I recall collecting matchbooks when I was growing up in Japan the son of missionary parents. These matchbooks or boxes depicted Utagawa Hiroshige paintings of Tokaido, the route between Tokyo and Kyoto. No longer can I recall how many of these matchbooks I gathered. It is fascinating the influence this Japanese painter had on Western painters…

Exhibit highlights Hiroshige's influence
Associated Press via Boston Globe
By Carl Hartman

The beauty and humor that he pictured on the road between two great cities brought fame to Utagawa Hiroshige, one of the greatest Japanese artists of the 1800s, and influenced French and American painters from Paul Cezanne to James McNeill Whistler.

The Phillips Collection has put together a rare exhibit of all "53 Stages on the Tokaido" Road, first published in 1863-4 as an accordion-like album, but now widely scattered. There are in fact 55 woodblock prints in the set: an additional one from Edo (Tokyo), the start of the trip, and another at the terminus, Kyoto, nearly 300 miles to the southwest.

Curator Susan Behrends Frank has matched the Hiroshiges with 41 European and American pictures to show how he changed Western ways of looking at things. "East Meets West" will be on view through Sept. 4.

View some Utagawa Hiroshige art prints.