Imazu, the Sixtieth Station

Imazu, the Sixtieth Station is a landscape print by Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) that depicts a stage along the Kisokaido, the inland highway that connected Edo to Kyoto over a mountainous route alternative to the coastal Tokaido. Imazu lay along the route in Omi Province on the western shore of Lake Biwa, a region prized in Edo ukiyo-e for the play of light across the great lake and the silhouettes of distant peaks. Hiroshige collaborated with Keisai Eisen on the Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaido (Kisokaido rokujukyu tsugi), one of the central monuments of the meisho-e tradition, contributing the majority of the designs and shaping the series' distinctive synthesis of road, weather, and landscape. The numbered designation in the title situates the image within the post-station sequence, and Hiroshige's treatment characteristically subordinates the figures of travelers and innkeepers to the larger natural setting in which they move. Through bokashi gradation, restrained palettes, and acute observation of moisture and atmosphere, he gives even a less-frequented station the dignity of an autonomous landscape. The print, accessible through ukiyo-e.org, demonstrates how the Kisokaido sequence broadened the geographic range of Edo's landscape print culture beyond the seacoast and into the colder, more thickly forested heart of central Honshu.