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Color print depicting people actively working in a lumberyard beside a river with village houses nearby and a mountain in the background.

The Tate River in Honjo, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji

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Katsushika Hokusai

This print shows a lumberyard where sawn boards await transportation via river to Edo. The Tokugawa shogunate regulated who could collect different kinds of wood. The government ran enormous lumberyards, but monitored forests and instituted strict policies on selective logging that protected old growth and ensured that wood remained a renewable resource. Beginning in the late seventeenth century, landowners were to be expected to proactively plant seedlings on their land in order to renew tree growth. This availability of wood as a renewable resource supported immense building projects in cities.
Artist
Katsushika Hokusai
(Japanese, 1760 - 1849)
Title
The Tate River in Honjo, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji
Date
1830-1835
Medium
Color woodcut
Dimensions
250 x 376 mm Overall
Credit
Bequest of John H. Van Vleck
Accession No.
1980.2413
Classification
Prints
Geography
Japan

Related

By 1925, purchased in Japan by Frank Lloyd Wright; ca. 1926, acquired by The Bank of Wisconsin; 1928, sold to Edward Burr Van Vleck (Madison, WI); 1943, passed through inheritance to Edward’s son, John H. Van Vleck (Madison, WI); 9 January 1980, bequeathed by John H. Van Vleck to the Elvehjem Museum of Art [now called Chazen Museum of Art]

  • Keyes, Roger S., Peter Morse. "Catalogue Raisonné of the Single-Sheet Colour Woodblock Prints of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)." The British Museum, 2015. https://www.dh-jac.net/db1/booksrske/search.php. cat. no. 609 (not illus.)
  • Marks, Andreas. "The (Almost) Complete Hokusai." Taschen, 2024. p. 516, fig. 39

  • Japanese Masterworks: Woodblock Prints from the Chazen Museum of Art Collection: Chazen Museum of Art, 5/6/2016–8/14/2016

This color print depicts people working in a lumberyard beside a river. On the left side of the print, a shirtless figure stands at the top of a tall pile of trimmed wood planks meticulously stacked into a tower. The figure tosses a single plank to a figure standing on the ground below. In the center are piles of long green bamboo sticks and thicker wood posts stacked horizontally. Another figure, also shirtless, stands atop a large rectangular plank of wood and uses a large saw to cut it into vertical strips. To the right of this figure, stand dozens of tall, slender planks of wood of various lengths stacked vertically. The lumberyard is located next to a river of blue water. Across the river from the lumberyard is a village of houses with blue pointed roofs surrounded by wooden fences and green trees and shrubbery. Above the village is a cloudless blue sky and the snow-capped peak of Mount Fuji is visible along the horizon on the right side of the print.

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