Shimada: The Oi River (Shimada, Oigawa)—No. 24, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Reisho Tokaido

Shimada: The Oi River (Shimada, Oigawa), No. 24 from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Reisho Tokaido, is a circa-1842 woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige. The Reisho Tokaido takes its nickname from the reisho clerical script used for the station cartouches and is one of several full Tokaido editions Hiroshige produced over his career. Shimada was the twenty-third post station along the road; just beyond it lay the Oi River, one of the most demanding crossings on the Tokaido. Bridges were prohibited for strategic reasons, so travelers waded or were carried across by licensed kawagoshi (river porters) on shoulder-borne platforms. In Hiroshige's Reisho design, the river dominates the composition: a wide gravel bed and braided channels stretch across the foreground, with porters carrying daimyo retinues, pilgrims, and merchants in long processions across the water. The artist treats the scene with the painterly atmospheric handling that distinguishes the Reisho edition from his earlier Hoeido set, broader washes of color, softer transitions, and a stronger sense of weather. This impression is held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Within his career-long engagement with the Tokaido, the print shows how Hiroshige could revisit a site already familiar from earlier sets and rework it as a more atmospheric, less narrative landscape print, true to his late Edo ukiyo-e sensibility.