Okitsu River at Okitsu

At the center of the picture, a large wrestler sits heavily in a palanquin, and the porters carry him with difficulty. Behind them, another wrestler is mounted on a horse, and the horse hangs its head under the weight. The gap between the wrestlers' relaxed expressions and the toil of those carrying them draws a laugh.

In the Edo period, sumo was staged around the country as kanjin sumo, held to raise funds for building and repairing temples and shrines. This print depicts one scene from the travels of such wrestlers.

On the left, a rugged rocky cliff rises, and in the back a seashore with a white beach and a line of pines continues. This is Miho no Matsubara, and white sails float offshore. Incidentally, the station name written in the picture is a different spelling of Okitsu.

Okitsu-juku was the 17th post station from Edo and an important point where the road to Kai (present-day Yamanashi Prefecture) branched off. The Okitsu River flows nearby and empties into Suruga Bay. By choosing the unexpected travelers of sumo wrestlers for a scene of crossing a river, Hiroshige humorously depicts the hardships of river crossings. The large pattern on the wrestlers' kimono also stands out in the picture.