Vehicles on the Streets of Tokyo1870
Rickshaws, horse-drawn carriages and even early bicycles crowd a Tokyo street in this triptych of 1870, only two years after the city, formerly Edo, had become the imperial capital. More about this work
About this work
Rickshaws, horse-drawn carriages and even early bicycles crowd a Tokyo street in this triptych of 1870, only two years after the city, formerly Edo, had become the imperial capital. Utagawa Yoshitora was one of several print designers who recorded the dizzying arrival of Western technology and fashion in Meiji Japan, and the public eagerly collected these images of the new. The rickshaw itself had only just been invented, and the strong, bright imported dyes then coming into use give such prints their vivid, modern look.
Written by Ochre Editions.
How it was made
- Colour woodblock print
- In Japan these were a team effort. The artist drew the design, a carver cut it into cherry-wood blocks, one block for each colour, and a printer brushed on the pigment and rubbed each sheet by hand. Full-colour prints of this kind were called nishiki-e, “brocade pictures”, from the 1760s on.
- Triptych
- Three sheets designed to sit side by side and read as one wide picture.
Ukiyo-e
Japanese woodblock prints of the floating world: actors, courtesans, landscapes and the sea.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Met has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- JP3378
- Credit
- Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Type
- Prints
- Department
- Asian Art
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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