“Fifty-three Pairings for the Tōkaidō Road” (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsui) series – 43rd station Yokka’ichi

The theme of the main painting from this series, covering two of the bottom thirds of the vertical format ōban, is not a landscape around a station on the Tōkaidō road, but an illustration of legends, historical stories and contemporary events related to the painting. Such an illustration is usually figural in nature. The painting of the Yokka’ichi station depicts a semi-figure of a fishing woman with loose hair and the ancient fleet from the wars between the Taira and Minamoto families appearing behind her as ghosts, which haunted fishermen in the Inland Sea (Naka no umi shinkirō), as the text at the print’s head explains. (See Helena Honcoopová, Kunisada, Praha 2005, pp. 100 and 101)