Kanbara c. 1840 - 1842

Utagawa Hiroshige made this woodblock print, titled "Kanbara", in Japan in the 1830s. Prints like this were made using a division of labor. Hiroshige would have made the initial drawing, and then a block cutter would painstakingly carve away the wood, leaving only the lines of the design. Finally, a printer would apply ink to the block and transfer the image to paper, repeating the process for each color. The Tokaido Road, depicted here, was the main route between Kyoto and Edo, the seat of the ruling Shogun. Hiroshige made many prints of this area, celebrating the beauty of the Japanese landscape. They met an eager market. By the time Hiroshige created this print, Japan was an economy deeply structured around commodity exchange. The artist was not just making images, but also participating in a complex system of production and distribution. The beauty of the final product belies the intense, skilled labor required to produce it.