Evening Snow at Kambara, no. 16 from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō

Falling snow is a subject particularly suited to woodblock prints, but before Hiroshige this motif seldom appeared. Hiroshige's first picture with falling snow may have been this picture of three travelers in the village of Kambara. It is evening, and the snow is falling in large flakes: mountains, houses and trees are all being buried under a thick white blanket. On their way through the dark, two travelers and a local resident with bent back are trudging through the snow, depicted with Hiroshige's sensitive virtuosity. He often used Prussian blue in his work, which earned him the nickname "Blue Hiroshige." This picture shows a distinctive feature of his landscape: the extremely skillful manner of depicting snow, and the lyrical mood of the countryside.