Shono, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)"
- Date:
- c. 1806
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; chuban
Shono, from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi), is a small [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) print designed by Katsushika Hokusai around 1801. The Shono station, located in present-day Mie Prefecture, was a modest post-town later made famous by Hiroshige's iconic rain scene, but here Hokusai approaches the same point on the great highway decades earlier through his own structural sensibility. The sheet condenses the station into a clear arrangement of buildings, travelers, and surrounding terrain, with line carrying much of the descriptive work and color held in restraint, as befits the small sheet size in which the early Tokaido was issued. Figures move through the foreground at the steady cadence of travelers between stops, while station structures and topographic cues anchor the place. As an Edo ukiyo-e print, the design illustrates Katsushika Hokusai's developing structural method for treating each station as both documented place and compositional exercise. The impression belongs to the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. For collectors and students of ukiyo-e print history, Hokusai's Shono is particularly interesting because it allows a side-by-side comparison with Hiroshige's later treatment of the same station, showing how two great designers approached a single point on the Tokaido through different sensibilities, and how the road accumulated its own visual tradition across the early nineteenth century.
1821
Color woodblock print with metallic pigments; surimono shikishiban
1822
Color woodblock print; shikishiban, surimono
1822
Color woodblock print; shikishiban, surimono
c. 1832
Color woodblock print; oban
Wakasa Kugushiko
1920
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
1934
Color woodblock print; oban
n.d.
Woodblock print; ishizuri-e, section of harimaze sheet
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Shono, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)" was created by Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) in c. 1806.
Yes — Shono, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)" is part of the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido series by Katsushika Hokusai.
Shono, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)" depicts landscapes and tōkaidō.