Tanba Province: Kane Slope

From the lower left of the picture, a narrow mountain road zigzags up the hills, with small travelers visible. Pines grow sparsely on both sides of the road, and green slopes overlap in many layers. On the summit of the mountain at upper right, a strange arch-shaped rock rises, with a stone laid across between two pillarlike rocks.

Pink mist trails between the green hills, and the sky is shaded from indigo at the top to white below. The slopes overlap alternately from left and right, leading the eye from the road in the foreground to the strange rock, and conveying the feeling of a journey climbing a mountain path.

Kane Slope is a pass on the road linking Kaibara and Sasayama in Tanba. The name is said to derive from a legend that a bell was placed at the pass to drive away demons, and the strange rock in the picture is said to depict the "Oni no Kakehashi" (Demon's Bridge) on the ridge of nearby Kanayama. Near the pass also stand the ruins of Kanayama Castle, built by Akechi Mitsuhide, so the area preserves the history of Tanba's mountain castles. Hiroshige expresses the mountainous province of Tanba through the combination of the pass road and the strange rock.

The Demon's Bridge is a rock seen looking up from the pass, but Hiroshige draws it large, pulled in just above the pass road. The National Diet Library also holds an impression with the same composition.