View of the Rokugo River Crossing at the Kawasaki Station (Kawasaki-juku Rokugo kawa watashi no zu), from the series "Tokaido Road (Tokaido)"

This color woodblock print in oban format from Hokuju's Tokaido Road (Tokaido) series, dated to circa 1789-1818 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts the river crossing at Kawasaki, the second post station on the great highway leading west from Edo. The Rokugo River, the lower stretch of the Tama River, was crossed by ferry rather than bridge throughout most of the Edo period, and the boatmen who poled travelers across were a familiar fixture of the Tokaido experience. Hokuju shows the broad sweep of the river with passenger ferries in midstream, travelers gathered on the banks waiting for transit, and the road continuing into the distance on the far side. The composition deploys his characteristic perspective scheme, with the river creating a strong horizontal recession that pulls the eye deep into the picture. The Tokaido series anticipates by more than a decade Hiroshige's famous 1833-1834 Tokaido prints, and a direct comparison between Hokuju's Kawasaki and Hiroshige's later treatment of the same station reveals how the genre evolved across a generation. Hokuju's version is more restrained in its drama and more austere in its color, but it establishes the basic iconography of the river crossing that Hiroshige would inherit.