Ukiyo-e Illustration A Visual Journey Through Japan's Iconic Landscapes - Hiroshige's Night View of Sarukawa-machi

"Night View of the Sarukawa-machi District" (original title: 猿わか町よるの景) is a print by the Japanese painter and illustrator Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) produced in September 1856.

For this night scene, Hiroshige adopted a more Western perspective to suggest the depth of the depicted street, with the vanishing point on the left and slightly inclined relative to the center of the image. The street, lined mainly with puppet, kabuki, and bunraku theaters, is bustling with passersby whose shadows are clearly visible in the moonlight. After the fire of 1841, the theaters were grouped together in the Saruwaka-machi district. Official establishments are identifiable by their yagura, the structure that tops some of the roofs. At this late hour, most of the theaters are closed, with the notable exception of the Morita Theater, from which a glow escapes to the left, which had just reopened after a fire in [year missing]. From 1830 onwards, Hiroshige began to explore the effects of light and the atmosphere of nighttime in his works, as demonstrated in his series Improvised Silhouettes (Sokkyo kageboshi zukushi) and his triptych Moonlight over Kanazawa from the series Snow and Moon.