Haft, Alfred. Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road. — London: The British Museum Press, 2025

Title-page: Hiroshige | artist of the | open road | Alfred Haft ||
Place/Date: London / 2025.
Publisher: The British Museum Press (A division of The British Museum Company Ltd).
Printer: OGM, Italy.
Language: English.
ISBN: 978-0-295-75409-3.
Description: Hardcover, blue endpapers; 287 × 256 mm. — Pp. [1–10] 11–224. — Colour illustrations throughout (chiefly after Hiroshige). Designed by Kathrin Jacobsen; colour reproduction by Alitimage. Printed on natural, renewable, and recyclable paper.
Inprint: © 2025 The Trustees of the British Museum. Published in the United States by University of Washington Press. Library of Congress Control Number 2025930882.
Contents: Director’s foreword 6 · Introduction 10 · 1. Hiroshige’s road to fame 26 · 2. Picturing the open road 44 · 3. Nature all around 98 · 4. Catching a summer breeze 138 · 5. Onwards from Hiroshige 178 · Evolving impressions (Capucine Korenberg) 208 · References 216 · Acknowledgements 218 · Credits 219 · Note to the reader, Concordance and Contributor biographies 220 · Index 221.
Colophon note: Cover illustration Evening View of the Eight Scenic Spots of Kanazawa in Musashi Province (1857); frontispiece Seba (late 1830s); inner illustration The Plum Garden at Kameido (1857) — all by Utagawa Hiroshige, from the collections of Alan Medaugh and the British Museum.
Scholarly note: In the Reference section of the book by Okuda Atsuko [奥田敦子] Hiroshige’s Fan Prints: Unknown Ukiyo-e (Hiroshige no uchiwa-e, 広重の団扇絵 知られざる浮世絵). — Kyoto: Unsōdō, 2010, the author’s name is erroneously cited as Okuda Toshiko [奥田俊子].

Contributors:

Korenberg, Capucine (British)
Haft, Alfred (American)

The chapter “Catching a summer breeze” explores the flourishing market for ukiyo-e woodblock prints in Edo, especially the seasonal demand for uchiwa-e—prints mounted on fixed, oval fan frames and used for cooling during summer festivals and strolls. From the late 1700s through the Edo period, publishers known as uchiwa-toya produced these ephemeral objects in large numbers. They were affordable, disposable, and visually engaging, often displaying elegant compositions on the front while concealing the fan’s ribs on the reverse. Initially sold by street vendors, uchiwa became a fashionable accessory by the mid-nineteenth century.

The production required both artistic and technical skill: more than seventy bamboo ribs were cut and spaced precisely, and the fan format demanded compositional innovation, as part of the image was lost at the base. Hiroshige’s mastery of the format made him its most prolific practitioner—he designed nearly 600 uchiwa, perhaps over 1,000, over two decades. His designs often depicted celebrated scenic sites (meisho), atmospheric summer evenings (yūsuzumi), and graceful figures amid cooling breezes.

Hiroshige exploited the fan’s semicircular form to achieve compositional balance and serenity, employing subtle gradations (bokashi) and blue tones (aizuri-e) derived from Prussian blue pigment. Many designs echoed the tactile and sensory pleasures of summer—wind, water, and shade—thus integrating his landscape vision with the intimate experience of daily life. In their union of technical precision, elegance, and transience, Hiroshige’s uchiwa-e bridged fine art and practical object, capturing the refined aesthetics of Edo’s seasonal imagination.