1media/Tokaido_goju_santsugi_p.22 Detail.jpg2020-05-06T18:31:52-07:00A Journey Along the Tokaidō Highway15image_header2020-05-19T14:40:21-07:00Tōkaidō gojūsantsugi (1840s)by Andō Hiroshige (1797-1858), the most celebrated Japanese woodblock print artist of the Edo period, depicts life along the fifty-three stations (or post towns) on the Tokaidō highway which ran between Edo (present day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Color woodblock printing allowed artists to create very sophisticated and visually striking illustrations, producing books like this that were works of art in their own right. Hiroshige created several different series of Tokaidō prints. In this series, each print has an accompanying comic poem (kyoka) printed on the page. It is possible that the poems were composed by members of a group who gathered regularly to exchange verse, they may even have commissioned this particular series of Tokaidō prints and had them bound to commemorate a particular event. It is bound as an accordion book (orihon).
