About This Print

Source:Information on this station taken from the wikipedia article "53 Stations of the Tōkaidō."
The 43rd print in this series of 58¹ prints titled Fifty-three Stations of the Tôkaidô Road issued in October 1865, picturing the Shichiri Ferry at Kuwana, the forty-second and second largest of the stations along the Tōkaidō.  It is located in the present-day city of Kuwana, in Mie Prefecture, Japan.

The Shichiri ("seven league") ferry traveled between Atsusa and Kuwana, a distance of seven leagues or twenty-one miles.

This print is a chirimen-e or crêped print.  For the crêped version of the print, the same woodblocks are used as for the paper edition, but by the time the process is finished, the piece has shrunken considerably.  See chirimen-e in the Glossary for additional information on this type of print.

The non-crêped print measures 9 1/2 x 7 1/4 in. and the crêped version is 7 1/4 x 5 1/4 in., approximately
a 25% reduction in size caused by the crêping process.

¹ The 58 prints are made up of the 55 views of the 53 stations (includes two alternate states of prints for Minakuch station and Ishibe station) plus the Nihonbashi starting point print and two Kyoto terminus point prints.

About the Series

See the section titled "The 1865 Series Tōkaidō gojūsan eki (Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō)" under Utagawa Hiroshige II (1826-1869) for details on this series.

Print Details

IHL Catalog	#428
Title or Description	Kuwana, Shichiri Ferry (桑名, 七里  渡し)
Series	Fifty-three Stations of the Tôkaidô Road (東海道五拾三駅 Tôkaidô gojûsan eki)
Artist	Utagawa Hiroshige II (1826-1869)
Signature	Risshō ga
Seal	none
Publication Date	after 1865 (Keiô 1), 10th month
Publisher	Maruya Tetsujirō
Impression	good
Colors	good
Condition	good -  minor soiling; two remnants of previous mounting along top verso.
Genre	ukiyo-e, fûkei-ga
Miscellaneous
Format	vertical chûban
H x W Paper	7 1/4 x 5 1/4 in. (23.5 x 13.3 cm)
Literature
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