Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重) (artist 1797 – 1858)
Hiratsuka (平塚): Inage Saburō Shigenari (稲毛三郎重成) from the series Fifty-three Pairings for the Tōkaidō Road (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsui - 東海道五十三対)
ca 1845 – 1846
9.625 in x 14.25 in (Overall dimensions) Japanese woodblock print
Signed: Hiroshige ga (広重画)
Publisher: Iseya Ichiemon (Marks 143 - seal 20-005)
Carver: Horikō Fusajirō (彫工房次郎)
British Museum
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Waseda University
Hagi Uragami Museum of Art
National Diet Library
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
Google maps - Hiratsuka
Van Gogh Museum
Museum of Oriental Art, Venice (via Ritsumeikan University)
Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen (Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, Leiden) via Ritsumeikan University
The National Gallery, Prague
The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (via Cultural Japan)
Harn Museum of Art
Fujisawa Ukiyo-e Museum The text reads: 馬入川ハ平塚宿の手前にあり 昔ハ相模川と唱ふ。甲州猿橋より流れて大河也と相傳ふ。建久九年十二月 稲毛三郎相模川に橋供養をいとなむ。右大将頼朝公も行向ひ給ふ 此時水上に悪霊出てくろくも舞下り 雷電霹靂す 頼朝公の乗馬 驚て水中に飛入て忽ち死す 故に馬入川と号（なづく）るよし 俗説に云伝ふ.
The translation reads: "The Ba'nyū River runs in front of Hiratsuka post station. The river used to be called the Sagami River and is a large river that runs from Saruhashi in Kōshū. In the twelfth month of the ninth year of Kenkyū (1198), Inage Saburō presented a devotional offering of the bridge over the Sagami River, and Lord Yoritomo attended this event. On that day an evil spirit suddenly appeared above the river and brought down black thunderclouds and bolts of thunder and lightning. Lord Yoritomo's mount was startled by the thunderbolts, jumped into the river, and died instantly. Popular lore has it that after this incident, people started to call this river the Ba'nyū (Horse Entering) River."
Quoted from: Tōkaidō Texts and Tales: Tōkaidō gojūsan tsui by Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige, and Kunisada, p53.
The accompanying text says: "The Ba’nyū River east of Hiratsuka could only be crossed by boat or by pack horses that were able to carry up to 330 pounds... Inage Shigenari (d. 1205) constructed the bridge as a devotional offering to his deceased wife, the elder sister of Hōjō Masako, wife of the shogun Minamoto Yoritomo (1147-1199). Various sources mention Yoritomo's presence during the opening ceremony. Yoritomo's fall from another horse when he returned from the funeral services eventually led to his death in the following year. This story is also provided in the Tōkaidō meisho zue."
There are three variant editions of this print. This one, in the Lyon Collection, is from the first edition because the waves at the shoreline are Prussian blue. The next edition has a non-gradated, more ordinary blue and the third one the shoreline is gray with green gradations.
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Shigenari is standing on the bank of the Sagami River when a horrific storm suddenly arises. He is seen glowering at the storm and ready to draw his sword to defend himself against these supernatural forces. Somewhere nearby is Minamoto Yoritomo who has joined Shigenari for the dedication of a bridge in honor of the warrior's deceased wife. As Yoritomo was crossing the river the lightning began to strike and Yoritomo's horse leapt or fell into the river. It is unclear if the horse drowned or was killed by the lightning. Either way, everything was high drama.
After this event the river was renamed the Ba’nyū-gawa (馬入川) or 'Horse-Entering' River. You will notice that the storm was so fierce that the enormous, peaked waves of the river are visible. Only such waves can generally be seen in larger bodies of water. Currently the river is back to being called the Sagami-gawa (相模川).
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There are nine prints from this series, Fifty-three Pairings for the Tōkaidō Road (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsui - 東海道五十三対), in the Lyon Collection. See also #s 382, 815, 816, 819, 951, 1022, 1095 and 1269.
Inage Shigenari was a historical figure who died in 1205. He was one of the participants in the Gempei wars and was related to Hatakeyama Shigetada. They both died when attacked by the Hōjō. Shigenari's name appears in The Tale of Heike.
