Signed: Hiroshige ga; Publisher’s seal: Ho’eidō (Takeuchi Magohachi); censor’s seal: kiwame; ōban, yoko-e, 24.4 x 36.3 cm; nishiki-e with fukibokashi

Print 47 (station no. 46) from “53 Stations of the Tōkaidō”. The Castle of Kameyama lies outside of the city. In this print, roughly twenty people, maybe members of the entourage of the lord of the castle, are struggling to climb a steep mountain slope in the snow. On the way home they may have stayed in town, before going the rest of the way at sunrise. The print in the Riese Collection is of good quality, only the grey behind the column of horsemen could have been a nuance lighter and the shading on the ground somewhat finer.

A.Lemp, Zurich (June 1963)
Riese Collection #153

Although impressions with a deep rosy sky are sought after by collectors (see for example, the impression reproduced in colour by Louis Ledoux, Hokusai to Hiroshige, no. 32), the earliest impressions are very light at the horizon, and a printed with delicate light shades of grey throughout the picture. The Riese impression is quite fine, the characters in the title and publisher’s seals still clear, and the border line intact, but the grey behind the horsemen might have been printed a little lighter, and tapered off at the bottom more delicately as in the Tōkyō National Museum impression (Ukiyoe Taikei, Vol. 14, no. 47). Both impressions have a small triangular piece missing in the sky above the snowy tree which seems to have been collared-in on the Ledoux impression.
The castle of Kameyama lies outside the town and to the north. The travellers mounting the hill early in the morning are probably a retinue from the castle who, having returned from a journey, spent the night in the town and are now making their way home at sunrise.

Reproduced in Ingelheim catalogue, no. 127.