Fujikawa, Ferry Boats

Fujikawa, Ferry Boats, recorded on ukiyo-e.org, depicts the river crossing associated with the Fujikawa station on the Tokaido. The Tokaido included a number of unbridged crossings where ferries carried travelers and pack animals across rivers that could not be safely forded in flood. Hiroshige, in his various Tokaido series, treated such crossings as set pieces, finding in them an opportunity to compose the Edo ukiyo-e landscape print around water, boats, and the geometry of riverbanks. In this design the ferries are shown loaded with passengers, traveling diagonals across the broad river; the foreground bank is occupied by porters and waiting travelers, while the far bank rises into low hills that fold back toward the horizon. The composition uses the boats themselves as the principal articulation of the picture plane, with bokashi gradations giving the water and sky their depth. The connection to the formal Tokaido itinerary places the design within the larger Hiroshige project of imagining the road as a sequence of distinct local conditions: at Fujikawa it is the river that defines the experience, just as the inn culture defines other stages and the mountains define still others.