Shop Selling Local Specialties at Narai Station

At right is a shingle-roofed shop, with a signboard reading "Oroku comb" hanging from its eaves. Inside, craftsmen and shop staff lay out their wares, and in front travelers stop to pick up the goods. Up the slope at left climb a traveler in a broad hat and a person carrying a load, and stones are placed on the roof in the foreground.

The left half of the picture is layered with mountains wrapped in mist, their depth created by gray and ink gradations. The red-brown roof of the shop and the indigo and green of the figures color the right half, contrasting with the pale mountains at left. Trees grow on the cliff, conveying the post town clinging to the mountainside.

Narai was a post town between Niekawa and Yabuhara, at the northern foot of the Torii Pass. It prospered with travelers staying before and after crossing the pass and is said to have been so lively that it was called "Narai of a thousand houses." The Oroku comb was a Kiso specialty, probably sold as a souvenir at the post town across the pass.

This is one of the designs by Keisai Eisen, who handled the first half of the series, and the impression at the Tokyo National Museum bears no signature. Eisen often wrote specialties and famous sites into his titles, and here too the subject is the post town's specialty. The shingle-roofed house with stones on the roof is typical of Kiso mountain villages.