Focus on this artwork and analyze the Format and Design.
The series uses a vertical (立て絵, tate-e) layout for each of the prints. The size was the vertical ôban: 35.6 x 24.8 cm (14 x 9 3/4 in.)
This was the first time such a format had been used in a major Japanese landscape print series. A likely reason for Hiroshige's choice was that rather than travel to the actual locations, he based many of his designs on Meisho Zue guidebooks which used a vertical, rather than horizontal, format. It is also speculated by scholars that a vertical format would have been a strong marketing ploy at the time and a better binding of such a large number of prints.The topics for the designs were famous places seen from the vantage point of a local. There is one print for each of the 68 provinces that existed at the time of the series. The print designs document a world that was about to change: A few months after the first prints were published the Black Ships that contributed to the opening of Japan arrived and just over a decade after the completion of the series, in 1872, the Meiji Restoration would rewrite the provincial boundaries that had existed since 824AD.
In addition to the prints of the provinces, there is a single print of Asakusa Fair in Edo, the capital of Japan at the time. This print would be a harbinger of Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo the start of which overlapped with the final prints of this series.
Edo Hiroshige Black Ships Meiji Restoration One Hundred Famous Views of Edo