At Nihonbashi, Starting the Ōyama Pilgrimage (Nihonbashi Ōyama mōde no zu)

This early-Meiji ōban color woodblock [triptych](/glossary/triptych) by Utagawa Kuniteru II, held by the Edo-Tokyo Museum (accession 0192200017), depicts the start of the Ōyama pilgrimage at Nihonbashi — the great wooden bridge in central Tokyo that marked the zero milestone of the Tōkaidō and the symbolic center of the city. Ōyama, a sacred mountain in Sagami Province (modern Kanagawa Prefecture) southwest of Tokyo, was a major pilgrimage destination from the Edo period onward; the summer Ōyama pilgrimage, undertaken by tradesmen's confraternities (kō) from Edo and the surrounding provinces, was one of the largest and most ritually elaborate popular religious observances of Edo-period and early-Meiji urban life.