Shokoku Mu Tamagawa (諸國六玉川 / Six Tamagawa Rivers from Different Regions)

By Utagawa Hiroshige

Click to enlarge

Kinuta no Tamagawa

Artist

Utagawa Hiroshige

(歌川広重; 1797–1858)

Edo period, 1857

Six woodblock prints; ink and color on paper

Each print 36.2 x 24.5 cm (14 1/4 x 9 5/8 in.)

Donated to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York by the Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation in 2015

Murase 2000, no. 152.

Murase, Miyeko

2000

Bridge of Dreams: The Mary Griggs Burke Collection of Japanese Art. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Six Tamagawa Rivers in Many Regions

[upper right] Noda no Tamagawa, poem 643 by Nōin Hōshi (b. 988) from Shin kokin wakashū

When evening approaches, / plovers cry in the briny air / over Tamagawa’s stream at Noda in Michinoku.

[lower right] Tetsukuri no Tamagawa, poem 1292 by Fujiwara Teika (1162–1241) from Shūi gusō

The cloth that is hung over the fence for bleaching / catches the morning dew at the village of Tamagawa.

[upper middle] Noji no Tamagawa, poem 280 by Minamoto Toshiyori from Senzaishū

I shall come back again tomorrow / to the Tamagawa at Noji. / The moon shines over the bush clover / and rests upon the river’s colored waves.

[lower middle] Ide no Tamagawa, poem 159 by Fujiwara Shunzei (1114–1204) from Shin kokin wakashū

As I stop my horse to give him water, / dew drops from yamabuki flowers are lost / in the stream of the Tamagawa at Ide.

[upper left] Kinuta no Tamagawa, poem 339 by Minamoto Toshiyori (ca. 1055–ca. 1129) from Senzaishū

The autumn wind over the pines sounds forlorn. / In the loneliness, / the sound of fulling cloth at Tamagawa.

[lower left] Kōya no Tamagawa, poem 1788 by Kōbō Daishi (774–835) from Fūgashū

Forgetting the warning / not to do so, / a traveler at the Tamagawa in Kōya / dips his hand in the water.

[on each print] Painted by Hiroshige

[in margin, top right] eleventh month; Aratame

[of publisher; in margin, lower left] Maruya Kyūshirō