Matsuida

On the slope road at the right foreground, a child leads a black horse loaded with rice bales, and beside it a traveler in a hat walks carrying a load. Coming down from the top of the slope at the back is a woman riding a horse loaded with bales. A large tree towers at the crest of the slope, and beside it stand a small shrine, banners, and a signpost pillar.

On the left, terraced fields are carved into the green slope, and beyond them spread blue ranges and a yellow sky. The composition, which divides the gray of the slope road and the green of the hillside on a diagonal, conveys the undulations of the mountain road approaching a pass.

Matsuida-juku was a station before Usui Pass, and ahead lay the Usui checkpoint, Sakamoto-juku, and Usui Pass, the Nakasendo's difficult point. Near the station was also the Goryo Chaya Honjin, where daimyo and others rested.

This is a print by Hiroshige. Two impressions of this design remain in the National Diet Library. The horse carrying bales and the figure of the child show the flow of goods along the highway and the life of a land before a pass. In this series Hiroshige draws roads outside the stations and passes more than the rows of houses of the stations.