- Museum number
- 1937,0710,0.124
- Title
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Object: Soshu Nakahara 相州仲原 (Nakahara in Sagami Province)
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Series: Fugaku sanjurokkei 冨嶽三十六景 (Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji)
- Description
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Colour woodblock oban print. Local people and travellers at bridge over small river: pedlar with load and furled umbrella, mendicant pilgrim with ringed staff and portable shrine, farmer with bird rattle, woman loaded with baby, hoe, spade and bundles and boxes in shallow wooden basin on head on bridge, fisherman with scoop-basket standing in shallows, two pilgrims approaching bridge; roadside stone statue of deity Fudo; bird-scarers strung between poles on strings; Mt Fuji in background. 1 of 2 impressions. Inscribed, signed, sealed and marked.
- Production date
- 1833 (probably 1833 (Keyes and Morse 2015))
- Dimensions
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Height: 25.50 centimetres
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Width: 37.70 centimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
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Clark 2001
Nakahara has been identified as a district of present-day Hiratsuka, where pilgrims to Mt Oyama would turn off the Tokaido Highway and begin their journey along the Oyama Road (UT 1975, no. 40). Oyama was an ancient holy site with a Fudo Hall halfway up the mountain and a shrine at the summit where a large rock, the Oyama Sekison, was worshipped. For country people it was the rain-inducing power of the deities of Oyama that was the main reason for their pilgrimages; for the city-dwellers of Edo it was on the return from climbing Mt Fuji, or part of a circuit that also took in visits to Enoshima and Kamakura (cat. 38; 'Edo-gaku jiten', 1984, s.v. 'Oyama-mode').
The slopes of Oyama were only open to pilgrims between the 27th day of the sixth month and the 17th day of the seventh month, the beginning of autumn. The scene here at the bridge over a small river is populated with both local people and travellers (anti-clockwise from the right): a pedlar with load and furled umbrella, a mendicant pilgrim ('rokujuroku-bu') with ringed staff and portable shrine, a farmer with a bird rattle - perhaps to protect boxes of seed - followed on the bridge by a woman loaded down with baby, hoe, spade and bundles and boxes in a shallow wooden basin on her head, a fisherman with scoop-basket standing in the shallows and two more pilgrims approaching the bridge. Turned away from us behind them is a roadside stone statue of the deity Fudo, surely marking the road to Oyama. Bird-scarers are strung between poles on strings that form their own nonchalant Fuji shape. The deep blue cloud to the left of Fuji has been printed using the technique of 'ita-bokashi' (block gradation), where the edges of the carved areas are abraded so as to appear slightly ragged when printed.
A second impression in the British Museum collection (1907.3-22.05) omits the red seals of the censor and publisher.
References:
'Ukiyo-e taikei, vol. 13: Fugaku sanju-rokkei', Tokyo, Shueisha, 1975 (text by Kobayashi Tadashi), no. 40.
'Meihin soroimono ukiyo-e, vol. 8: Hokusai I', Tokyo, Gyosei, 1991 (text by Nagata Seiji), no. 26.
Julia White, 'et al.', 'Hokusai and Hiroshige: Great Japanese Prints from the James A. Michener Collection, Honolulu Academy of Arts', Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1998 (commentaries by Yoko Woodson), no. 45.
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Clark 2017
Nakahara was the first village on the road to Ōyama that branched off the Tōkaidō highway at Hiratsuka. The men carrying portable shrines on their backs are pilgrims to the Shingon sect temple on Mt Ōyama, which was only open to practitioners for a brief period in late summer. Beneath the bridge a man fishes for river shellfish. The roadside statue seems to be a replica of the stone Fudō that was worshipped at the mountain temple. The pack at the right is marked with the emblem of the publisher, Nishimuraya.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
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Exhibited:
2001, 11 May-29 Jul, BM Japanese Galleries, '100 Views of Mount Fuji'
2017 6 Oct - 19 Nov, Osaka, Abeno Harukas Art Museum
2022 16 Apr-12 Jun, Tokyo, Suntory Museum of Art, Hokusai from the British Museum
- Acquisition date
- 1937
- Department
- Asia
- Registration number
- 1937,0710,0.124
