Picture of Mimeguri (Mimeguri no zu)

A print at the Victoria and Albert Museum, dated about 1780, depicting Mimeguri, a celebrated location on the Sumida River downstream of Edo associated with the Mimeguri Inari shrine and with the cherry-tree-lined embankment that was one of the spring beauty spots of the capital. The shrine and its setting were a regular subject of Edo meisho-e: visitors came by boat and on foot, viewed the blossoms, and stopped at the famous teahouses along the embankment. Toyoharu's print follows the standard meisho-e formula, foregrounding the riverbank with its figures and trees and using a perspective recession appropriate to his uki-e training to set the shrine precincts in the distance. The image belongs to the long tradition of Sumida-river prints that runs from the early eighteenth century through to Hiroshige's nineteenth-century views and is a representative example of Toyoharu's later application of his perspective method to the standard scenic repertoire of Edo.