Hiroshige at Ota Museum

The Ota Memorial Museum of Art in Tokyo is showing the first half of its 2026 Hiroshige exhibition through May 10, with fox-fire folklore among the best-known images in the run. (ukiyoe-ota-muse.jp) The show, “Utagawa Hiroshige ‘One Hundred Famous Views of Edo’ — His Final Challenge,” opened April 15 and runs through June 14 in two parts. The first term ends May 10, the second runs May 15 to June 14, and the museum says all works change between terms. (ukiyoe-ota-muse.jp) The museum says it is presenting the complete set of 120 works from the series: 118 designs by Hiroshige, one by Hiroshige II, and the series index. Adult admission is ¥1,200, with the museum open from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and last admission at 5:00 p.m. (ukiyoe-ota-muse.jp) Ukiyo-e are Japanese “pictures of the floating world,” most often associated with woodblock prints made from the 17th through 19th centuries. The Ota Memorial Museum in Harajuku specializes in the form and rotates small thematic displays from a collection of about 15,000 pieces. (gotokyo.org) Hiroshige made “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” in the last three years of his life, when he was 60 to 62, and the museum calls it the culminating achievement of his career. It says the series pushed landscape prints toward bolder compositions, with oversized foreground motifs and unusual viewpoints. (ukiyoe-ota-muse.jp) One print in the series, “New Year’s Eve Fox Fires at the Changing Tree,” turns from city scenery to folklore. The Art Institute of Chicago says the image draws on a tradition that foxes gathered near Oji Inari Shrine on New Year’s Eve and that farmers read the fox-fire as a sign for the coming year’s harvest. (artic.edu) That mix of named places, seasonal custom, and popular belief helps explain why the series still anchors museum programming in Tokyo. The Ota museum says Hiroshige used the set to introduce “new” famous places in Edo while folding in elements of contemporary life and popular culture. (ukiyoe-ota-muse.jp) For visitors in Tokyo over the next two weeks, the immediate deadline is May 10. After that, the same exhibition remains on view, but with a new rotation of works for its second term. (ukiyoe-ota-muse.jp)