Yokkaichi: The Junction of the Road to Ise Shrine at Hinaga Village (Yokkaichi, Hinagamura oiwake, Sangudo)—No. 44, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Reisho Tokaido

Yokkaichi: The Junction of the Road to Ise Shrine at Hinaga Village, designed around 1842, is the forty-fourth station in Utagawa Hiroshige's Reisho Tokaido, named for the formal clerical script used in its title cartouches. Yokkaichi, on the Ise Bay coast of present-day Mie Prefecture, was a market town and important crossroads: the Tokaido continued north toward the capital, while a branch road known as the Sangu kaido headed southwest toward the Grand Shrine of Ise, the holiest pilgrimage destination in Japan. Hiroshige situates this Edo ukiyo-e landscape print at the moment travelers must decide which way to continue. A signpost or shrine marker stands at the fork, surrounded by porters, packhorses, and groups of pilgrims, each bound for a different goal. Hinaga village extends along the road into the middle distance, with thatched roofs and field patterns suggesting the agricultural character of the area, while distant ridges close the view. The composition emphasizes the social function of the station as a meeting and parting point rather than its picturesque qualities alone. Compared to his earlier Hoeido Tokaido designs, the Reisho series adopts wider, more compositionally balanced views and a quieter palette. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression, an instructive example of how Hiroshige used the Tokaido subject across multiple editions to explore both regional geography and the human drama of travel on Japan's most important early modern highway.