Forty-Eight Famous Views of Tokyo: Gathering Shellfish at Susaki

This view of shellfish-gathering at Susaki, from Ikkei's 'Forty-Eight Famous Views of Tokyo' series of around 1871, depicts the spring low-tide custom (shiohi-gari) at the tidal flats of Susaki, then on the eastern edge of Tokyo Bay. The annual shiohi-gari at the spring equinox was one of the most cheerful of the Edo seasonal customs: townspeople walked out onto the exposed mud flats at low tide to dig clams, mussels, and other shellfish, often making a full day's family outing of the trip. Ikkei renders the receding tide as a broad pale band across the middle distance, with the figures of clam-diggers — women in tucked-up kimono, men with reed baskets, children running — dotted across the flats in careful spatial recession. The composition uses the wide horizontal expanse to convey the openness of the tidal estuary, with the distant sail-rigged fishing boats placed on the horizon for additional depth. The print belongs to the Edo-Tokyo Museum's holdings and is one of the clearest surviving depictions of the Tokyo Bay shellfish-gathering custom before the great reclamation projects of the late Meiji and Taishō decades transformed the bay's shoreline beyond recognition.