Lower Meguro (Shimo Meguro), from the series "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei)"

Lower Meguro (Shimo Meguro) in Hokusai's Fugaku sanjurokkei presents a village area south of Edo where the Meguro River ran through a landscape of tea houses and rice paddies. Hokusai's composition places Mount Fuji at a distance across flat terrain, the mountain's familiar triangular profile rising above a horizon of low buildings and trees. The foreground likely includes travelers on a road or figures at rest near the river, rendered with the energetic, confident line that distinguishes Hokusai's figural work. The Prussian blue (bero-ai) central to the series appears in flat, ungraduated application to the sky and water areas, contrasting with the pale buff ground of the open agricultural landscape. Meguro was known as a destination for Edo residents — its forested precincts and river-fed gardens made it a recreational area just beyond the city's eastern edge. Hokusai's treatment situates Fuji within this suburban agricultural landscape rather than a dramatic natural setting, a compositional choice that emphasized the mountain's ubiquitous, almost incidental presence across the Kanto plain and made ordinary working landscapes the frame through which the sacred peak was perceived.