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Experimental Cartography in Hiroshige’s Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road

Lasting from the consolidation of military power away from the traditional capital of Kyoto in 1603 and giving way to the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the Tokugawa Shogunate governed Japan with a unique rule on travel and trade, where the archipelago was to isolate itself from the rest of the world with only small doses of trade with other nations.

Travel within the nation was allowed but regulated. The policy of alternate attendance to the capital (sankin-kōtai) drove the formation of the imperial highway system that ultimately reinforced the power of the new capital, Edo. One of five primary routes leading out of Edo, the Tōkaidō Road led from Edo to Tokyo.

In the final century of shogunate rule, travel for leisure became increasingly popular as a result of surplus agricultural production and subsequent urbanization. So too did the proliferation of travel-related media including maps, guidebooks, and — most pertinent to this article — works of art.

Born in 1797 in Edo, print artist Utagawa Hiroshige saw widespread popularity after publishing his blockbuster series, The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsugi) in the early 1830s.

Following the convention of compromise between fact and fiction established by contemporary maps and guidebooks of the Tōkaidō, Hiroshige’s series features landscapes with varied commitment to reality, often arranging physically distant elements of a given site for aesthetic convenience.

The coexistence of systematic documentation and fictive artistry sees The Fifty-Three Stations as an artifact of experimental cartography, in which purposely impractical compositions shape popular understanding of place.

The Tōkaidō Road’s Place in the History of Japanese Cartography

The history of Japanese mapmaking is not easily accessible, in part because it was not treated as a distinct practice. The history of Japanese mapmaking is not easily accessible, in part because it was not treated as a distinct practice. In an essay in the collection Japanese Cartography, Satoh Ken’ichi explains that what evidence of cartography that does remain from pre-medieval history provides few clues: “Maps of small areas must have been drawn freehand while the mapmaker was looking at the terrain, while domain maps were presumably drawn with recourse to memory and imagination” (33).

With the continued construction of a national highway system, the shogunate seized a clerical opportunity to reinforce Edo’s claim as a capital city with the kuniezu project.

Figure 1: Suruga Province Kuniezu map
Figure 1 shows the Suruga province, just west of Edo along the Tōkaidō route, with color-coded notation. Kuniezu proved an exercise in bureaucratic dominance, in which shogunate cartographers developed a streamlined style guide for notation seen on national, provincial, and local maps.

A professor at the University of Tokyo’s Historiographical Institute, Sugimoto Fumiko calls on the efficacy of simple, consistent graphic forms “to indicate the organization of an administrative system”: “Red, blue, black, and white constitute the four primary colors, as customarily expressed in the Japanese language. In the maps, red is used for roads, blue for waterways, and black for the boundaries of county-level districts (gun)” (49).

Kuniezu placed undying emphasis on detail, with features including uniquely shaped and colored labels for castles and their lords, specific ovals to identify tax obligations, and figures on villages’ average annual rice production (Fumiko 49). A database of official maps anticipated (and at least in part caused) the explosion of interest in leisurely travel a century later.

As detailed by Princeton University’s Nicole Fabricand-Person, the establishment of such a system allowed for the creation of a second layer of mapping in the form of guidebooks:

“[B]y the mid-seventeenth century the small, concisely written guidebooks (dōchūki) that contained important practical information to be carried by tourists were joined by expanded ‘fictional guidebooks,’ which offered a blend of fact and fiction for this rapidly growing but non-traveling audience.” (72)

In the decades prior to Hiroshige’s Fifty-Three Stations, there existed a “cult of travel,” a robust infrastructure of government-distributed, mathematically exact maps supplemented by publicly disseminated information whose allegiance to truth proved increasingly pliable.

The development of cartography as an institution in seventeenth-century Japan was not possible without the physical infrastructure that enabled diplomatic and later recreational travel. Figure 2 is a 100-inch-wide scroll of the Tōkaidō road near the Hakone station.

Figure 2: “Proportional Linear Maps of the Major Turnpikes,” Hakone station on the Tōkaidō Road, from Wigen, Kären, et al.
Though not directly connected to Hiroshige’s famous series, this map does provide an example of the cooperative relationship between fiction and reality in cartography during the Edo Period, where an interest in seamless visual presentation supplements and sometimes overrules the aim of exact measurement on a given map.

