Kameyama—No. 47, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Reisho Tokaido

Kameyama was the forty-sixth post station on the Tokaido, a small castle town in Ise Province perched on a hill above the surrounding plain. The site is best known in Edo ukiyo-e landscape print history for Utagawa Hiroshige's Hoeido-period treatment of Kameyama under heavy snow, one of the masterpieces of his early Tokaido series. In this 1842 sheet from the Reisho Tokaido, the artist returns to the station with a different mood, treating the town's setting and architecture rather than reproducing the famous snowscape. The Reisho Tokaido takes its nickname from the clerical-script (reisho) calligraphy in its title cartouches and was published by Maruseiya Jinpachi as one of several Hiroshige Tokaido editions that recapitulated the route for an Edo market that continued to absorb such sets in large numbers. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression preserves the muted palette, controlled bokashi, and crisp registration valued in the series. By placing Kameyama in this calmer, more descriptive register, Hiroshige underlines a point characteristic of his late style: the same station can support multiple, equally valid pictorial interpretations, with weather, vantage, and incident varied to suit the temperament of a particular set rather than reproducing a single fixed view.