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Paper short abstract

This paper argues that Hiroshige III’s 1876 series "Nihon chishi ryakuzu" employs pictorial quotation not only from landscape prints and meisho zue but also from state-sponsored educational geography, revealing institutional mediation in Meiji print landscapes.

Paper long abstract

In March 1876, the landscape print series "Sketches of Geographic Locations in Japan" (Nihon chishi ryakuzu 日本地誌略図) was issued. Designed by Utagawa Hiroshige III (1842-1894), the series comprises seventy-four horizontal chūban prints and a title page, marking Hiroshige III’s largest serialized project to date and his first sustained engagement with landscapes spanning multiple regions of Japan.

Depicting Japanese landscapes in the late nineteenth century required artists to mobilize a shared repertoire of compositional devices and visual conventions. In this series, Hiroshige III relied extensively on pictorial quotation (hongadori 本画取り), referencing established designs associated with the Hiroshige lineage—most notably Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) and Utagawa Hiroshige II (1826-1869)—as well as black-and-white line illustrations from woodblock-printed travel guidebooks (meisho zue 名所図会). These sources offered authoritative visual templates for representing notable sites and regional topographies, allowing Hiroshige III to situate his work within a recognizable landscape tradition.

This paper argues, however, that identifying pictorial quotation solely within the domain of artistic precedent is insufficient to account for the composite nature of this series. Building on Julie Nelson Davis’s influential reconceptualization of prints as products of artistic and commercial collaboration, I propose expanding the analytical frame to include institutional networks as formative agents in landscape design. Specifically, I argue that the four-volume illustrated book "Outline of Geographic Locations in Japan" (Nihon chishi ryaku 日本地誌略, 1874)—edited by the Tokyo Teacher Training School and published by the Ministry of Education—served as a canonical visual and textual source for "Nihon chishi ryakuzu".

Through close analysis of shared visual motifs, modes of geographic classification, and representational strategies, this paper demonstrates how Hiroshige III’s landscapes operate as pictorial quotations not only of earlier print and meisho zue models but also of state-sponsored educational media. By foregrounding institutional mediation alongside artistic lineage and commercial publishing, the paper reframes late nineteenth-century print landscapes as composite images that negotiated cultural authority, pedagogical knowledge, and emerging conceptions of national space.