Shinano Province: The Moon Reflected in the Sarashina Rice Fields near Mount Kyodai

From the lower right toward the middle, long, narrow terraced paddies are stacked in steps on a green slope, and a white moon shimmers in each flooded field. Above the slope are houses among trees and a small hill with jutting rocks. A river runs through the valley at lower left, with fields and a village spreading along it.

At upper left, a large gray mountain parts the clouds, and a full moon is left white against the indigo sky. Madder-red clouds trailing across the mountainside echo the blue of the paddy water, conveying the clear air of a moonlit night. The composition tilts the foreground slope steeply to show the depth of the valley.

Mount Obasute in Sarashina has been a poetic place name for the moon since the Kokin Wakashu, and Basho also came to view the moon on the journey recorded in his Sarashina Travelogue. The "moon in every rice field," in which the moon is reflected once in each small paddy, was a well-known attraction in the Edo period. It is said to have been passed down less as a view one could actually see all at once than as a scene to be savored in the mind.

Mount Kyodai, named in the title, lies across the Chikuma River as seen from Obasute, and is said to have been so called because the moon rises from it. The Art Institute of Chicago holds three impressions, suggesting that this was a popular design.