Beneath Mannen Bridge in Fukagawa (Fukagawa Mannenbashi shita) from the series "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei)"

Beneath Mannen Bridge in Fukagawa is one of Katsushika Hokusai's most architecturally striking designs in the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Made around 1825, the print places the viewer directly under the arched span of Mannen Bridge as it crosses the Onagi canal in the Fukagawa district of Edo. Boats glide on the water, pedestrians cross above, and the silhouettes of figures fishing or hauling cargo populate the picture; through the cleanly drawn semicircle of the bridge, Mount Fuji appears as a tiny but unmistakable presence in the distance. Hokusai constructs the image around this dramatic framing device, demonstrating his command of one-point perspective and his interest in the geometry of Edo's working waterfronts. The imported Prussian blue floods both sky and canal, producing the tonal unity characteristic of the Fugaku sanjurokkei. As an ukiyo-e print, the design is among the most quoted in modern Hokusai scholarship for its bold compositional invention and its empathetic depiction of working life. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this impression and integrates it into its narrative of Katsushika Hokusai's landscape practice, where Edo ukiyo-e began to take the city itself, its bridges and canals, as a serious modern subject.