The Plum Orchard at Kamata

Plum trees with thick trunks line the picture from front to back, with white flowers opening at the tips of their branches. Among the trees stands a thatched teahouse where elegantly dressed women stroll. At front right sits a palanquin with a blue bedding cover in a hemp-leaf pattern, and at back left a patch of blue from a pond peeks through.

The sky is crimson at the top and softly gradated to pale below, setting off the white of the plum blossoms. The blue-green of the ground and the gray of the trunks create a calm tone, and the palanquin, boldly cropped at the edge of the picture, has the effect of placing the viewer at the entrance of the garden.

The Plum Garden at Kamata is said to have begun when the Yamamoto family, who sold the traveling medicine Wachusan in Kamata village on the Tokaido, planted plum trees in their garden. It doubled as a teahouse where travelers rested and was loved as a plum-viewing spot to which people extended their trips from Edo. Many visitors are thought to have arrived by palanquin.

It stands alongside Plum Garden at Kameido as a famous plum spot of the Spring section. The Metropolitan Museum of Art also holds the same print, and impressions with very similar tones of color can be seen. The composition keeps figures small and conveys the atmosphere of the place through the trees and the palanquin.