Higo Province: Gokanosho

A natural bridge of rock linked in an arch crosses the center of the picture, and a person carrying bundles of firewood on a shoulder pole walks across it. Below the bridge a deep valley opens its mouth, with white clouds welling up. At left a red-trunked pine stretches high.

At the back a gray rocky mountain with a red-dyed summit rises, and the sky is shaded from blue to yellow. Green thickets, white clouds, and gray rock overlap, and the smallness of the human figure emphasizes the depth of the mountains. Hiding the valley floor with cloud makes the height and danger of the bridge felt all the more strongly.

Gokanosho is a mountain village deep in the Kyushu Mountains, known for the legend that fugitives of the Heike clan hid and lived there. In the Edo period it was a hidden land that few outsiders visited. The name is said to derive from its being made up of five villages, and it was linked to other places by steep mountain paths.

Hiroshige is said not to have visited Kyushu, and the print is thought to depict, with some imagination, a hidden land he knew by hearsay through a rock bridge and clouds. The Metropolitan Museum of Art and others also hold this same print.