Unknown Maker, Japanese

[text and poems] Inscription in Chinese by Kameda Bosai (painter and Confucian scholar from Edo) concerning a crane monument (Tsuru shiba no hi). The monument was raised at Ainoshuku motoichiba on the Tokaido. The view of Mount Fuji from there showed a part of the mountain that resembled a dancing crane, called tsuru shiba. Roshu, a Kyoto painter, designed the crane.The inscription seems to say that there is a special crane shape in the middle of Mount Fuji known as Haku-tsuru shiba. He paints the crane to memorialize the place in late summer of 1820 (cyclical date, Bunsei kanoetatsu), and signs his name Heian (from Kyoto) Roshu. This print is likely a Meiji-period souvenir-print meant to imitate a rubbing taken from the actual Crane Monument.The three Chinese characters at the top of the print indicate a longer inscription, now trimmed away, which would have duplicated the Kameda Bosai inscription on the monument.

Signature: Heian (of Kyoto) Roshu