A Captivating Journey between the Real and the Imaginary

Known to have existed as early as the 7th century, the Eastern Sea Route (Tōkaidō) was only properly equipped with 53 relay stations under the shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1601, allowing more than 260 feudal lords (daimyo) and their thousands of retainers to travel back and forth for their alternate year attendance (sankin kōtai), a policy the shogun cunningly developed to strengthen his control. Sankin kōtai required the lords to alternate living one year in their respective domains and the other year in Edo. This duty monopolized their time and resources, as it was no small feat to move their entire retinue, family and belongings along this route.

Travel on the Tōkaidō was initially restricted to samurais and religious pilgrims with special permits. Yet, carefully crafted illustrations in travel guides and magazines began to entice people on an adventure – be it real or imagined – to experience scenic places (meisho) and specialty foods (meibutsu). These illustrations fostered the perception that the Tōkaidō was more than a mere road along the country’s eastern sea coast – it was a destination in and of itself.

Hiroshige read these accounts too, of course. According to legend, he made the journey along the route in 1832 with a convoy of horses sent by the shōgun to the emperor. In reality, he probably did not go all the way to Kyoto before creating this first print series, as most of the compositions are in fact clever adaptations of illustrations from Jippensha Ikku’s comic novel Tōkaidōchū hizakurige (Shank’s Mare on the Tōkaidō, 1802) and Akisato Ritō’s travel guide, Tōkaidō meisho zue, (Pictorial Guide to Famous Places on the Tōkaidō, 1797).

By the 19th century, there was movement of both goods and ordinary people along the Tōkaidō, contributing to the growth of Edo’s consumer culture. In fair weather, the journey would take two weeks to complete on foot. Each station along the way, between the point of departure in Edo, the Nihonbashi bridge, and the point of arrival in Kyoto, the Sanjōhashi bridge, was approximately 10 km apart. There, travellers found everything from lodging to specialty foods, sexual services and products of all sorts, including straw sandals.

With the return of imperial rule to Japan in 1867, the Meiji government began modernizing its infrastructure, and the old Tōkaidō was replaced. At last, anyone could travel the road, regardless of class or travel permits. Today, the Shinkansen bullet train covers the same distance in less than 3 hours. While the old Tōkaidō might have disappeared, Hiroshige’s dreamscapes linger on.

A success story

The atmospheric allure with which Hiroshige infused his compositions earned him the reputation as the master of Japanese landscape prints. He became truly famous in Europe in the late 19th century, when collectors, artists and critics were swept up in Japonisme.¹ He was not considered a professional artist when he first began, however. Born as Andō Tokutarō into a samurai family in Edo, he lived on a relatively steady income from his affiliation with the firefighters’ guild, which allowed him to indulge in his artistic pursuits on the side. “Side,” that is, until this iconic series skyrocketed his career.

He was not the first artist to focus on this subject, yet his first Tōkaidō far eclipsed all the others in popularity. Some of his illustrations got reprinted more than 15,000 times. Breaking away from the simple observation of the natural landscape, he incorporated an astonishing variety of themes, not burdening himself with topographical accuracy. He masterfully combined Western pictorial elements, such as the focal perspective and horizontal picture format, with the synthetic blue pigment and shading effects, while tapping into earlier travel guides and magazines to create compositions that teased his readers’ desire to live the dream of exotic travel, fashion and food.

These prints were geared mainly towards the merchant townspeople (chōnin), who were growing increasingly wealthy during this period and contributing substantially to the leisure and entertainment industry of Edo society. The fashion of understated displays of elegance and sophistication (iki), combined with Edo’s rising literacy rates – one of the highest in the world at the time – provided fertile ground for the mass consumption of landscape prints, which could be purchased for the mere cost of a bowl of soba noodles. Given their ubiquity, publishers soon began using these ephemeral objects as advertising tools to promote trends that people would follow and aspire to. Discrete product placements in the margins of the compositions conveyed one message: be chic, buy our products.

At that time, Japan’s printmaking industry was monopolized by large publishing houses. However, Hiroshige’s main publisher and art director, Takenouchi Magohachi (signed Hoeidō), was a newcomer who lacked the experience and financial resources of his more established competitors. To leverage his chances of success, Hiroshige joined forces with another editor, Tsuruya Kiemon (signed Senkakudō), with whom he co-signed twelve prints of the series. Hiroshige would also comply with his publisher’s demands to make his prints more cost-efficient by sketching an easy-to-print, yet effective, scene with few elements and colours.

Sometimes, the publisher would require special effects such as shading (bokashi) to boost sales. In such cases, the printer would render the gradient effect by wiping off part of the pigment on the woodblock with a damp cloth – an operation that took twice as much time as a simple print. The more bokashi the printer applied, the more expensive the final image would be. The series was conceived as a commercial venture by the publisher. He was in charge of defining the theme and the quality of the product.

It must be said that the success of Hiroshige’s first “Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō” was due to a confluence of factors that went beyond his irrefutable artistic talent: the timely growth of the mercantile class, the effervescence of Edo’s consumer society with its thirst for escapism, but also, and more importantly, the rise of literacy and print mass consumption, his publisher’s entrepreneurial flair, and the carver and printer’s expertise in realizing Hiroshige’s drawings.

This series holds a timeless, undeniable charm. As we look at these images today, we still buy into the dream and wonder: what would it have been like to travel on foot along the Tōkaidō?