Autumn Moon of the Jewel River, View of Fishermen Catching Sweetfish (Tamagawa shugetsu, Tamagawa ayukumi no zu), from the series Eight Views of Famous Places (Meisho hakkei), recorded by the Art Institute of Chicago with a date of 1828, matches the classical shugetsu, autumn moon, motif with the Tamagawa, the Jewel River that figures prominently in waka poetry through the celebrated theme of the Six Jewel Rivers (Mu Tamagawa). Utagawa Toyokuni reinforces the poetic register with the specific scene of fishermen catching sweetfish (ayu), one of the activities most associated with the Tamagawa in seasonal verse and pictorial tradition. The combination of moonlit autumn landscape and working figures gives the design a particular emotional flavor: classical reference and observed labor coexist in a single sheet. The Eight Views format aligned Toyokuni's work with the increasingly popular landscape series produced by Hokusai, Hiroshige, and others in the late 1820s and 1830s. Although Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) best knows Utagawa Toyokuni for his [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e), this series demonstrates his late-career commitment to a different mode, in which classical schema, meisho recognition, and atmospheric effect take precedence over actor portraiture. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves the sheet as part of its Toyokuni holdings, where it links the artist's name to one of the great themes of Japanese poetic geography and to the broader movement of the Utagawa school into the landscape print market of the early nineteenth century.
early 1830s
Color woodblock print; shikishiban, surimono
1796
Woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper
1769–1825
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper
Autumn Moon of the Jewel River, View of Fishermen Catching Sweetfish (Tamagawa shugetsu, Tamagawa ayukumi no zu), from the series "Eight VIews of Famous Places (Meisho hakkei)" was created by Utagawa Toyokuni I (歌川豊国) in c. 1833/34.
Autumn Moon of the Jewel River, View of Fishermen Catching Sweetfish (Tamagawa shugetsu, Tamagawa ayukumi no zu), from the series "Eight VIews of Famous Places (Meisho hakkei)" depicts fish, moonlight, and autumn foliage.
