Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞) / Toyokuni III (三代豊国) (artist 1786 – 01/12/1865)
View of Okitsu (Okitsu no zu: 興津ノ図) 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: ōju Kunisada ga (応需国貞画)
Publisher: Sanoya Kihei
Censor's seal: kiwame
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - published by Moriya Jihei
National Diet Library
Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna
British Museum - Hiroshige version
Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of Art - they date their copy to 1836
Bryn Mawr
Honolulu Museum of Art - published by Moriya Jihei
The Spencer Museum of Art
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California
Harn Museum of Art
The Library of Congress
Fujisawa Ukiyo-e Museum
Victoria and Albert Museum
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art All of the prints in this series are chūban sized. The example of this print in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston is 10 1/4 x 7 5/16 in. This one in the Lyon Collection is somewhat smaller because it has been trimmed on all sides.
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Okitsu is 6 miles from Yui.
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This print is number 18 in the series. The curatorial files at Museum für angewandte Kunst in Vienna say: "The representation differs from Hiroshige's original in particular with regard to the characters. Instead of two sumo wrestlers, there are two "ordinary" people sitting in a litter or on a horse. In the foreground is a tea house operator who has tied her child on her back while she is serving tea. She is holding a tray with two tea cups in her hand. She wears a pink patterned apron over her kimono. A piece of a straw mat can be seen next to it, as it often served as a side wall for a simple tea shop on the roadside."
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In the background is the famous Miho Pine Grove.
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In Tōkaidō Texts and Tales: Tōkaidō gojūsan tsui by Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige, and Kunisada edited by Andreas Marks, University Press of Florida, 2015, on page 76 they note that there are numerous renditions of the view of Mt. Fuji from Okitsu. Many of them include a poem by Yamabe Akahito (山辺赤人: fl. 724-37). It reads:
Tago-no-ura ni
uchi-idete mireba
shirotae no
Fuji no takane ni
yuki wa furitsutsu
田子の浦に
打出て見れハ
白妙の
雪ハふりつつ
Gazing up
from the vast Tago Shore
I find the towering peak of Mount Fuji
adorned
in pure white snow
The text says: "The poem by the Nara-period poet Yamabe Akahito... appears in the anthology Man'yōshū (3:318). It is the fourth poem in the Hyakunin Isshu, an anthology thought to have been compiled by Fujiwara Teika (1162-1244). The three artists Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige, and Kunisada jointly designed the series Imitations of the Ogura One Hundred Poets, One Poem Each (Ogura nazora-e hyakunin isshu), which was published around the same time as this print, featuring the entire Hyakunin Isshu including this poem. The anthology was also featured ten years earlier in Hokusai's series One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse (Hyakunin issu ube ga etoki).
Several more prints bearing this poem exist, going back even to Suzuki Harunobu's design from the late 1760s... They usually feature Mount Fuji, mostly with the poet gazing at it."
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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 66, T24-18. On page 82 there are four different editions of this print with an accompanying description on page 83.
Sanoya Kihei (佐野屋喜兵衛) (publisher)
landscape prints (fūkeiga 風景画) (genre)
boshi-e (母子絵) (genre)
beautiful woman picture (bijin-ga - 美人画) (genre)