Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞) / Toyokuni III (三代豊国) (artist 1786 – 01/12/1865)
View of Ishiyakushi (Ishiyakushi: 石薬師ノ図) from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsugi no uchi: 東海道五十三次之内)
ca 1838
Signed: Kōchōrō Kunisada (香蝶楼国貞)
Publisher: Sanoya Kihei
Censor's seal: kiwame
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
National Diet Library
Spencer Museum of Art
Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna
British Museum - Hiroshige's version with only the hills in the distance similar
Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art - they date their copy to 1836
Bryn Mawr
Honolulu Museum of Art
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the University of California
Fujisawa Ukiyo-e Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art In Hokusai and Hiroshige: Great Japanese Prints from the James A. Michener Collection, Honolulu Academy of Arts on page 208 it says: "Ishiyakushi and Shōno, the next town, are the smallest of the Tōkaidō Road stations - Ishiyakushi has only fifteen inns, Shōno ten. The town took its name from Ishiyakushi Temple. According to the tradition of this temple, in 812 Kōbō Daishi, founder of Shingon, an esoteric sect of Japanese buddhism, carved the statue of Yakushi (Buddha of Medicine) from a natural rock half-sunk in the earth. Since Kōbō Daishi is the most famous priest in Japan, works of this sort are attributed to him all over the country. The origin of Ishiyakushi Temple's Buddha of Medicine was most likely a fable, but the staue nevertheless atracted many worshipers from the neighboring area."
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This is print number 45 in the series. The curatorial files at the Museum für angewandte Kunst in Vienna say: "From this point on, Kunisada no longer used Hiroshige's pictures as a template, but chose his own motifs. In the background the country road runs through a plain. On the right a shrine in a forest. In the foreground is a woman holding a box in her hand. She wears an apron."
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Illustrated in a small color reproduction in Kunisada's Tokaido: Riddles in Japanese Woodblock Prints by Andreas Marks, Hotei Publishing, 2013, page 74, T24-45.
Sanoya Kihei (佐野屋喜兵衛) (publisher)
landscape prints (fūkeiga 風景画) (genre)
beautiful woman picture (bijin-ga - 美人画) (genre)