Maisaka, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)"

Maisaka, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," is a Katsushika Hokusai ukiyo-e print of about 1801 in the Art Institute of Chicago. Maisaka was the thirtieth station on the Tokaido, sitting on the eastern shore of Lake Hamana opposite Arai; travelers customarily took a ferry across the lake's narrow mouth to continue west. Hokusai concentrates on the lakeside character of the stop, with boats, water, and a few travelers loosely arranged across a horizontal sheet. The image belongs to a kyoka-album set in which each station was paired with humorous verse, and viewers would have known to read Maisaka through its associations with crossings, distance, and the long ferry passage. Edo ukiyo-e of this period was steadily moving toward landscape as primary subject, and Katsushika Hokusai's small-format Tokaido captures that movement at an unusually pure pitch. The figural style connects directly to the parallel work in the Hokusai manga, with quick gestures conveying labor and conversation. The treatment of water foreshadows the great seascapes of his later career, especially the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and Oceans of Wisdom series. As a ukiyo-e print, this Maisaka also documents how Edo audiences imagined inland water travel as a poetic interlude in the long Tokaido journey. The Art Institute of Chicago impression preserves the soft gradations of lake and sky in their characteristic kyoka-album palette.