About This Print
This print is one of twenty-nine colored woodblock prints designed by Mizushima for the sketch-tour book (travel journal) Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō [supplement] Seto Inland Sea issued in March 1920 by the publishing house Kanao Bun'endō. It appears in the Inland Sea portion of the book and depicts the Yabakei (耶馬渓) gorge, a nationally designated Place of Scenic Beauty spanning the municipalities of Kusu and Nakatsu in Ōita Prefecture.1 If you enlarge the above image of the print (click on the image) you will see two travelers (one, perhaps, the artist), near the gorge's Aonodōmon 青の洞門 (Blue Tunnel).
Yabakei Gorge
image source: By Underbar dk - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45900339Aonodōmon (Blue Tunnel)
Source: website of ZEKKEI Japan https://zekkeijapan.com/spot/index/457/
"Set among a series of steep cliffs, Ao-no-domon (Blue Tunnel) was formerly known as Kusarido-no-Nansho. The old name means that it was a dangerous path that people could traverse only by clinging to a chain strung from one side to the other. It is said that after a monk named Zenkai witnessed a traveler and his horse fall to their deaths on this path, his compassionate spirit drove him to dig the tunnel. With only a hammer and chisel, it took him 30 years to finish. Although most of the tunnel has since been rebuilt, you can still see some of the benevolent monk's chisel marks on the wall."
Aonodōmon in Yabakei Gorge
The Sketch-Tour Book:
Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō [supplement] Inland Sea
Issued in March 1920 by the publisher Kanao Tanejirō, this work has been called the last book of the sketch-tour genre. [For more information on this genre see the section "Sketch-Tour Genre" under the biography of Nakazawa Hiromitsu (1874-1964).] Written and illustrated by Mizushima Nihofu the book contains twenty-nine color woodblock prints and forty-nine monochrome woodblock prints. In his article "Sketch-tour Books and Print of the Early Books Twentieth Century" Scott Johnson writes:
Nihou's [Nihofu's] travel journal text is further embellished with cartoons and lighthearted dialogue. Nihou was capable of creating powerful compositions on the post-card sized pages of this book. Perhaps because cartooning trained him to make the most of small areas, some of Nihou's woodcuts and line illustrations create muscular, nearly monumental effects by modest means. As a phenomenon of graphic art in book form, the sketch-tour book finished with Nihou's 1920 Tōkaidō gojus̄an-tsugi Fu Setonaikai fifteen years after Hiromitsu [Nakazawa Hiromitsu (1874-1964)] had started it with his pioneering Gojūsantsugi Suketchi.2
cover
click on image to enlarge
image source: Princeton University Library
1 Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yabakei
2 "Sketch-tour Books and Print of the Early Books Twentieth Century", appearing in Andon 37 , June 1991,
Print Details
| IHL Catalog | #2358 |
| Title | Yabakei 耶馬溪 [title as it appears on the right of the bottom margin] |
| Book | Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō [supplement] Seto Inland Sea [traveler's journal] Tōkaidō gojus̄an-tsugi Setonaikai [kikō] 東海道五十三次 瀬戸内海 [紀行] |
| Artist | Mizushima Nihofu (Nihou) (1884-1958) |
| Signature | not signed on print colophon - author: Mizushima Nihofu 著作者水島爾保布 |
| Seal of the artist |  |
| Date | March 15, 1920 |
| Edition | first and only edition |
| Publisher | 發行者 金尾種次郎 publisher Kanao Tanejirō 發兌元 金尾文淵堂 publishing house Kanao Bun'endō |
| Printer | Nishimura Kumakichi 西村熊吉 |
| Carver | unknown but possibly Ōkura Hambei 大倉半兵衛 |
| Impression | excellent |
| Colors | excellent |
| Condition | good - overall light toning; soiling in margins |
| Genre | shasei kikō (sketch-tour); zuroku 図録 (illustrated book) |
| Miscellaneous | |
| Format | |
| H x W Paper | 7 5/16 x 4 7/16 in. (18.6 x 11.3 cm) |
| H x W Image | 4 x 3 3/16 in. (10.2 x 8.1 cm) |
| Collections This Print | Collections holding the entire book: University of Southern California Library DS894.59.T632 M59 1920; Princeton University Library DS894.59.T632 M59 1920 [entire book is online]; Smithsonian Freer/Sackler Galleries FSC-GR-780.419.1-2 |
| Reference Literature |
8/10/2020 created
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