About the artist
Yoshimori Utagawa (also known as Yoshimori Taguchi) was a 19th century woodblock print artist. A student of Kuniyoshi Utagawa, Yoshimori is known for his Yokohama-e, prints that depict the booming port town of Yokohama and its influx of foreign people and things. In addition, Yoshimori contributed to two large Tokaido-themed series during his career. The Tokaido Road, the eastern sea road connecting Edo (or by the Meiji period, Tokyo) to Kyoto, captured the imagination of artists since the early 19th century, and Yoshimori was no exception. In 1863, he contributed designs to The Scenic Places on the Tokaido. Printed on the occasion of Shogun Iemochi Tokugawa’s trip to Kyoto, the series captured all the pomp and circumstance of the procession while the shogunate crumbled. In 1872, Yoshimori was one of five artists who worked on the series Calligraphy and Pictures along the Fifty-three Stations. Deeply layered in poetic allusion, landscape, and glimpses of imported technologies, the series considers a familiar subject in modernizing world.