Hiroshige: The 53 Stations of the Tokaido

Hiroshige: The 53 Stations of the Tokaido by Muneshige Narazaki

The Tokaido is featured prominently in both of James Clavell's novels on Japan, Shogun and Gai-Jin. When Jeff and I were in the Hakone area of Japan in 2007, we had come upon a stretch of tree-lined road that was supposed to be a section of the old Tokaido. At the Edo Tokyo Museum, I had read about the extravagant daimyo processions on the Tokaido in feudal times. Countless books, poems and art work have been produced about the Tokaido, with the most famous being Hiroshige's "The 53 Stations of the Tokaido" in woodblock prints. As I have no knowledge of Japanese, these prints are the only ones that I can appreciate.

A third of the book is an introduction, with the rest being full-colour reproductions of the prints. A brief description is provided for each picture. Some of the familiar names that I encountered in Japan made me smile: Nihonbashi, Shinagawa, Odawara, Hakone, ...

While classical Japanese paintings were chiefly influenced by Tang dynasty Chinese painting techniques and subject matters, the woodblock prints of the nineteenth century were entirely original. Hiroshige's pictures leap off the pages with their vibrant colours, elegant composition, and lively human figures. The understanding of perspective being a uniquely European invention, Hiroshige's representation of buildings, trees and mountains often appears a bit awkward. However, he excelled at drawing marvellously natural, realistic, and creative human figures. Another strength of Hiroshige's was his ability to convey emotions. His pictures effortlessly exude loneliness, joy, melancholy, humour, sadness, fear, ... It is fascinating to think about the lives depicted, of that bygone era...

The distance between Tokyo and Kyoto is just over 500 kilometres. In the olden days, a trip from Edo to Kyoto on the Tokaido required two weeks on average, twice as long when the weather did not cooperate. Today, our train ride on the Shinkansen Hikari took a mere two hours and forty-five minutes without any worries about the elements. The Nozomi covers the distance in an even shorter interval of two hours and twenty minutes. Times have definitely changed.