Dried Gourd Shavings, a Specialty of Minakuchi

In the left foreground, a woman seated on a mat is putting a knife to a gourd (yugao). Behind her, a girl carrying a baby on her back holds the next gourd to be peeled, and the girl in front hangs the thinly peeled flesh on a rope to dry. Kanpyo is a food made by peeling the flesh of the gourd into long strips and drying them in the sun. White kanpyo hung on the rope droops in many arcs.

In front of the house at back right, a woman can also be seen drying gourds on leaning reed screens. Beside the large tree at the center, a traveler in a hat passes quickly. The working women and the passing traveler are placed in the same picture. At the back, thatched-roof houses and a bamboo grove line up, and indigo mountain ranges peek out in the distance.

Minakuchi was a post station that was also the castle town of the Kato clan of the Minakuchi domain. Here Hiroshige chose to draw not the bustle of the castle town but the work of village women. The Koka City tourism association introduces that Minakuchi kanpyo became widely known through this print. The indigo kimono of the women and the white kanpyo stand out well against the green ground.