Hiratsuka is less than 10 miles to the east of Kamakura. The most striking element of this print is the dramatic lightning.
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Listed in Robinson, Kuniyoshi: The Warrior-Prints (1982), list #S44.8.
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Illustrated:
1) in color in Kunisada's Tōkaidō: Riddles in Japanese Woodblock Prints by Andreas Marks, Hotei Publishing, 2013, page 102, #T78-07.
2) in color four times in Tōkaidō Texts and Tales: Tōkaidō gojūsan tsui by Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige, and Kunisada, edited by Andreas Marks, University Press of Florida, 2015, on pages 52-53 and 162
3) in color in a small reproducton in an online publication, 'Tōkaidō gojūsan tsui – Uma Série Japonesa na Coleção do Museu Calouste Gulbenkian' by Beatriz Quintais Dantas, her master's thesis, no. 8, April, 2021.
4) in black and white in the Catalogue of the Van Gogh Museum's Collection of Japanese Prints by Charlotte van Rappard-Boon, Willem van Gulik and Keiko van Bremen-Ito, 1991, p. 283, #411.
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There is another copy of this print in the collection of the Fujisawa Ukiyo-e Museum.
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The original Tōkaidō was established by the Kamakura bakufu (1192-1333) to run from Kamakura to the imperial capital of Kyoto.
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The Tōkaidō gojūsan tsui: A collaborative work
Andreas Marks wrote in 'When two Utagawa masters get together. The artistic relationship between Hiroshige and Kunisada' in Andon 84, November 2008, pp. 37 and 39:
"The artistic relationship between Hiroshige and Kunisada entered a new period in 1845, when both artists were commissioned to contribute to the series Fifty-Three Pairs of the Tōkaidō (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsui). The Fifty-Three Pairs of the Tōkaidō is an example of a series where a number of artists were commissioned to contribute complete and individual designs under a specific theme. A few years before, the Kisokaidō series by Hiroshige and Eisen had been published with the same concept. This concept became quite common in the second half of the 1840s until the early 1850s, and sometimes the artists were supported by their disciples who drew inset cartouches.
The main contributor to the Fifty-three Pairs of the Tōkaidō was actually Kuniyoshi with 30 designs, followed by Hiroshige (21 designs), and Kunisada (eight designs)." This series of 59 ōban falls in a period when designers, actors, writers, and publishers had been imprisoned or expelled from Edo in the aftermath of the so-called Tenpō reforms (Tenpō no kaikaku). Only the joint effort of six different publishers made this series possible."
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About the fan cartouches found at the top of each print in this series
Laura W. Allen wrote about these fan-shaped cartouches on page 9 in 'An Artistic Collaboration: Traveling the Tōkaidō with Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige, and Kunisada' in Tōkaidō Texts and Tales: Tōkaidō gojūsan tsui by Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige, and Kunisada: "At the outset someone decided that the publishers would promote their individual brands through the use of different-shaped cartouches... at the top of hte prints in the set: a bean shape (mame) for Ibaya Senzaburō (active 1810s to 1860s), a fan shape (ōgi) for Ibaya Kyūbei (active ca. 1804 to 1850s), two overlapped snowflake roundels (yukiwa) for Kojimaya Jūbei (active 1790s to 1860s), two overlapped round fans (uchiwa for Enshūya Matabei (active 1760s to early 1880s), a stylized shrimp (ebi for Ebiya Rinnosuke (active 1830s to 1890s), and a square (kaku for Iseya Ichiemon (active 1820s to 1860s). The six men were all former members of the fan makers' guild, and they worked in close proximity to each other, sharing or independently operating shops within the same Edo neighborhood, Nihonbashi Horiechō, all within the blocks designated as Itchōme and Nichōme. It was only the dissolution of the guild system during the Tenpō reforms that allowed other craftsmen, such as these former fan makers, to begin publishing single-sheet prints. The Tenpō reforms thus stimulated not only artistic change - in the development of new themes - but also social mobility, as the fan makers came to occupy new terrain with the publishing industry."
Iseya Ichiemon (伊勢屋市右衛門) (publisher)
warrior prints (musha-e - 武者絵) (genre)
landscape prints (fūkeiga 風景画) (genre)