新橋ステンシヨン蒸汽車鉄道圖（中の1枚）

About this print

This is the center sheet of Shinbashi Sutenshon Jokisha Tetsudo Zu (Steam Railway at Shinbashi Station), a triptych (three sheets placed side by side to form one picture) published under the name Hiroshige. "Sutenshon" is the English word "station." The print shows a two-story station building with rows of windows, a roofed platform crowded with people, and a locomotive puffing smoke. In the foreground are a red, roofed freight car and flatcars loaded with what look like straw bales. The year of publication is not known, but it is thought to date from 1872 (Meiji 5), when the station opened, or later, and the artist is thought to be Utagawa Hiroshige III.

Shinbashi Station was the Tokyo end of Japan's first railway, which linked Shinbashi and Yokohama. Designed by the American Richard Bridgens, it was a Western-style building with a timber frame faced with stone. Freight service began the following year, in 1873 (Meiji 6).

The station building burned in the Great Kanto Earthquake, but in 2003 (Heisei 15) the Old Shinbashi Station, a reconstruction of the station as it looked when it opened, was built on the site.

Glossary