Buzen Province: The Road below Rakan Temple

Most of the picture is occupied by a brown rock wall pressing on the river. The cliff is carved with deep vertical grooves, and at its foot several windowlike openings are cut, with people walking along the passage inside. On the near right bank is a path lined with slender trees, where a single traveler in a hat stands.

Above the cliff is a green slope with pines growing in dots, and the sky beyond the summit is faintly tinged with red. The brown of the rock, the blue of the river, and the green above overlap vertically, conveying the depth of the steep valley.

This road is thought to be the Ao no Domon, a tunnel cut through a cliff along the Yamakuni River. It is said that the monk Zenkai spent some thirty years digging it through to save people who lost their lives on the chain path on the cliff, and pilgrims to Rakan-ji also used it. It is also said that after completion tolls were collected to cover the cost of the work, and by the late Edo period it was known as a famous place.

This print appeared early in the series, in Ansei 1 (1854). The road later became widely known as the setting of Kikuchi Kan's novel "Onshu no Kanata ni." The National Diet Library's impression has the same composition.