Yoshiwara, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)"
- Date:
- c. 1806
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; chuban
Yoshiwara, 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. This Yoshiwara is the Tokaido station of that name in present-day Shizuoka, not the Edo pleasure quarter that shared the name, and Hokusai's sheet treats it as a coastal post-town with views of the surrounding terrain. The composition arranges station buildings, travelers, and topographic cues into a clear, legible scene appropriate to the small sheet size, with line carrying much of the descriptive work and color held in restraint. Figures move through the foreground at the steady pace of travelers between stops, while the surrounding landscape opens just enough to indicate the wider geography of the road. As an Edo ukiyo-e print, the design belongs to the early-nineteenth-century print culture in which compact Tokaido sets circulated for an urban readership curious about the great highway connecting Edo and Kyoto. The impression is preserved in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. For collectors and students of ukiyo-e print history, Katsushika Hokusai's Yoshiwara is a useful early example of how the artist organized station imagery, demonstrating the structural clarity with which he treated road, architecture, and human movement decades before the landscape masterpieces of his later career.
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.
Yoshiwara, 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 — Yoshiwara, 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.
Yoshiwara, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)" depicts landscapes and tōkaidō.