‘Its waters gush with the speed and power of an arrow…If they lose their passenger, they lose their lives.’
Not much is known about this ukiyo-e woodblock print, date and artist unknown. However, we are aware of many similar artworks, leading us to date the artwork to the late 18th or early nineteenth century. Woodblock artists such as Utagawa Hiroshige (as featured in the exhibition with The Lobster) and Utagawa Kunisada have created similar works.
The Oigawa was a particularly dangerous river in what is now Shizuoka prefecture in Japan. Due to the challenging speed and direction of currents, you could pay for a skilled porter to carry you over the river. This continued from the 17th century until 1871, when ferries took over favour. The cheapest way to travel was for a porter to carry you, but you could pay more for a litter.
Ukiyo-e, or floating world prints, were woodblock prints that were particularly popular from the 16th to 19th centuries. Woodblock prints were a convenient way of mass-producing colourful artworks, and their subjects ranged from actors’ portraits to landscapes. The ‘floating world’ refers to the hedonistic lower-class districts of theatre and arts. Oigawa River Crossing is an example of shunga, which were erotic prints. These ranged from sexually explicit to implied eroticism, as in the case of this artwork, but clues can be spotted in the leering faces of the litter-carriers, and in the implications of the women wrapping their legs around the porters’ heads.
This print has lost most of its colour, likely due to being poorly conserved, and exposed to too much sunlight. This work would previously have been bright with colour, but now only the intricate patterns in blue on the women’s kimonos remain.
Although decidedly not depicting Kent, this piece illustrates the concept of translation, as discussed in the cases of Airborne by Chisto Tamabayashi and Mitsumasa Anno’s My Journey. Here, translation refers to the crossing of the river itself, just as the Museum of Imagined Kent bridges Kent and Japan, and shows how concepts often end up translated when displayed in the museum, ending up changed at the other end.
Learn more about ukiyo-e here