Mochizuki

A gently rising road runs from the left foreground into the distance. Thick pines line the road, and beneath them travelers with packs and a horse loaded with rice bales move along. To the right the ground drops into a valley, and beyond the diagonally reaching pine branches can be seen hazy mountains and the moon.

The sky is a deep indigo gradation, darker toward the top. The pine trunks are painted in pale pink, and in contrast with the ink-colored needles they seem to stand out in the light of the night. A gray road and a blue-green band of slope divide the picture diagonally, conveying the length of the slope continuing into the distance.

Mochizuki was a post town between Yawata and Ashida, known from ancient times for the Mochizuki pasture that supplied horses to the imperial court. Because horses were presented around the full moon of the eighth month each year, they were called "Mochizuki horses," and the name of the post town is said to derive from this.

This is a design by Utagawa Hiroshige. It is thought that he linked the post town's name Mochizuki ("full moon") to the moon and depicted the scene at night. The same design is also at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the shades of the gradation in the sky differ slightly from impression to impression.