Tsukudajima in Musashi Province

The large boat in the foreground is piled high with cargo, and the boatman poles it along. Around it are scattered passenger boats, cargo boats, and fishing boats, facing various directions. Apart from the small splashes the boats raise, the surface of the sea is as still as a mirror. The prow of the foreground boat raises white waves and moves out of the picture. The small boats scattered to left and right lead the viewer's eye from the foreground to the island in the back.

In the middle ground, Ishikawajima and Tsukudajima float, with houses built along them. The masts of boats with furled sails stand in rows to the horizon, and the regular arrangement of thin vertical lines makes the picture even quieter. The first printing was an "ai-zuri" printed only in gradations of indigo, and the impression in the Tokyo National Museum is also based on indigo. A bleak sky occupies most of the picture.

Tsukudajima is an island that formed from a sandbar at the mouth of the Sumida River. It is said that when Tokugawa Ieyasu entered Edo, he invited fishermen from Tsukuda Village in Settsu Province (today's Nishiyodogawa Ward, Osaka) to settle there. The whitebait fishing from winter to spring was a seasonal feature of Edo.