Tōkyō hanjō basha ōhen (東京繁昌馬車往返)

The title of this print indicates that it was made after the city of Edo had been renamed Tokyo when Emperor Meiji moved the imperial capital there in 1869. The Meiji era represents an era of historic change for Japan, as ancient customs gave way to Western influences, much as Paris was transformed from a medieval city into a bustling metropolis in the nineteenth century. In this print, Hiroshige represents three levels of society, clothed in a mixture of traditional Japanese and modern European dress, grouped by their means of transportation: workers with hand-drawn carts, the upper classes via private horses or rickshaw, and the public crowded into a horse-drawn omnibus.