Placing the rear end of the horse in the foreground in such close proximity to the viewer, Hiroshige may have been attempting to add a Western sense of depth to his composition. Though the view may have a slightly comical effect, Hiroshige's scene does have a literary foundation. The New Station at Yotsuya was a semiofficial center for prostitution just outside the city, and in the 1775 chapbook Master Kinkin's Dream of Glory, a jaded geisha refers to the prostitutes in one of the brothels as "flowers blooming in the horse droppings of Yotsuya."