Tile Kilns and Hashiba Ferry on the Sumida River

At lower left are the black roof of a tile kiln and a fence stacked with firewood, and thick gray smoke from the kiln rises all the way to the top of the picture. In the river of the middle ground two ferries carrying passengers float, and in the water in the foreground a flock of white birds swims. The far bank is made up of trees of the Suijin grove and thatched houses, and Mount Tsukuba can be seen far at left.

The smoke flowing in a large vertical divides the picture in two, and beyond it the river and far bank spread horizontally. The pale blue of the river and the gray of the smoke make a calm tone, and the black of the kiln tightens the foreground.

Hashiba lay north of Asakusa, and ferries crossing the Sumida River toward Mukojima had long operated there. On the riverbank of neighboring Imado stood kilns firing tiles and clay dolls, Imado ware, and the rising smoke was a famous sight of the area. The white birds are thought to be miyakodori, known from a poem by Ariwara no Narihira.

This print belongs to the Spring section. It depicts the ferry of a famous place together with the everyday scene of the smoke of a working kiln, and is one of a series of prints that trace the famous places along the Sumida River upstream.