Ferry boat on the Yodo River

A [shikishiban](/glossary/shikishiban) [surimono](/glossary/surimono) of circa 1815–1825 in the Art Institute of Chicago, this print depicts a ferry boat on the Yodo River — the great waterway connecting Kyoto to Osaka and the main artery of travel and commerce in the Kamigata region. The shikishiban format, roughly twenty centimeters square, was the standard surimono size of the Bunka-Bunsei golden age, and Hokuba was one of its most refined practitioners. He distributes a small group of figures across the boat with the unforced naturalism his contemporaries admired, the long sweep of the riverbank carrying the eye into mid-distance, while the boat itself anchors a stable horizontal across the lower half of the design. Travel subjects of this kind allowed kyōka poets to compose verses on the time-honored themes of departure, journeying, and the floating moment — themes that resonated with the historic literary associations of the Yodo, a waterway sung in classical poetry since the Heian period. The print would have circulated within a poetry circle as a luxury keepsake combining image and inscribed verse, the careful printing on heavy paper marking it as a private rather than commercial production.