Hozu River Rapids - Early summer

The Hozu River winds through the gorge between Kameoka and Arashiyama on Kyoto's western edge, where flat-bottomed boats have shot the rapids for tourists and travelers since the seventeenth century, navigating a series of fast-running shallows beneath wooded slopes. Suizan's early-summer treatment of this familiar route would render the freshness of the season — bright young foliage on the gorge walls, clear water rushing over rocks, perhaps a small boat with poles steering through the current. The early-summer dating points to the period after the cherry blossoms have fallen and before the high heat of midsummer, a transitional moment Kyoto artists have long prized. Compositionally, the print likely uses the vertical format common to Kyoto landscape designs, with the river drawn into the foreground and the distant gorge receding through bokashi gradations of green and grey. As nishiki-e printed on washi, the rapids would be rendered through fine carved lines for the white water and overprinted blue-greens for depth. Within Suizan's body of work, Hozu River Rapids sits among his less-frequent landscape designs, complementing his bijin-ga with a study in pure scenery.