Hiroshige's Kameido Tenjin Shrine: The Red Bridge and the Wisteria
A steep red bridge and wisteria in bloom: the story of Hiroshige's Kameido Tenjin Shrine, from his last great series, and how prints like it reached Van Gogh and Monet.
A Bridge, a Shrine, and Wisteria in Bloom
This print shows a steep red bridge arching over water, with purple wisteria hanging above it in bloom. It is one of Utagawa Hiroshige's best-loved views of old Edo, the city we now call Tokyo.
The bridge is the taiko-bashi, or "drum bridge," at Kameido Tenjin Shrine. To anyone living in Edo, that bridge meant one thing: you were at Kameido, and the wisteria was out.
Hiroshige's Last Great Work
The print comes from a series called One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Hiroshige made it late in life, between 1856 and 1858, and it was his last big project. He died in 1858, and a few of the designs were finished by his student, who took the name Hiroshige II.
Despite the title, the series is not exactly one hundred prints. It runs to about 118 views. "One hundred" was a round, poetic number, not a count. Together they are seen as one of his finest achievements, and one of the great works of ukiyo-e.
What You Are Looking At
The shrine is Kameido Tenjin. It honors Sugawara no Michizane, a scholar from more than a thousand years ago who was later worshipped as Tenjin, the god of learning. Students still visit shrines like this to pray before exams.
Two things made Kameido famous: its steep drum bridges and its wisteria. Every spring the flowers came into bloom, and people crossed the city to see them. Hiroshige puts you right at the foot of the bridge, looking up, with the wisteria overhead. The tall, upright shape of the print makes the bridge feel even steeper.
The Print That Reached Europe
This series did something few prints do: it helped change Western art.
Thirty years after it was made, the painter Vincent van Gogh copied two prints from it in oil. One of them showed a famous plum garden in Kameido, the same part of the city as this shrine. You can see both of Van Gogh's copies today at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Claude Monet collected Japanese prints too. He built a Japanese-style bridge in his garden at Giverny, and later added a wisteria trellis over it, the same bridge-and-wisteria pairing you see here. Prints like this one are part of why Europe fell for Japanese art.
The Print We Have
The print we carry is a Showa-era reproduction of Hiroshige's design. It is a real woodblock print, made by hand, not a machine copy. It is pre-owned and shows some age, which is normal for a print like this. The product page has photos of the exact condition.
You can see more Hiroshige prints here. If you want to know how reproductions like this compare to originals, read our guide on original, reprint, or reproduction.
Sources
Brooklyn Museum — Inside Kameido Tenjin Shrine, part of the complete One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art — In the Kameido Tenjin Shrine Compound.
Art Institute of Chicago — Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.
Van Gogh Museum — a Hiroshige print Van Gogh studied.
John Fiorillo, Viewing Japanese Prints — on Hiroshige.