The British Museum brings Hokusai and Hiroshige back to Tokyo

For much of the 19th century, Japan was imagined through the images of Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige. Gigantic waves, snow-covered bridges, travelers along the Tōkaidō, sudden rain showers, and mountains suspended in mist contributed to the creation of a new concept of the modern landscape, destined to profoundly influence European painting between the 19th and 20th centuries. The exhibition, organized by the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, brings together a selection of ukiyo-e masterpieces from the British Museum, one of the institutions holding the most important collection of Japanese prints outside of Japan. The exhibition spans the Edo Period, connecting landscape, urbanization, travel, and popular culture. The exhibition naturally centers on the celebrated series dedicated to Mount Fuji and Japan's great transport routes. Hokusai's woodcuts transform the landscape into a dynamic construction of line, movement, and visual tension. In Hiroshige, however, nature often takes on a more atmospheric and silent quality, constructed through rain, fog, snow, and variations in light. The exhibition also emphasizes the role of ukiyo-e as an urban phenomenon linked to the economic and cultural growth of 19th-century Edo. Prints were not rare works destined for the elite, but images reproduced in large quantities and distributed among merchants, travelers, and city dwellers. In this sense, the project demonstrates how ukiyo-e anticipated some modern forms of mass visual culture. An important section of the exhibition also focuses on the international circulation of Japanese prints after the country's opening to the West in the second half of the 19th century. Many works entered European collections, influencing artists such as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, and Edgar Degas. The British Museum played a central role in the conservation and study of these works during the spread of Japonism in Europe.