The Whirlpools in Naruto Strait, Awa Province (Awa Naruto no fukei)

The Whirlpools in Naruto Strait, Awa Province (Awa Naruto no fukei) belongs to the great cycle of vertically composed landscape print masterpieces Utagawa Hiroshige produced in 1857. The Naruto Strait, a narrow channel between Awaji Island and Shikoku's Awa Province, is famous for the powerful tidal whirlpools that erupt at the change of the tide, when the difference in water level between the Pacific and the Inland Sea forces vast volumes of water through a tight passage. Hiroshige sets a craggy headland and a wind-bent pine at the top of the print, then drops the eye down across a deeply gradated band of indigo into a foreground of spiraling white foam and dragon-coiled eddies. Birds wheel over the cliffs and a single small boat near the lower margin underscores the human scale against which the natural spectacle is measured. The print is among the great vertical landscape compositions of late Edo ukiyo-e, comparable to Hiroshige's snow, moon, and flower triptychs in its ambition to bring the woodblock medium into competition with hanging-scroll painting. The carving of the foam was one of the most technically demanding passages in any Hiroshige design, and the Art Institute of Chicago's Buckingham impression preserves the sheet in fine condition.