No. 5: Noda River in Mutsu Province, from the series "Six Jewel Rivers of the Floating World (Ukiyo Mu Tamagawa)"

No. 5: Noda River in Mutsu Province, from the series Six Jewel Rivers of the Floating World (Ukiyo Mu Tamagawa), is a circa 1769 hosoban color woodblock print at the Art Institute of Chicago. The "Six Jewel Rivers" (Mu Tamagawa) are six rivers across Japan that share the auspicious epithet tamagawa ("jewel river"), each celebrated in classical poetry and traditionally illustrated as a set. The Noda River in Mutsu Province - the present-day northern Tohoku region - was associated in poetry with the cry of the chidori plover and with the rugged frontier of the Japanese north. The genre of "floating-world parodies" of the Six Jewel Rivers (Ukiyo Mu Tamagawa) updated the classical landscape topos by replacing the original rural scenes with contemporary figures of beauties and dandies, transposed onto each location. This kind of mitate - simultaneously honoring and gently parodying the classical canon - was central to Shigemasa's literary print practice. By 1769, full nishiki-e color printing had been available for several years; the hosoban format remained popular for series prints because it produced a compact, collectible set. The Art Institute of Chicago holds multiple sheets from this series in Shigemasa's hand.