Eight Views of the Ryukyu Islands: Evening Moon at Izumizaki

Over a cove in the foreground spans a stone bridge that bulges up round like a drum, with people coming and going on and beside it. On the bank at the right, tile-roofed houses stand on stone walls, and two boats with their sails lowered are moored. In the back, yellow sandy ground and green hills overlap, and a white full moon floats beside a large navy-blue mountain.

"Eight Views of the Ryukyu Islands" is a series of eight horizontal nishiki-e issued around 1832 (Tenpo 3). That year an embassy from the Ryukyu Kingdom visited Edo, and the series is said to have been published to coincide with the rise of interest in the Ryukyus. Hokusai had never been to the Ryukyus, and is thought to have drawn it using as clues pictures such as the "Eight Views of Ryukyu" in the Qing investiture envoy Zhou Huang's "Ryukyu-koku Shiryaku," adding his own imagination.

Expressing the stillness of a moonlit night with a combination of navy blue, pale blue, and the yellow of the sand, it is one of the best-known designs in the series. The Urasoe Art Museum in Urasoe, Okinawa, owns all eight designs of this "Eight Views of the Ryukyu Islands" and shows them in special exhibitions and elsewhere. The image is an impression owned by the Art Institute of Chicago.