Description
Journey of flowers: / walking slowly / with the row of porters, / in Ejiri you will see the pond of the wet nurse / and the child’s bridge (花の旅 / 駕をつらせて / ゆたゆたと / うばか江尻に / 見ゆる児ばし). The words of the kyoka (狂歌) poem by Hanagakiya Toshiko (花垣家寿子), written in the upper part of this work made between 1840 and 1842 by the artist Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重), accompany the depiction of the Ejiri station (江尻宿) dominated by Mount Fuji (富士山).
This precious woodblock print is the nineteenth panel of the “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road” (東海道五拾三次), a series also known as the “Kyoka Tokaido” (狂歌入東海道) due to the presence, in fact, of poetic compositions combined with the stations of the famous route that connected Edo (江戸) or today’s Tokyo (東京), the shogun’s capital, with the imperial capital Kyoto (京都).
The print on Japanese washi paper (和紙), produced by the publisher Sanoya Kihei (佐野屋喜兵衛), owner of Kikakudo (喜鶴堂), has the right signs of aging and in particular a general patina and two small holes on the right side.
