Yui: The Yui River (Yui, Yuigawa), from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Tokaido with Poem (Kyoka iri Tokaido)

Yui: The Yui River (Yui, Yuigawa), from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Tokaido with Poem (Kyoka iri Tokaido), is an early-1830s woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige. Yui was the sixteenth post station along the highway between Edo and Kyoto, set on the Suruga coast just east of the celebrated Satta Pass. The Yui River, descending from the mountains to the sea, marked an important crossing for travelers and a recurring subject within Hiroshige's many Tokaido designs. In this print, the artist organizes the composition around the river and the road that flanks it: porters and pilgrims wade through a shallow stretch of water, while wooded slopes rise on one side and the bay opens out toward the horizon on the other, often offering a glimpse of Mount Fuji in the distance. The Kyoka iri Tokaido frames each station view with a comic kyoka poem in a cartouche, integrating the picture into the playful poetic culture of late Edo. This impression is held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Within Hiroshige's larger contribution to Edo ukiyo-e, the Yui sheet shows how the landscape print could absorb a single river crossing, the people who used it, and a famous mountain on the skyline into one tightly judged page, modeling the visual economy on which his enduring reputation rests.