Utagawa Hiroshige's "Mishima: Morning Mist (Mishima, asagiri)," from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road (Tokaido gojusan tsugi no uchi)," also known as the Hoeido Tokaido, dated 1828 in the Art Institute of Chicago's records, is one of the defining landscape prints of Edo ukiyo-e. Mishima was the eleventh station on the Tokaido road, in Izu Province, famous for the great Mishima Taisha shrine and for travelers setting off into the dawn after a night at its inns. Hiroshige stages the scene at the moment when fog lies low along the road, half-obscuring porters, horsemen, and the iconic torii gate so that only their silhouettes emerge through the gray-blue mist. The result is a study in selective revelation: shapes register as gradations rather than outlines, and the viewer's eye is invited to feel the cold dampness of an early start on the road. The Hoeido Tokaido is the project that catapulted Hiroshige to popular fame, and "Mishima: Morning Mist" sits among its most admired sheets, often cited as a masterclass in atmospheric printing. The bokashi gradient skies and the carefully judged distribution of figures in space established design conventions that subsequent meisho-e artists would imitate. For Edo-period travelers, the print served as a souvenir, an inducement, and a memory aid; for modern collectors of Japanese woodblock prints, it is a touchstone of how landscape print art could externalize mood. The image also helped cement Mishima's identity in popular imagination as a station defined by mist and pilgrimage. Now held at the Art Institute of Chicago, this Utagawa Hiroshige Mishima Hoeido Tokaido landscape print remains a foundational image of Japan's most-traveled Edo-period highway.
Wakasa Kugushiko
1920
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
1934
Color woodblock print; oban
n.d.
Woodblock print; ishizuri-e, section of harimaze sheet
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Mishima: Morning Mist (Mishima, asagiri), from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road (Tokaido gojusan tsugi no uchi)," also known as the Hoeido Tokaido was created by Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重) in c. 1833/34.
Mishima: Morning Mist (Mishima, asagiri), from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road (Tokaido gojusan tsugi no uchi)," also known as the Hoeido Tokaido depicts landscapes, tōkaidō, and travel scenes.
