Glossary

Tōkaidō

東海道

Term · other

The Eastern Sea Road: the main highway of Edo-period Japan, from Nihonbashi in Edo along the Pacific coast of Honshū to Kyoto, with fifty-three post stations — the subject of Hiroshige’s Fifty-three Stations and of several of Hokusai’s views of Mount Fuji. The Tōkaidō (東海道, “Eastern Sea Road”) was the main highway of Tokugawa Japan. It followed the east coast of Honshū from Edo to the head of Ise Bay and turned inland towards Lake Biwa and Kyoto, its terminal point.1 Between Nihonbashi in Edo and the Sanjō Ōhashi bridge in Kyoto lay fifty-three post stations (shukuba), where travellers changed horses and porters and found inns; the crossing of Ise Bay from Miya to Kuwana, seventeen miles by boat, was its longest and most dangerous passage.23 The road was a subject in its own right. The small towns along it produced Ōtsu-e, cheap pictures named after the station of Ōtsu.4 In the summer of 1832 Hiroshige travelled it to Kyoto with the convoy carrying the shōgun’s annual gift of horses to the emperor, and from the journey came the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō (published 1834), the series that made his name and eclipsed Hokusai’s.5 Several of Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji look at the mountain from its stations — five name the road in their titles (Hodogaya, Yoshida, Kanaya, Ejiri and Tago Bay, Shinagawa’s Goten-yama) — and its course is drawn on that series’ map. The road itself is the place Tōkaidō. “This ‘Eastern Sea Route’ was the main highway that followed the east coast of Honshu from Edo to the head of Ise Bay and then turned inland towards Lake Biwa and the terminal point of Kyoto” — Mason 2005, S. 279. ↩ “the longest water passage along the Tokaido and also the most dangerous” — ebd., S. 292. ↩ The fifty-three stations in order, from Shinagawa to Ōtsu: Anon. o. J.e. ↩ “These much cruder images are known as Otsu-e, after a town famous for producing them on the Tōkaidō” — Mason 2005, S. 279. ↩ “in the summer of 1832 … Hiroshige set out for Kyoto along the Tokaido with a convoy escorting a group of horses, an annual gift from the shogun to the emperor” · “So popular was the Tokaido series that Hiroshige’s reputation quickly eclipsed that of Hokusai” — ebd., S. 292–293. ↩ Literatur Anon. o. J.e: 東海道五十三次, in: Wikipedia (ja), https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%B1%E6%B5%B7%E9%81%93%E4%BA%94%E5%8D%81%E4%B8%89%E6%AC%A1 (zuletzt abgerufen am 4.11.2026). Mason 2005: Penelope E. Mason, History of Japanese Art, 2nd, Pearson Education LTD. 2005.