Itahana

From the right to the center of the picture, snow-laden pines stretch diagonally. Along the road between them, travelers in hats and straw raincoats advance in a line, and at the back left a person on horseback passes in front of a snowy house. The rock in the foreground is also covered with thick snow.

At lower left a stream of deep indigo swirls, with a small wooden bridge spanning it. The sky is a dull gray, tinged pale crimson only near the horizon. With three colors, white snow, black pines, and indigo water, the print draws the stillness and cold of winter.

Itahana-juku was a station on the banks of the Usui River, where in the first half of the Edo period there was no bridge and travelers crossed the river on porters' shoulders or on renday. In 1861 (Bunkyu 1), Princess Kazunomiya, on her way to Edo, stayed at the honjin here.

The title is the same "Kiso Kaido Rokujukyu-tsugi no uchi" as in Hiroshige's prints, but this is a print by Eisen. Both the Tokyo National Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago attribute it to Eisen. The Metropolitan Museum of Art also has two impressions. It is a print that conveys the severity of travel through snow in quiet colors.