Nakagawa River Mouth, No. 70 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

The two passenger boats in the lower half of this print are crossing paths on the Onagi Canal at the point where it joins the Nakagawa River, the broad stream in the center. They are passing in front of a guard station barely visible at the lower left. This checkpoint, established for military security in the early Edo period, was apparently once quite strict. By Hiroshige’s time, however, after more than two centuries of peace, the inspection procedure was a mere formality. A memory of the inspection station survives today in the Guardhouse Bridge, which spans the entrance to the Onagi Canal.