Hizen Province: Mount Inasa in Nagasaki

At the bottom of the picture, a ship with a striped sail advances over a deep indigo sea. Ahead of it spreads an inlet with intricate capes of black rock, and on the shore can be seen rows of houses, a torii, and pine groves.

In the middle distance red-dyed mist drifts horizontally, and above it a gray mountain with a red summit rises. More mountains continue behind, each with its name written small. The sail in the foreground puts the viewpoint aboard the ship, showing the scenery through the eyes of a traveler entering the harbor.

In the Edo period Nagasaki was a trading port under direct shogunate control, where Dutch and Chinese ships called, and one of the mountains surrounding the harbor is Mount Inasa. Nagasaki, where foreign things entered, was a distant, longed-for town for the people of Edo. The harbor had Dejima and the Chinese quarter, and the mountains surrounding the inlet made a natural good harbor.

The Art Institute of Chicago dates it to 1853, while the Tokyo National Museum dates it to Ansei 3 (1856). The National Diet Library's impression has the same composition. Like the print of Saijo in Iyo, it uses a sail in the foreground to indicate a viewpoint aboard a ship and conveys the feeling of a journey drawing near a harbor.