Snow at Okuramae (Okuramae no yuki), from the series Edo meisho dōke zukushi (Comical Views of Famous Places in Edo)

Snow at Okuramae (Okuramae no yuki), from 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. Okuramae was the street running along the great Tokugawa rice granaries (kome-gura) on the west bank of the Sumida River south of Asakusa, a district known in late Edo for its rice merchants, samurai who came to draw their stipends in rice, and the gambling, drinking, and amorous diversions that flourished around the granary precinct. Hirokage's print stages a winter scene of pedestrians struggling through new snow on the street fronting the granaries, treating the canonical Edo snow-scene meisho-e of the kind Hiroshige had refined as a vehicle for slapstick mishaps — slippery footing, dropped loads, and the comic indignity of cold. The Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs Division holds an impression of this sheet (LCCN 2008660931), measured at 33.6 × 22.3 cm, accessible through the Library's open-access digital program.