Artist: Utagawa Hiroshige
Production date: 1851 (Kaei 4)

The Hot Springs of Hakone, from the series Famous Places of the Toukaidou
In this picture, the landscape of “Dougajima-Yuyado (Inns of Dougajima Hot Spring)”, one of the seven hot springs of Hakone, is illustrated. It is said that this hot spring was opened by a high-rank Buddhist monk Musou Soseki from Namboku-cho period and attracted many visitors from the old time. There is a notation of Shiraito-no-taki (the White Thread Waterfall) on the right, and the falling of the water from a height of a mountain is illustrated.

This is an e-baisho (anthology of the seventeen syllables Japanese haiku poems with related pictures) that a variety of poems written by the notable contemporary poets from the haikai poetry circles are allotted with the pictures of famous places of the Toukaidou, as a hokku-shu (anthology hokku or haiku poems ) appears in pictures. This series was the changed title version of “Toukaidou Meisho Hokku-shu (The Hokku-shu of Famous Places of the Toukaidou)”, published by Eiraku-ya Jousuke in 1851, and originally the format of this picture was hanpon or book style. However when this version was made, the landscapes of Edo to Izu were re-edited as a gajou (folded picture book) format, thus the readers can appreciate each landscape as the independent picture. When Hiroshige produced this work, he was also commissioned to paint nikuhitsu-ga (paintings) from Tendou clan. Therefore the expressions such as the composition with natural dimension and bluish pale touch of the color in this series are influenced from the painting expressions.