Hokusai vs. Hiroshige — Breathtaking Views! The Ultimate Showdown

This is a special ukiyo-e exhibition bringing together two of Japan's most celebrated woodblock print masters – Hokusai and Hiroshige. The exhibition features approximately 100 works drawn from the museum's own collection. 

Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige are widely regarded as the greatest landscape printmakers of the ukiyo-e tradition, and both enjoy significant international recognition. Hokusai holds the distinction of being the only Japanese artist named to LIFE magazine's list of the 100 Most Important People of the Last 1,000 Years. Hiroshige's work, meanwhile, famously inspired Vincent van Gogh, who made copies of his prints. Despite working in the same era, the two artists brought markedly different sensibilities to landscape. Hokusai, approximately 40 years Hiroshige's senior, was drawn to bold, architecturally precise compositions. His landmark series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji — one of the centrepieces of this exhibition — showcases his extraordinary range, placing the mountain as a towering presence filling the entire frame in some prints, and as a small, distant silhouette in others. Hiroshige, by contrast, excelled at capturing the human dimension of travel: his Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido (Hoeido Edition), the exhibition's other centrepiece, is populated with travelers, townspeople, and the rhythms of life along the highway, rendered with warmth and lyrical atmosphere. The two series were produced concurrently. While Hokusai was at work on his Thirty-Six Views, Hiroshige published the Fifty-Three Stations with the Hoeido publishing house, earning him widespread fame. The exhibition uses this historical parallel as its central dramatic conceit, presenting both bodies of work side by side and inviting visitors to draw their own comparisons.

The exhibition is organised to mark the 70th anniversary of Izumi City's establishment.

Public Programs

The museum has scheduled a range of accompanying programs throughout the exhibition period.

Curator-led gallery talks will be held on April 25 and May 17 at 13:00 in the exhibition galleries. Attendance is free with museum admission; visitors should gather in the New Wing Lounge.

For those wishing a more hands-on experience, relief printing workshops using resin plates will run on selected weekends: April 18–19, May 4–5, May 16–17, and June 6–7. Each session runs approximately one hour, beginning at 11:00 and 15:00. Capacity is limited to 10 participants per session, with same-day registration at the museum. The workshop fee is ¥200, in addition to museum admission.

Over the Golden Week holiday period, the museum is offering a free family concert series, From 0 Years Old and Up, on May 3, 4, and 5. Two sessions are held each day — at 11:00 and 14:00 — in the museum's Ei Hall. No advance booking is required, though entry may be subject to capacity limits on busy days.

Museum concerts are scheduled on 18 dates across the exhibition run, from April 12 through June 14, held in Kuboso Ei Hall. Performances begin at 14:00. Admission is free for visitors who have paid museum entry; a numbered ticket, distributed from 13:30 at the entrance upon presentation of an admission receipt, is required. Capacity is limited to 120 and seating is unreserved. Visitors are encouraged to contact the museum directly for program details.