No. 34, Inside Sujikai Gate (Sujikai gomon uchi), from the series Comical Views of Famous Places in Edo

Inside Sujikai Gate (Sujikai gomon uchi), number 34 in Utagawa Hirokage's Edo meisho dōke zukushi ('Comical Views of Famous Places in Edo'), is a vertical ōban color woodblock print published in 1859 by Tsujiokaya Bunsuke. The Sujikai Gate (筋違御門) was one of the principal gates of Edo's outer fortifications, controlling access from the northwest along the great Nakasendō highway and standing at the present-day intersection that became Manseibashi. The print depicts the area just inside the gate as a scene of comic mishap: a porter loses his footing, a load topples, and pedestrians scatter in postures that owe more to slapstick stagecraft than to the dignified circulation usually shown in [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) of the gate. The series as a whole, signed Hirokage and issued in numbered plates from 1859 through 1861, takes the standard repertoire of Edo famous-place views and reanimates each through a comic incident calibrated to local knowledge — viewers were expected to recognize the gate, anticipate its usual decorum, and feel the joke of its disruption. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston holds an impression of this sheet (object 537069, William Sturgis Bigelow Collection), part of one of the most important American holdings of the Hirokage series.