print
- Museum number
- 1915,0823,0.738
- Title
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Object: Yui Satta-mine Oya-shirazu 由井 薩多嶺 親しらず (Yui - Satta Peak and Oya-shirazu)
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Series: Gojūsan-tsugi meisho zue 五十三次名所図会 (Illustrated Guide to Famous Places along the Fifty-three Stations)
- Description
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Colour woodblock oban print. Travellers ascending cliff-side road; ships in bay; Mt Fuji in distance. No.17 in 'Upright Tokaido' (also called 'Vertical Tokaido') series.
- Production date
- 1855 (Seventh month)
- Dimensions
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Height: 35.80 centimetres
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Width: 24.30 centimetres
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- Curator's comments
- Clark 2001
Oya-shirazu (literally, 'forgetting a parent') is the name used to describe a treacherous coastline beaten by waves where there is not even time for 'a child to look back for a parent, or a parent to look back for a child'. Until the construction of the Satta Pass by the Shogunate in 1655, the route of the Tokaido had been along the rocky shoreline at low tide, here seen partially covered by the sea. At other times the waves could certainly be more dramatic (cat. 86). A comparison with cat. 76, the view of the same location from the 'Hoeido' Tokaido series of more than twenty years before is instructive. The elements of the scene are now more smoothly integrated but this results in an undeniable lack of focus or drama. Instead of three tiny travellers perched at a vertiginous vantage-point at the top of the cliff in the earlier version, this composition is much more explanatory, taking us up the long slope that leads to the high pass. The figures are of the stereotypical 'stick-leg' kind (it almost looks as if they are on stilts) of Hiroshige's later years. Compensatory interest is created by the use of unusual, even unnatural colours - the yellow and black sky here, the pink and purple sky in the previous (cat. 78). The line of the right slope of Mt Fuji has been deliberately fragmented to suggest that it is glimpsed through the trees.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2001, 11 May-29 Jul, BM Japanese Galleries, '100 Views of Mount Fuji'
- Acquisition date
- 23 Aug 1915 (transfer date)
- Acquisition notes
- Transferred from Department of Oriental Manuscripts (August 1915)
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1915,0823,0.738
