Fujisawa, from the series "A Record of a Journey to Enoshima (Enoshima kiko)"

Fujisawa is one of the station views in A Record of a Journey to Enoshima (Enoshima kiko), the celebrated surimono series Totoya Hokkei designed in 1833 for a kyoka poetry circle whose members took collective pleasure in retracing the famous pilgrimage route from Edo south to the island shrine of Benzaiten. Located along the Tokaido and at the gateway to the side road leading to Enoshima, Fujisawa was a natural choice for inclusion in the set, marking a transition between the major coastal highway and the final stretch of the journey. Hokkei's composition combines a low horizon, controlled placement of figures, and a careful balance of architectural and natural elements characteristic of his mature landscape practice. He learned this disciplined approach to space directly from Katsushika Hokusai, and his role within the Hokusai school was to extend such conventions into the more private and literary format of surimono. The inscribed kyoka verses above the image transform the station view into a poetic event, the patrons' contributions completing a printed object whose audience was the membership of the club itself. The deluxe production methods of surimono, including limited edition runs, metallic pigments, and embossing, made these sheets some of the most refined products of the Edo print industry, even though they were never sold publicly. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression of Fujisawa under accession entry 80996, contributing to a wider corpus of surviving sheets from the set that document Totoya Hokkei's mediation between Hokusai school landscape vocabulary and the refined tastes of kyoka poets.