Mist at the Hotohoto Festival in the Great Shrine in Izumo Province, no. 42 from the series Pictures of Famous Places in the Sixty-odd Provinces

In the Japanese Shinto tradition, it is believed that kami (divine spirits) leave their shrines and travel to the Izumo shrine for one month each year. During the Hotohoto Festival, visitors bring offerings and carry lighted torches to help lead the kami to the shrine. In this print, the mystery of the pine and cypress forest surrounding the sacred site is highlighted, as three women are about to pass into the mist on their way to the shrine. Dressed in beautiful, multilayered kimonos, they carry offerings of oranges and pine branches.

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川広重, also known as Andō Hiroshige 安藤広重, was Japan’s most prolific master of landscape prints. His creativity, effortless combination of Western perspective and techniques from various schools of Japanese painting, as well as his practice of publishing prints in long, thematic series such as The Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, made his work extremely successful.