Maple Trees at Mama, Tekona Shrine and Tsugi Bridge (Mama no momiji, Tekona no yashiro, Tsugihashi), from the series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)"

Issued in 1857 as part of One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, this landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige binds together three of the celebrated sights of Mama, on the eastern bank of the Edogawa River in what is now Ichikawa: the autumn maples of Mama, the small Tekona Shrine, and the Tsugihashi bridge that linked the pilgrims' paths. The site was steeped in poetic memory, particularly the legend of Tekona, a beautiful village woman of Nara-period verse who was said to have drowned herself rather than choose among rival suitors and was later enshrined in this quiet grove. Hiroshige treats the scene from an unusually steep elevated viewpoint that allows him to layer the flaming reds and oranges of the maple canopy directly against the slate-blue distance of the bay and the silhouetted Boso Peninsula beyond. Tiny figures gather under the maples, picnic, and cross the small bridge below, scaling the composition and reinforcing the meisho-e tradition of recording famous places not just topographically but as theaters for ordinary life. The dramatic close-up tree composition and bold use of vertical format are hallmarks of late Edo ukiyo-e under Hiroshige's hand. This impression is preserved in the Clarence Buckingham Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.