Hibiya and Soto-Sakurada from Yamashita-cho

At lower left is a branch of New Year pine, at right the tip of a battledore decorated with a picture of a woman, and in the sky the legs of a kite shaped like a servant and a shuttlecock drift. Beyond them the outer moat of Edo Castle spreads out with ducks floating on it; on the far bank are the white walls and red gate of a daimyo mansion, and farther back rows of houses and Mount Fuji.

Objects in the foreground are boldly cropped at the edge of the picture, with the distant view peeking out between them, in a close-up composition. The deep green of the pine needles, the indigo of the moat and the red of a sky reminiscent of sunset add a festive New Year brightness.

Yamashita-cho was a townspeople's quarter outside Yamashita Gate of Edo Castle, facing the daimyo mansions of Hibiya and Soto-Sakurada across the moat. It shows clearly how in Edo samurai and townspeople districts were separated by a single moat.

This is the third print of the Spring section. The wit characteristic of the series is said to lie in expressing New Year pastimes such as battledore and kite flying through the tools alone, without depicting anyone playing. The censor's seal dates it to December 1857 (Ansei 4), so it is thought to have been put on sale for the following New Year. The way it crops foreground objects large was later received with astonishment by Western artists.