Tokyo Then and Now Blur Together in Hiroshige-Inspired Photo Project
The revived “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo”
One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, created by Utagawa Hiroshige, captures the changing landscape as Edo transitioned into Tokyo, richly depicting the atmosphere of the four seasons. Although titled “One Hundred Views,” the series ultimately expanded to 119 scenes plus one index after Hiroshige’s death, including works by his successor Hiroshige II, making it a comprehensive masterpiece of landscape ukiyo-e. It is also globally renowned and said to have influenced Western painters such as Vincent van Gogh.
The 119 scenes cover locations from central Edo to its outskirts, including places such as “Kōnodai” (present-day Ichikawa), “Inokashira Pond” (Mitaka), “Senzoku Pond” (Ota), and “Shin-Juku” (now Niijuku, Katsushika), depicting a wide variety of seasonal and time-of-day scenes.
In late March, floating photographer Kisenya published Revisiting Hiroshige’s “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo”(Tetsujinsha), which overlays modern Tokyo landscapes onto Hiroshige’s works to express the connection between Edo’s past and present-day Tokyo. The project involved visiting all 119 locations, identifying them as precisely as possible, and compositing or editing contemporary photographs to match the original compositions as closely as possible.
Kisenya’s fascination with “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” began in 2013, when he photographed wisteria flowers over the drum bridge at Kameido Tenjin Shrine. When he casually composited part of Hiroshige’s artwork onto the image, it unexpectedly gained attention on social media. This led him to deeper research into the series and a growing fascination with the works.
As he writes in the book’s introduction:
“Each time I visited various locations and continued photographing, I felt that Edo’s townscape and people’s daily lives were connected to present-day Tokyo. When I looked through the viewfinder, it felt as if I could see the people of Edo, and I naturally began to think of compositions to overlay onto the photographs.”
He began using the title floating photographer in 2017 after his first solo exhibition. In 2018, he started a serialized project on the website Nippon.com, and by 2022 he had completed the entire set of 119 scenes plus the English-language index.
Hiroshige’s style is characterized by bold compositions with extreme foreground and background contrasts, as well as bird’s-eye and elevated perspectives, making it extremely difficult to reproduce the same image even with modern photography. In addition, over the past 170 years, many landscapes have changed drastically — rivers and seas have been reclaimed, and highways now block once-visible views.
Even so, there remains a shared something that transcends time between the two works. For example, in “Nihonbashi Tōriitchō Ryakuzu,” a group of dancers holding large umbrellas appears almost seamlessly merged with modern women holding parasols in front of Coredo Nihonbashi in midsummer. In “Kasumigaseki,” even though the photo was actually taken on nearby Shiomi-zaka, the atmosp here feels the same.
The book offers a renewed sense that the everyday lives of Edo’s people are somehow still connected to us today.
