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

Kanaya was the twenty-fourth station of the Tokaido, lying on the far bank of the Oi River from Shimada and known throughout the Edo period for the difficulty of its river crossing, which was made on foot through unbridged water with the help of porters and litters. Utagawa Hiroshige's Kanaya in the 1832 Kyoka iri Tokaido, held by the Art Institute of Chicago (object 4354), engages this crossing as the central subject of the design. The sheet shows the wide expanse of the Oi River as a band of pale water cutting across the foreground, with rows of porters carrying travelers in seats or simply on their shoulders through the current. On the Kanaya bank, the post town rises gently, while distant hills close the upper part of the view. As an Edo ukiyo-e landscape print, the design illustrates one of the defining infrastructural facts of the Tokaido: that even the most heavily traveled road in the country had no permanent bridge over its great central rivers. The Kyoka iri version's verse cartouche adds a literary frame to this practical scene. For collectors, the print is a useful complement to Hiroshige's other treatments of the Oi crossing and an instructive piece of social topography within his Edo ukiyo-e output.