Kawasaki: The Rokugo Ferry (Kawasaki, Rokugo no watashi)—No. 3, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Reisho Tokaido

Kawasaki: The Rokugo Ferry (Kawasaki, Rokugo no watashi), No. 3 from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Reisho Tokaido, was produced around 1842 by Utagawa Hiroshige. The Reisho Tokaido takes its nickname from the reisho-style "clerical" script used for the station cartouches and is one of several full Tokaido sets Hiroshige designed after the runaway success of his Hoeido edition of 1833. In this print, travelers cross the Tama River at the Rokugo ferry, the boundary between Edo and Musashi-Sagami country and the first major water crossing for those leaving the capital. Hiroshige composes the station around the river itself: a ferry barge laden with figures, porters, and packhorses pushes out from the bank, while distant boats and a low, atmospheric horizon establish the wide, slow rhythm of the crossing. The Reisho Tokaido is prized by collectors for its more painterly handling than the earlier Hoeido edition, with broader washes of color and a more atmospheric sense of weather, qualities at the heart of Hiroshige's mature Edo ukiyo-e landscape print practice. This impression is held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. As one of fifty-five sheets covering Edo, the fifty-three post stations, and Kyoto, the Reisho Kawasaki shows how Hiroshige could return to a familiar route and find new pictorial possibilities in the same stretch of river, reinforcing his standing as the defining travel artist of late Edo Japan.