One Hundred Famous Views of Edo No.33Yotsugi dori canal and towboats

Before the Edo period, the area east of the Sumida River was made up of lowland and marshes and was not suitable for living or for growing crops. Thus, the first measure the shogun-appointed official had to take was to develop the area. This meant that the marshes had to be filled with earth, canals had to be dug to drain the lowland and mud had to be taken from the canals to reclaim the marsh. Since then, so many canals were built that the area became crisscrossed by them.
Another function of the canal was for the transportation of goods. All canals were connected with the Sumida River, an arterial watercourse, and facilitated the delivery of goods to every part of Edo city.
The canal shown in this print is called Yotsugi-dori, located at the northern end of Mukojima. The canal was originally constructed to supply the inhabitants of the Honjo-Fukagawa area with water and, later, to irrigate paddy fields on both sides of the canal. Yet later, it was used for transporting goods as well as human beings. The canal was so narrow and the water flowed so slowly that boats had to be towed by people walking beside it using ropes. In this print, two boats in the foreground are being towed upstream. Another one, with a mother and a boy as passengers, is towed downstream by the husband. These boats were frequently used by farmers to transport vegetables to the local market.
Mt. Tsukuba can be seen above the mist hovering in the distance. Hiroshige usually used mist to indicate the long distance between the foreground of a print and mountains in the background.
( Written by Teruaki Hori )