Roben Falls at Oyama in Sagami Province (Soshu Oyama Roben no taki), produced about 1828, belongs to Katsushika Hokusai's series A Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces (Shokoku taki meguri). Mount Oyama in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture was an important pilgrimage destination, and the Roben Falls at its base were associated with the eighth-century monk Roben and with purification rituals undertaken by pilgrims. Hokusai depicts the falls as a tall white sheet plunging between mossy rocks, with small figures of pilgrims in white robes performing ablutions below. As a ukiyo-e print, the design demonstrates the artist's command of Prussian blue, used to give the surrounding cliffs and pool a cool depth that intensifies the brilliance of the falling water. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves a fine impression of the work, and the museum's holdings of Edo ukiyo-e prints place it within the wider story of religious geography and travel imagery in the early nineteenth century. The Tour of Waterfalls series is notable for treating each falls as a meditation on shape, force and stillness rather than as a piece of conventional famous-places imagery. The Roben Falls design, with its overt allusion to Buddhist purification, makes the spiritual logic of the series particularly explicit and underlines Hokusai's interest in the religious and ascetic uses of water.
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.
Roben Falls at Oyama in Sagami Province (Soshu Oyama Roben no taki), from the series "A Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces (Shokoku taki meguri)" was created by Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) in c. 1833.
Roben Falls at Oyama in Sagami Province (Soshu Oyama Roben no taki), from the series "A Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces (Shokoku taki meguri)" depicts landscapes, waterfalls, and autumn foliage.