About This Print

Source:Information on this station taken from the wikipedia article "53 Stations of the Tōkaidō."
The 51st print in this series of 58¹ prints titled Fifty-three Stations of the Tôkaidô Road issued in October 1865, picturing Minakuchi, the 50th station along the Tōkaidō.  It is located in the present-day city of Kōka, in Shiga Prefecture, Japan.

We can see someone hanging strips of dried gourd along the fences.   Dried gourd, kanpyō, was a regional specialty that would have been sold to travelers.

Two different prints were issued to commemorate this 50th station along the Tōkaidō and this print is likely the second state of the print.  It is assumed that the blocks for the first state of the print, pictured below, were irreparably damaged or lost.  It is interesting that in the below supposed first state of the print no dried gourd is visible.  I can imagine the publisher realizing this and then demanding the artist create another showing this town's specialty.


This collection's 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	#426
Title or Description	Minakuchi: Famous Dried Gourd (Minakuchi - Meibutsu kanpyō 水口 - 名物干瓢)
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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