The Floating World

For two centuries the print shops of Edo sold the world back to the people who lived in it: the road to Kyoto, the first snow on a shrine gate, ferrymen leaning into a grey river. The Floating World brings together thirty woodblock prints of travellers and weather, lent by a private collection in Kent and shown together for the first time.

Snow, mist and the long road

Most of the prints come from series made for travellers and for people who could only dream of travelling. Hiroshige gives us the famous stations of the Tōkaidō road in every kind of weather, and often the weather is the real subject: a village under evening snow, a bridge lost in morning mist.

Look closely at the edges. Each colour was cut on its own block and printed by hand, and small shifts in the register, the faded blues and the soft grain of the paper tell you how each sheet was made and used.

The prints are hung low in the Print Room, as they were meant to be seen: close, and one at a time.