Utagawa Hiroshige II (二代目 歌川広重)
Utagawa Hiroshige II (二代目 歌川広重; 1826 - September 17, 1869) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the late Edo period trained in the Utagawa School. Aside from his birth name (Suzuki Chinpei 鈴木鎮平), details on his early life are scant, but at some point in adolescence or early adulthood he began apprenticing under Hiroshige (1797 - 1858) and was strongly influenced by his style. During the life of his master, Hiroshige II used a variety of pennames, but after his master's death in 1858 he began to use Hiroshige. As the most successful of his master's small group of students, Hiroshige II was groomed to be his master's heir in all matters and even married his daughter, Otatsu. However, the marriage was unhappy and ended after several years, with Otatsu remarrying another of her father's students, Shigemasa (c. 1842 - 1894), who began to use the Hiroshige name, eventually adopting the name Hiroshige III to differentiate himself from Hiroshige II.
AKA: 二代目 歌川広重
Yokohama emerging as an international port.
橫濱海岸圖會 / [View of the Coast at Yokohama.]
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An early 1860 ukiyo-e triptych by Utagawa Hiroshige II, capturing Yokohama, Japan, as it emerged as an international treaty port. Published just months after Yokohama opened to foreign trade in 1859, this panoramic view presents a city poised between the insular world of Tokugawa Japan and the profound transformations that would soon accompany sustained contact with the West. Among the earliest printed views of Yokohama, it offers a Japanese vision of the nascent port: cherry blossoms, temples, teahouses, theaters, and the notorious Miyozaki pleasure quarter occupy a landscape only beginning to accommodate global commerce. Most evocative is a woman seated in a waterfront teahouse, telescope in hand, gazing across the harbor - an image that seems to encapsulate Japan itself, watching with fascination as an unfamiliar world approaches. (more details)