Mt. Fuji on Left Along the Tōkaidō, no. 25 from the series Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji

A man and a woman walk along a pine tree-lined section of the Tōkaidō, the historic road that connected Edo (Tokyo) with Kyoto. The man, his shaved head suggesting that he is a Buddhist monk, pauses and looks to his left. At the side of the road are a mile marker and, above it, a government bulletin board (fuda 札) he may be reading. Beyond the road is a rice field where farmers are working, the roofs of their village visible behind them. Mt. Fuji towers majestically in the distance. This print is from Hiroshige’s series Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji, made late in his career, which was inspired by the celebrated earlier series of the same name by Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾北斎 (1760–1849).