Yamashiro Province: The Togetsu Bridge at Arashiyama

The Togetsu Bridge cuts diagonally from left to right across the bottom of the picture. People holding parasols and carrying loads go back and forth on it, and on the water men work poles to guide rafts downstream. A pine-covered sandbar appears in the middle, and beyond it on the far bank Arashiyama rises.

The mountainside is filled with pale pink cherry blossoms and deep green pines, with red-tinged mist trailing between them. A single waterfall drops from the mountain's slope, and at far left the hall of a temple and a teahouse roof can be seen. The composition, which stacks the bridge, the river, the flowering mountain, and gray distant peaks from bottom to top, makes full use of the vertical format as is typical of this series.

The cherry trees of Arashiyama are said to have begun with trees transplanted from Yoshino in the Kamakura period, and in the Edo period it was a famous cherry-viewing spot for the people of Kyoto. The river was also a route for floating timber by raft from Tamba upstream, and the rafts passing under the bridge show how a place of leisure and a place of livelihood overlapped.

To begin a series that tours the provinces in the order of the Gokishichido, he placed Yamashiro, home of the capital, and a famous spring scene there. The Tokyo National Museum and the National Diet Library also hold the same design, and the Diet Library's impression is of a version of the composition with differences such as the direction of the bridge.