The Five Pines on the Onagi River (Onagigawa Gohonmatsu), from the series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)"

Gohonmatsu—five pines—along the Onagigawa canal in the Kôtô district of eastern Edo were a celebrated meisho associated with the waterside culture of the city's working-class eastern wards. Hiroshige's design from the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo series shows the distinctive pine trees rising above the still canal waters, with flat-bottomed cargo boats moored along the banks. The canal's calm surface allowed Hiroshige to exploit reflections, a compositional device he used frequently to create visual depth and implied symmetry in landscape prints. The eastern canal district of shitamachi had a character quite different from the official landscape of the city center, and Hiroshige documented it with the same attention to meisho convention as more celebrated sites near Edo Castle or along the Tôkaidô. The five pines themselves—named specimens associated with a specific location—represent the Japanese practice of identifying particular trees as landmarks worthy of artistic commemoration.