One Hundred Famous Views of Edo No.8Suruga Street

Suruga-cho (street) ran from east-northeast to west-southwest, pointing towards Suruga Province (now Shizuoka Prefecture), where Mt. Fuji lay. The name of the street was derived from Suruga Province. When the sky was clear, one could observe Mt. Fuji between rows of houses standing on both sides of the street.
Hiroshige has drawn the street and the lofty Mt. Fuji with clouds hovering between the two. Incidentally, in Ukiyo-e prints, this kind of clouds was often used as a means to divide the scenery into two, a distant view and a short-range view. As the clouds were used previously in the illustration of the Tale of Genji, the clouds were named Genji clouds. Edo people considered Mt. Fuji best viewed from this street, which was located directly to the north of Nihonbashi, the centre of Edo city, making it one of the busiest commercial streets in the city.
There were several drapers’ stores along the street, among which the most famous was Echigoya, established in 1683 by a wealthy merchant family from Ise Province named Mitsui, meaning “three wells”. The family crest was a Chinese character meaning “three”, encircled by overlapping parallel lines symbolizing a well, and a circle.
The crest is inscribed on blue curtains hanging outside the store, which was comprised of two parts facing each other across the street. The store on the right sold silk goods and the one on the left sold cotton and hemp goods.
The front of the stores in this print are crowded with people who have come for shopping. Among them is a group of women followed by a porter carrying purchased goods on his back. In the centre of the street, a little further back in the picture, is a warrior riding on a horse with his retainers around him. Another group of three people with reed hats in their hands are probably from the countryside. The two men with large amounts of baggage on their backs, to the front left of the print, are delivering goods ordered by clients. A fishmonger from the fish market nearby is entering the street carrying fish in tubs suspended from both ends of a pole which he bears over his shoulders.