Hauling Canal Boats, Yotsugi Road

Ando Hiroshige's woodblock print depicts a section of the Yotsugi canal in Edo (modern Tokyo), where workers haul boats along the waterway through flat agricultural terrain. The composition employs bold color blocking—yellow towpaths, blue water, green fields—and a high vantage point characteristic of Hiroshige's landscape series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Mount Fuji appears as a distant blue silhouette. The print captures everyday labor within Edo's infrastructure system, showing the boats, laborers, and scattered buildings that sustained the city's commerce and transport networks during the late Edo period.