Miya, Kuwana, Yokkaichi, and Ishiyakushi, from the series "Famous Places on the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, Four Stations (Tokaido gojusan eki yonshuku meisho)"

Miya, Kuwana, Yokkaichi, and Ishiyakushi, four consecutive stations of the Tokaido road as it skirts the head of Ise Bay and crosses into the lands south of Nagoya, are consolidated onto a single oban sheet in Utagawa Kuniyoshi's series Famous Places on the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, Four Stations. Published around 1825 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, the design captures one of the most distinctive stretches of the great highway, where overland travel intersected with the ferry crossing of Ise Bay between Miya and Kuwana. Kuniyoshi orchestrates the composition as a landscape continuum, weaving small figures of travellers, boats, and pilgrims through a topography that recalls the actual geographic relationships of the four stations. The Miya-Kuwana ferry, the bustling river-mouth town of Kuwana, the open fields and small temples around Yokkaichi, and the famous Yakushi-do of Ishiyakushi are all suggested with concise notational detail. Although Kuniyoshi is most strongly identified with Edo ukiyo-e warrior prints, his treatment of the Tokaido here testifies to his complete fluency in the meisho-e idiom of the late Bunsei era. The bokashi gradations of sky and water, the careful balance of horizontal and vertical, and the rhythm of figures echo the larger landscape currents that Hokusai had set in motion and that Hiroshige would soon transform. The sheet also records the everyday experience of the Tokaido for Edo travellers, suggesting how literary, religious, and commercial activity all overlapped along the road as it approached the Ise pilgrimage routes.