Famous Places on the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, Three Stations (Tokaido gojusan eki sanshuku meisho)

This set by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, the Tokaido gojusan eki sanshuku meisho, is a near sibling of the four-station and five-station Tokaido projects he produced in the late 1830s and 1840s, in which the great highway between Edo and Kyoto was distributed across compact sheets that grouped neighboring post stations together within a unifying framing device. Where the canonical Hoeido cycle treats each of the fifty-three stations as a separate composition, the three-station format compresses the journey, allowing buyers to assemble the entire Tokaido from a much smaller set of prints. As an example of late Edo fukei-e, the project belongs to a market in which the basic Tokaido formula had been thoroughly absorbed and in which novelty came through unusual groupings, fresh vantage points, or playful combinations of stations whose famous places might not otherwise share a sheet. Kuniyoshi treats each station with characteristic economy, supplying just enough of its identifying feature, whether a famous bridge, noted teahouse, or distinctive natural landmark, to satisfy a viewer who carried the Tokaido in memory. The publisher and date should be verified against the standard reference catalogues, but the prints sit comfortably within the network of Edo houses that issued Kuniyoshi landscapes alongside his more famous warrior subjects. For modern scholarship the compact Tokaido sheets are valuable precisely because they show the formal experimentation that characterized Edo print publishing in its late maturity, when the Tokaido had become a cultural commonplace and the challenge for designers was to find ways to refresh it. Collectors today encounter these sheets as part of broader assessments of Kuniyoshi's landscape output, and they offer a clear demonstration of how the warrior-print master extended his designer's instinct into more compact topographic formats.

The Famous Places on the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, Three Stations (Tokaido gojusan eki sanshuku meisho) series contains 1 prints, created by Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

The Famous Places on the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, Three Stations (Tokaido gojusan eki sanshuku meisho) series was created by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳).

We currently have 1 of 1 known prints from the Famous Places on the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido, Three Stations (Tokaido gojusan eki sanshuku meisho) series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.