New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji – Hiroshige, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji (Ōji Shōzoku Enoki Ōmisoka no Kitsunebi, 王子装束ゑの木大晦日の狐火) is the only supernatural scene in Utagawa Hiroshige's masterpiece, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Published in 1857, just a year before the artist's death, it has become one of the most beloved kitsune images in Japanese art.

The print illustrates a local legend from Ōji, then a village north of Edo, now part of Tokyo. Every New Year's Eve, the foxes of the whole Kantō region were said to gather beneath a great hackberry tree, the shōzoku enoki or "costume tree", to put on their finest attire before paying their respects at Ōji Inari Shrine, the head shrine of the fox messengers of the god Inari. Their ghostly flames, the kitsunebi, could be seen dancing across the fields, and local farmers counted them to predict the coming year's harvest.

Hiroshige turns the legend into pure poetry: white foxes glowing in the deep indigo night, tiny flames hovering by their heads, a bare winter tree against a sky full of stars, and in the distance, a long procession of foxfires still approaching across the fields. The tradition lives on today: every New Year's Eve, the people of Ōji hold a lantern-lit fox parade, their faces painted or masked as foxes.

High-definition art print of New Year's Eve Foxfires at Ōji

• ✓ Thick, matte, museum-quality paper
• ✓ Printed from ultra-high-definition images
• ✓ Restored colours, faithful to the original woodblock print
• ✓ Fast worldwide shipping in a protective cardboard tube

Our prints are available in a wide range of sizes, which you can choose from the drop-down menu. Don't hesitate to contact us if you need any advice.

Styling tip: its deep indigo night and glowing foxes make a magical piece for a bedroom, a hallway or a child's room, in a thin black or natural oak frame. It is also a beautiful gift for the New Year or the winter season. Discover more fox spirits in our yokai art prints collection, or more landscapes in our Japanese woodblock prints.

About Utagawa Hiroshige

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) is one of the greatest landscape artists in Japanese history. His series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo captured the beauty of Japan's roads, seasons and cities with unmatched sensitivity to weather and light. His work deeply influenced European artists: Vincent van Gogh even painted his own copies of two prints from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.