Kyoto: The Imperial Palace (Kyo, Dairi), from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Tokaido with Poem (Kyoka iri Tokaido)

Kyoto: The Imperial Palace (Kyo, Dairi), 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 dating to around 1832 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago. The series ends, as the road did, at Kyoto, the imperial capital and historic seat of court culture. Where the Hoeido Tokaido closed at the Sanjo Bridge over the Kamo River, the Kyoka iri version offers an alternative terminus by focusing on the Dairi, the imperial palace precincts whose great gates and roofed walls signalled the cultural authority of the city. Hiroshige builds the composition around the formal architecture of the palace and the visitors approaching it, paired with a kyoka verse that interprets the scene in a witty or affectionate register. The Edo ukiyo-e landscape print typically used Kyoto as a closing flourish for a Tokaido series, and the choice between the Sanjo Bridge and the imperial palace highlights different aspects of what Kyoto meant to Edo audiences, the bustling commercial river crossing on one hand and the centre of classical court culture on the other. The Art Institute of Chicago's preservation of the Kyoka iri Tokaido allows the series to be read as a complete travelogue, and the closing image of the Dairi communicates the symbolic weight of arrival at the seat of the emperor after the long road from Nihonbashi. The design rewards careful study of architectural detail and of how Hiroshige handled the difficult problem of bringing such a series to a fitting visual conclusion.