Kintai Bridge in Suō Province (Suō no kuni Kintaibashi)

Kintai Bridge in Suo Province (Suo no kuni Kintaibashi), published around 1834, belongs to Katsushika Hokusai's series Unusual Views of Famous Bridges in Various Provinces (Shokoku meikyo kiran), one of his most architecturally inventive sequences. Suo Province, in the far west of Honshu near present-day Iwakuni, was celebrated for the five graceful wooden arches of the Kintai Bridge, built in the seventeenth century to cross the swift Nishiki River. Hokusai draws the bridge in steep perspective so that its rhythmic curves dominate the composition, with tiny travellers crossing the arcs and small figures gathered on the riverbank below. The print demonstrates the artist's enduring interest in engineering, geometry and the integration of human ingenuity with natural force. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds an impression that preserves the layered Prussian blue water and the soft bokashi gradation in the sky, both signatures of early Edo ukiyo-e printing in the 1830s. As a ukiyo-e print, the design occupies an important place beside Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji and his Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces, all produced during the same intensely productive decade. Together these landscape series widened the public imagination beyond the famous places near Edo to encompass the diverse engineered and natural wonders of Japan. The V&A holdings support ongoing study of the series and its publishers.