The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of April 25, 2024

Nissaka: The Night-Weeping Stone at Sayo no Nakayama, from the series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō

Nissaka: The Night-Weeping Stone at Sayo no Nakayama, from the series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō

c. 1848–50
(Japanese, 1797–1858)
Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
Color woodblock print
Sheet: 22 x 34.7 cm (8 11/16 x 13 11/16 in.)
The Kelvin Smith Collection, given by Mrs. Kelvin Smith 1985.323
Location: not on view

Did You Know?

This print belongs to a series known colloquially as the “Formal Script Tōkaidō” because of the style of text in which the name of the series is printed.

Description

This print is an image of a mountain pass in Nissaka, one of the stops along the Tōkaidō, a road running from Kyoto to Edo (present-day Tokyo). This scene alludes to a legend in which bandits murdered a pregnant woman on that stretch of road, and her blood fell upon a stone. Shown in the foreground, the stone is said to contain the woman’s spirit, and so it weeps each night. In some versions of the story, the stone’s cry alerts a passing monk (really the disguised bodhisattva Kannon) to the presence of her infant, who survived the attack. The monk takes the child from the deceased mother’s body, and raises it as his own. The child goes on to avenge its mother.
  • (R. E. Lewis, Inc., California, sold to Kelvin and Eleanor Smith)
    ?-1985
    The Kelvin Smith Collection, Cleveland, OH, given by Mrs. Kelvin [Eleanor Armstrong] Smith [1899-1998] to the Cleveland Museum of Art
    1985-
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Japanese Gallery 235 Rotation. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (January 2-July 9, 2018).
    Later Japanese Art Gallery Rotation (Gallery 113). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (February 20-May 6, 2003).
    A Private World: Japanese and Chinese Art from the Kelvin Smith Collection. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 14-November 13, 1988).
  • {{cite web|title=Nissaka: The Night-Weeping Stone at Sayo no Nakayama, from the series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō|url=false|author=Utagawa Hiroshige|year=c. 1848–50|access-date=25 April 2024|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1985.323