Poem by Minamoto no Muneyuki

From a series built on a joke. Hokusai illustrated a hundred classical poems as though explained by an old nurse who has missed the point of every one of them, so image and poem sit at a deliberate angle to each other.

Muneyuki, who died in 939, wrote about a mountain village in winter: loneliness increasing as both the grasses and people's visits dry up. The nurse pictures hunters warming themselves instead. The print has a fold down the centre, which suggests it once sat in an album.