Hazy Moonlight at Ushimachi, Takanawa 高輪牛町朧月景

When Japan’s first railway lined opened between Shimbashi, Tokyo, and Yokohama, the steam locomotive, a great novelty, became the subject of many ukiyo-e prints. This polychrome print, which depicts the Takanawa coast between today’s JR Tamachi and Shinagawa stations in Tokyo, is one example. At the time, polychrome railway prints depicting Shimbashi Station, with its Western-style architecture, were the most striking. Other popular topics were the Shinagawa Yatsuyama Bridge, an overpass over the tracks, and railway tracks along the seashore, as in this print. Each depicted places that had changed greatly due to the opening of the railway. These novel sights attracted great interest and spurred ukiyo-e artists to design many prints about them. Kobayashi Kiyochika (1847-1915), who designed this print, was a former retainer of the shogunate who was active as an ukiyo-e artist from about 1876 on. His images of famous places in Tokyo were sold as “light ray pictures,” a reference to his Western-style prints, created with a new awareness of light and shadow. They gained immediate popularity. In this example, he used innovative methods to depict the flames coming out of the smokestack and the clouds in the sky. The engines running on that first railway were made in Britain. For some reason, however, Kiyochika depicted an American-made engine, with a cowcatcher in front, instead of the type of engine actually in use. His error probably arose from referring to an American lithograph of a steam engine in designing this print. Kiyochika probably studied Western paintings fervently in order to establish his own unique style amidst the many polychrome prints them being produced.