The Plum Garden at Kameido Shrine

This colour woodcut of 1857 belongs to Hiroshige’s series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo and is held by the Rijksmuseum. The museum records Uoya Eikichi as its publisher. Instead of laying out the whole garden before us, Hiroshige first places a huge trunk across our field of vision, then reveals the grounds and visitors through gaps between the branches.

The change of scale between the near tree and the distant figures is abrupt. The thick trunk rises diagonally, with slender branches bending away on either side. Follow those dark limbs first, then find the small people beside the fence: two layers of space emerge on the flat sheet. White blossoms are scattered at different distances, helping us trace the branches and offering bright places for the eye to rest.

The red sky grows paler toward the middle, while blue-green tones quieten the ground below. Between these two areas of colour, the dark outline of the tree runs through the whole image. There is no need to identify every flower at once. Look first at how the trunk interrupts the sky, then at the spaces enclosed by the branches. The composition draws strength both from the tree and from the areas it leaves open.