Ouchiyama, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)"
- Date:
- c. 1806
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; chuban
Ouchiyama, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," is a Katsushika Hokusai [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) print of about 1801 in the Art Institute of Chicago. The name Ouchiyama refers to a hilly stretch along the Tokaido in Omi Province, near the great barrier of Suzuka and not far from the imperial precincts of the capital region. Hokusai presents the location as a quiet wooded slope, with travelers picking their way along a path while distant peaks recede into a soft sky. The series was made for kyoka poetry clubs, who treated the Tokaido as a sequence of poetic prompts as much as a real itinerary, and the inscribed verses would have steered viewers toward associations with mountain solitude and journey. Edo ukiyo-e of this transitional period increasingly let landscape carry the meaning that figures once monopolized, and Katsushika Hokusai's Ouchiyama is a small but telling example. The figural touches relate to the parallel work of the Hokusai manga, while the spatial layering points forward to his later integrated landscapes such as Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. As a ukiyo-e print, this Ouchiyama also documents how Edo audiences imagined the road's quieter intervals, the stretches between named stations where travel slowed into reflection. The Art Institute of Chicago impression preserves the soft gradations of green, gray, and ocher that distinguish the kyoka-album palette from the bolder color schemes of later Tokaido series.
1821
Color woodblock print with metallic pigments; surimono shikishiban
1822
Color woodblock print; shikishiban, surimono
1822
Color woodblock print; shikishiban, surimono
c. 1832
Color woodblock print; oban
Wakasa Kugushiko
1920
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
1934
Color woodblock print; oban
n.d.
Woodblock print; ishizuri-e, section of harimaze sheet
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Ouchiyama, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)" was created by Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) in c. 1806.
Yes — Ouchiyama, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)" is part of the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido series by Katsushika Hokusai.
Ouchiyama, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)" depicts landscapes and tōkaidō.