YUSHIMA TENJIN · SHRINE OF THE GOD OF LEARNING · SPRING...

Artist: Utagawa Hiroshige II 二代歌川広重 (1826–1869) Title: Yushima Tenjin 湯島天神 (No. 8) Series: Edo meisho shijūhakkei 江戸名所四十八景 — Forty-eight Famous Views of Edo Publisher: Tsutaya Kichizō 蔦屋吉蔵 (Tsutakichi seal, right margin) Date: 1861 (Bunkyū 1 / Man'en 2) Format: Chūban tate-e, 25 × 17 cm Technique: Woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and colour on paper Signature: Hiroshige ga 廣重画, in a blue tanzaku cartouche at lower right CONDITION Good impression and condition, minor trimming on the margins. The paper is firm and subtle. Please check the images! ABOUT THE PRINT Yushima Tenjin is a shrine dedicated to Sugawara no Michizane (845–903). Michizane was a Heian-period scholar and statesman who was deified after his death as Tenjin, the god of learning and calligraphy. The shrine stood on a high bluff on the edge of the Hongō plateau, looking east over Shinobazu Pond towards the wooded hill of Ueno. That view, together with the shrine's plum trees, made it one of the city's best-known places to visit. Students and scholars came to pray for success in their studies. Nearby was the Shōheizaka academy, the shogunate's official Confucian school, which helped make the Yushima area the centre of learning in Edo. The shrine was also a centre of popular life. It was one of the "three tomi of Edo" (Edo no santomi), the three temple and shrine grounds licensed to hold the large public lotteries known as tomikuji. Teahouses and stalls lined the approaches. Hiroshige II included the site in the first group of sheets in this series, alongside its neighbours Kanda Myōjin, Shinobazu Pond and Ueno. ABOUT THE SERIES Edo Meisho Shijūhakkei is a complete set of forty-eight chūban sheets, each pairing one of Edo's famous places with the seasonal feature it was known for; the publisher's seal and the censor's seal alternate from sheet to sheet, and two printing dates are documented — the twelfth month of Man'en 1 (1860) and the first month of Bunkyū 1 (1861). The publisher was Kōeidō, Tsutaya Kichizō. Hiroshige II — born Suzuki Chinpei, pupil and adopted son-in-law of the first Hiroshige — inherited the name in 1858 and, with it, the obligation to keep the studio's famous-places line running. This set belongs to the very last years of Edo: within seven years of its publication the city had a new name and a new government, and the pleasure districts it records were about to change beyond recognition. The chūban format made them affordable souvenirs at the time, which is precisely why they now read as an unusually candid record of where townspeople actually went.

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