Two women grab weary travellers outside a roadside inn

At dusk on the street of the Goyū post station, two sturdy women outside an inn seize two male travellers by the arm and sleeve, hauling them bodily toward the entrance while the men resist, laughing and off-balance. A third woman in a blue kimono with a red obi hurries away down the street, glancing back. Inside the inn a bald man sits cross-legged while a maid kneels beside a wooden tub. Rows of dark shophouses recede under a graduated blue evening sky; the title cartouche sits at top centre and Hiroshige's signature and red seal at left. From the Hoeido edition of the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, a comic scene of touting innkeepers' women (meshimori onna) accosting passers-by at Goyū.

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) was the last great master of the ukiyo-e landscape print. Born into a family of fire wardens in Edo, he turned to printmaking under Utagawa Toyohiro and found his subject in the roads and seasons of Japan — above all in the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1833–34) and the One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–58). His snow, rain and evening skies, and his bold near-and-far compositions, were studied closely by Van Gogh, Whistler and Monet. His prints are held by the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Printed as a museum-grade giclée on Hahnemühle fine art paper using 12-ink archival pigment printing. Available handframed in FSC-certified wood with optional float glass, or unframed. Ships worldwide with free delivery to 30+ countries.