Hida Province: Basket Ferry

In the middle of the picture, two baskets hang from ropes stretched between the banks of the valley, carrying people through the air. On the cliff at left are people handling stakes and ropes, along with a straw-roofed house, and on the bank at upper right a scaffold like a watchtower and some figures can be seen. Below the cliff, the river flows toward the viewer in white waves.

Walls of pale green and gray rock close in from both sides and cut deep into the picture, while a crimson sky and distant mountains appear at the back of the valley. A thin rope stretched between the dark indigo river below and the bright sky above conveys both the height and the danger.

A kagowatashi was a device for carrying people and goods in a basket hung from a rope stretched across a deep mountain valley where a bridge was hard to build, and it was used in the mountains of Hida and Etchu. The title does not name the river, so the subject was probably chosen as a scene typical of mountainous Hida. The unease of the passenger and the hard labor of those hauling the rope come through in the tiny figures.

In a series full of famous temples, shrines, and seashores, this is an unusual print whose subject is a means of everyday transport itself. The National Diet Library also holds an impression with the same composition, and the Art Institute of Chicago owns two.