The Pagoda at Zojo Temple and Akabane (Zojoji to, Akabane), from the series "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei)"

Zōjōji, the Tokugawa family's mortuary temple in the Shiba district, was a principal Buddhist site of Edo and a recognizable landmark on the city's southern skyline. Hiroshige isolates the five-storied pagoda — a vertical mass of stacked roofs — against the lower rooftops of Akabane in the middle distance. The vertical oban format suits the pagoda's upward thrust, and the silhouette functions as a structural counterweight to the receding ground plane. Bokashi gradations soften the sky and far distance, while flat color fields and emphatic outlines — devices Hiroshige refined in his final years — give the image its graphic clarity. Among the One Hundred Famous Views, this sheet contributes to a sequence of religious and ceremonial sites that anchor the series alongside its market scenes, plum orchards, and waterside views. As meisho-e, it locates a famous place through architectural fact rather than narrative incident, characteristic of Hiroshige's late approach to landscape.