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

Shimada belongs to Utagawa Hiroshige's Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi), Tokaido with Poem (Kyoka iri Tokaido) version, dated around 1832 and held in the Art Institute of Chicago. Shimada was the twenty-third station along the Tokaido and stood on the eastern bank of the Oi River, one of the most formidable obstacles on the highway between Edo and Kyoto. The Oi was deliberately kept unbridged by the shogunate, so travelers had to be carried across by porters wading or by shoulder-borne platforms when the water level allowed. Hiroshige's Edo ukiyo-e landscape print of Shimada concentrates on this distinctive ritual of crossing, depicting groups of porters preparing palanquins and travelers for the river passage. The bank is shown as a long horizontal strip, with the river opening out behind it and distant mountains rising in graded blue bokashi at the top of the sheet. Figures cluster in the foreground around bundled palanquins; some porters carry travelers piggyback, while others test the depth of the channel. The kyoka inscribed on the print belongs to the broader Kyoka iri Tokaido scheme, in which each station is paired with a comic verse, often making puns on local features. Through this combination of image and poem, Hiroshige and his publishers gave urban audiences a portable, slightly humorous map of the highway, of which this Shimada sheet captures one of the most memorable practical challenges of Edo-period travel.