UNSIGNED, EDO PERIOD (EARLY-MID 19TH CENTURY)

This long scroll shows all the stages and processes of mining for gold and silver, almost certainly in the island of Sado; a small number of similar scenes from a work entitled Sashu kingin saisei zenzu [Complete illustrations of gold and silver mining and processing in Sado] are reproduced in a recent textbook on the history of Japanese metallurgy.¹

1 Amakasu Ken and others (ed.), Saiko to yakin [Mining and metallurgy], Koza Nihon gijutsu no shakaishi [A course of the history of Japanese technology and society], vol. 5 (Tokyo, 1983), pp. 190, 191, 200, 201 etc.