Fujieda, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Tokaido with Poem (Kyoka iri Tokaido)

Fujieda, from Utagawa Hiroshige's Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi), Tokaido with Poem (Kyoka iri Tokaido) version, dates to about 1832 and is held by the Art Institute of Chicago. Fujieda lay in Suruga Province as the twenty-second post town along the highway and served as a relay station where porters and packhorses changed at the local honjin compound. In this Edo ukiyo-e landscape print, Hiroshige focuses on the everyday labor of the post system, depicting porters loading and unloading goods, packhorses standing or being led, and travelers waiting beside the relay buildings. Such infrastructure scenes are characteristic of his Tokaido work, in which the highway is presented not only as a sequence of picturesque vistas but also as a working transport network. The composition places figures and animals across the foreground and middle ground, with low buildings extending sideways to frame the scene, and the surrounding landscape suggested in muted greens and browns. The inscribed kyoka that gives the series its alternate title links the image to popular verse circles that delighted in commemorating each station with a comic poem. Through this combination of pictorial detail and poetic commentary, the Fujieda sheet captures both the practical operation of the Tokaido and the way Edo audiences enjoyed thinking about the highway as a literary subject, reinforcing Hiroshige's role as the central visual chronicler of inter-city travel in late-Edo Japan.