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

Goyu, from the series Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi), also known as the Tokaido with Poem (Kyoka iri Tokaido), is a landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige in the Art Institute of Chicago, dated to around 1832. Goyu was the thirty-fifth station of the Tokaido, in present-day Aichi Prefecture, infamous among contemporary travellers and later print collectors for its meshimori onna, the female attendants of the post inns who would tug at travellers' sleeves to draw them inside for the night. Hiroshige's Hoeido Goyu, with its candid scene of women pulling on a guest's clothing in front of an inn, became one of the most loved images in the original Tokaido series. The Kyoka iri Tokaido version revisits the same town in a different design, pairing it with a kyoka verse and continuing the formula of integrating comic poetry with travel imagery. Goyu's reputation gave Hiroshige and his publishers a recognisable hook for the station, but his designs of Goyu range from straightforward town views to the more pointed and humorous interpretations of inn life. As an example of the Edo ukiyo-e landscape print, the work reminds us that Hiroshige's road imagery did not avoid the social complexities of travel, and that the road's commercial economy, taverns, ferries, teahouses, brothels, was part of what he captured. The Art Institute of Chicago's collection preserves this Kyoka iri Goyu alongside Hiroshige's other treatments, supporting comparative study of how the artist returned to one of the Tokaido's most narratively loaded stations.