Fire

Catalog note / 解説

The text in the fan-shaped cartouche in this <i>uchiwa-e</i> (rigid fan print) design by Hiroshige reads <i>Hi - Nakasu Mitsumata yotsude o orosu gyoshu no kagaribi</i>, meaning 'Fire - the burning lights on the fishing boats as they lower their four-armed scoop nets where the river forks (Mitsumata) at Nakasu'. The location of this star-lit scene is the reedy strand in the stretch of river just south of the Shin-Ohashi Bridge in the Northern Nihonbashi district of Edo. For a short period during the 1770s and 1780s this had been the site of an eight-acre island that had thrived as a pleasure quarter in competition with the Ryogoku area. In 1789, however, as part of the crackdown on immorali…