Chie no Umi: Miyatogawa Naganawa (Sea at Chie: Long-line Fishing on the Miyato River)

A print from the Sea at Chie series composed with formative art depicting the interwoven water and fishermen.
The fishing scene on the Miyatogawa River as seen from the banks of a river town shows a panorama of the neighborhood of Ryogoku. The Miyatogawa River was one of the names of a downriver portion of the Sumida River during the Edo Era. Long-line fishing is a method of fishing in which many hooked lines lead off from a single main line.
The buildings at the rear are the Ofunagura boat houses in which the Shogun’s military vessels were stored, and this consists of an area from Chitose 1-chome through to Shin-Ohashi Bridge today. Fourteen boathouses were lined up along an area of land 4,800 tsubo (15,864 square meters) in size, and this piece of land was called Ofunagura Atakemachi owing to the fact that Iemitsu Tokugawa’s newly-build state barge, the Atake Maru, which assumed the shape of a military vessel, was also anchored here.