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Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (名所江戸百景), actually composed of 118 woodblock landscape and genre scenes of mid-19th century Tokyo, is one of the greatest achievements of Japanese art. The series includes many of Hiroshige's most famous prints. It represents a celebration of the style and world of Japan's finest cultural flowering at the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate.<br/><br/> The winter group, numbers 99 through 118, begins with a scene of Kinryūzan Temple at Akasaka, with a red-on-white color scheme that is reserved for propitious occasions. Snow immediately signals the season and is depicted with particular skill: individual snowflakes drift through the gray sky, while below, on the roof of a distant temple, dots of snow are embossed for visual effect.<br/><br/> Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川 広重, 1797 – October 12, 1858) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist, and one of the last great artists in that tradition. He was also referred to as Andō Hiroshige (安藤 広重) (an irregular combination of family name and art name) and by the art name of Ichiyūsai Hiroshige (一幽斎廣重).
A low-class prostitute, or yotaka (literally 'night hawk') tries to lure a low ranking samurai retainer (yakko) by tugging at his sash. She carries a straw mat so that she can provide her services under the stars.<br/><br/>The first poem on the print puns on the word taka, literally 'hawk', and yotaka, 'nighthawk prostitute'. The last line meaning the strings attached to a hawk while hunting (Taka no ashigawa) can also mean the strap by which a samurai attaches his dagger to his sash.<br/><br/>The second poem plays on the convention of seeing a hawk in a New Year's dream, but here the hawk is the prostitute.