12. Ueno Yamashita 1857

Utagawa Hiroshige crafted this woodblock print, titled "Ueno Yamashita," amidst the sociopolitical transformations of 19th-century Japan. The image depicts a bustling scene near Ueno, capturing the everyday lives of people from various social strata. As the city of Edo, now Tokyo, expanded, so too did the opportunity for a rising merchant class to flourish. Here we see a restaurant scene, but Hiroshige suggests so much more, a kind of social mobility as represented in an openness of public spaces and the access to consumer culture for a wider segment of the population. The use of the woodblock as a medium suggests the development of alternative narratives outside of traditionally valued art forms. The scene is less about the individual and more about a collective experience, in which gender, class, and the pursuit of leisure are visually interwoven. It captures a fleeting, yet resonant moment in time.