Text from the publisher's pamphlet:

The Mii temple is located about a half mile northwest of the town of Otsu. The temple was founded in 686 A.D. and is the headquarters of the Tendai sect of Buddhism. In its most prosperous days there were 859 buildings within its vast compound of six acres, and even today it contains more than sixty buildings.

The foreground shows a wide stretch of flat fields, with two yellow straw stacks in the middle, and a scattering of tiny human figures wending their way homeward at dusk. In the background are the undulating shapes of low mountains, with several buildings (including the Mii temple), depicted in delicate gradings of green and grey. In the distance, rising above a broad zone of white mist streaked with reddish brown, the towering bulk of a high mountain is depicted in graded grey and black.

In a free translation the poem reads as follows: At the sound of the vesper bell from the Mii temple, the lovers at the inn pause before pledging themselves till daybreak.