Wedding Rocks, Futamigaura

This Night Scenes print depicts the Meoto Iwa, the Wedding Rocks at Futamigaura on Ise Bay — two volcanic pinnacles of rock joined by a heavy shimenawa (sacred straw rope) that has stood as one of Japan's most photographed Shinto landscape icons since the late nineteenth century. Shōda Kōhō's treatment is in the characteristic [chuban](/glossary/chuban) (22 by 29.5 cm) format of the Hasegawa-Nishinomiya Night Scenes series, and the composition stages the two rocks against an early-morning or evening sea in a restrained sepia palette. The shimenawa is drawn as a delicate horizontal across the upper third of the composition; a small torii crowns the larger of the two rocks; the sea below is rendered in three or four tonal values that suggest first light without fully committing to any specific time of day. The Wedding Rocks were a pilgrimage destination during the late Meiji and early Taishō eras, when Ise visiting (Ise mōde) had become a mass-tourism phenomenon along the new railway network, and Shōda's print fits comfortably into the publisher's broader business of producing inexpensive souvenir prints aimed at a domestic travelling audience. The print is reliably documented through the Japanese Art Open Database research files and is published by Hasegawa-Nishinomiya, circa 1910s through 1930s.