Ryogoku Revisited.
Found the spot!
Here is the scene I am trying to capture. While the distance seems off, the angles more closely align. It is possible that the river is not as wide now, which is possible as it is now lined with a concrete bank and flood wall on each side.
To get this shot I had to hold my new camera aloft, over the top of the flood wall, and use the movable screen to see what I was shooting. As is easily noticeable, I was unable to get as wide angle of a view as depicted in the print. A wider angle lens would produce the fisheye effect and being further from the scene would have been impossible for me to take. The concrete embankment I stood on drops off long before I could get far enough back and if I could gain access to the room that would afford the proper view point, the elevated highway seen at the top left of my photo and the flood way would be in the way. This is as close as I can get to the same vantage point as Hokusai had.
There’s a large peak in the distance in the print—is that still in the distance, now hidden by ugly buildings?
This is an extreme example of the kind of thing I’ve seen online in recent years where various photos of various streets or buildings taken decades or, in some cases, hundreds of years apart, are posted side by side. As you must have an extensive library of photos of Japan over the last 3 decades, that might be an interesting pursuit to go back to some of those places and compare the changes over a far shorter period of time. Also far more likely to be able to get to the exact spot the original photos were taken.