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

Shinagawa, 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 in the Art Institute of Chicago, designed around 1832. Shinagawa was the first station of the Tokaido after leaving Edo, marking the formal beginning of the long journey to Kyoto. Located on the western shore of Edo Bay, it functioned both as a working post town and as a sprawling pleasure district whose teahouses, brothels, and harbourside inns enjoyed an especially lively reputation. Hiroshige's Hoeido Shinagawa shows a daimyo procession arriving along the coast as the bay opens to the south. The Kyoka iri Tokaido version revisits Shinagawa with a kyoka verse and a complementary design, suggesting a slightly different aspect of the station's character. As an Edo ukiyo-e landscape print, Shinagawa benefits from its dual identity as a place of departure and as one of the suburban quarters in which Edo's leisure economy flourished. Hiroshige's choice to begin a Tokaido series here rather than at Nihonbashi made Shinagawa effectively the road's first major scenic statement, and his repeated returns to the station across multiple Tokaido versions show how it served as a kind of pictorial gateway to the entire series. The Art Institute of Chicago's preservation of the Kyoka iri Tokaido invites close comparison with the Hoeido Shinagawa, and viewers can study how Hiroshige modulated his depictions of the same coastal town to fit different publishing strategies, audience tastes, and formats over the course of his career.