series was complete, and customers that bought the prints one by one as they were issued could also have had the set bound into an album by the publisher once they had all fifty-five prints. ("The Tôkaidô Road: Connecting Japan" exhibition Nov/26/2009-Jan/24/2010)

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