The map-landscape hybrid depicts Tōkaidō as an unrealistically wide, gold surface, its function not dissimilar to a subway line on a modern transit map. The composition prioritizes the information most necessary to the viewer and leaves room to spare for environmental context.

Figures 3.1-4: Maps of the London Underground transit system from 1895 to 1933, where abstraction of geographical reality takes hold over time for increased clarity, a practice not dissimilar to that found in Figure 2.
Constantine N. Vaporis offers a series of thoughts on the image.

First, “this extension of the gaze far beyond the borders of the road implied Japan’s unity under Tokugawa rule” (46-47). Notably, the major natural features in the scene are labeled, but Mt. Fuji is not labeled and instead colored white.

Second, Vaporis notes the map’s creation date, which is estimated to be much closer to Hiroshige’s day and thus much later than the initial burst of shogunate-sponsored cartography.

He explains, “The late date of production of these maps indicates that even with the long years of peace that defined the Tokugawa era, the shogunate never lost its strategic concerns in administering the highway network” (44).

Especially pertinent to the power of mapping techniques as reflected in Hiroshige’s series, “[b]oth maps contain a remarkable level of detail, noting the structure of bridges (stone, wood, or earth), the position of mileage markers, and the location of post-station offices and inns for daimyo” (Vaporis 46).

Even if he took comprehensive notes during his journey along the Tōkaidō, Hiroshige had access to a series of detailed, specific maps whose wayfinding elements snuck their way into certain prints despite the artists’ frequent lean toward impossible scenes.

Then and now, visual evidence of the highway network supports its crucial role to the both the logistical prowess and symbolic power of Tokugawa rule, but Vaporis goes so far as to cite infrastructure official Tanaka Kyūgu (1662-1729), who called the system the “arms and legs of realm” (46).

The Fifty-Three Stations as Experimental Cartography

The Fifty-Three Stations features 55 total prints, with each of the administrative checkpoints along the roughly 300-mile journey featured in order, as well as bookend prints of Edo and Kyoto, respectively. The order of the prints start from Edo and end in Kyoto, this standard practice in the popular once again reinforcing shogunal control.

An inversion of the Western adage “all roads lead to Rome,” in the case of Tokugawa Japan, all roads seem to lead from Edo. Hiroshige’s series was uniquely popular but remained one in a long line of print series with the same title.

Importantly, woodblock prints were not treated as fine art: They were a single element among a medley of mass-printed products. The prints functioned not only as souvenirs for travelers who wished to commemorate their journeys but also as collectibles for those who dreamed of those same journeys. But to which group did Hiroshige himself belong?

With some level of certainty, the artist “was appointed in 1832 to travel to Kyoto with a delegation bringing the annual gift of horses from the shogun to the emperor” (Fabricand-Person 83). There is no evidence to suggest that The Fifty-Three Stations was a commissioned work, by the shogun or otherwise — such a structure was not common in printing. Regardless, Hiroshige did see the route he later depicted.

By the 1830s, a majority of Tōkaidō travelers did so for leisure, and Hiroshige’s series reflects the emphasis not always on the road itself but also on the natural landscape along its course, a thought confirmed by Columbia University’s Henry D. Smith II:

“Another consequence of Hiroshige’s emphasis on the leisure-orientated ‘culture of movement’ was a heavy stress of the surrounding landscape, which was itself often the focus of the activities, especially in the case of seasonal viewing pleasures” (Forrer et al 39).

Some of the series’ most famous prints are those that show travelers braving extreme weather conditions in various seasons, Hiroshige’s single trip during a single season proving that some scenes could not have been from mere eyewitness.

Of 55 in the series, ten station prints include a thin, pink-ish yellow signpost that stands at each station as a sort of checkpoint or mile marker, in addition to potential directional information.

Figure 4: Utagawa Hiroshige, 1797-1858, Fukuroi [Station 27]: Tea Stall (Fukuroi, dejaya no zu), from the series “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi no uchi),” also known as the Hoeido Tokaido, 1828-39, Color woodblock print; oban, Frederick W. Gookin Collection, 1939.1358
Station 27, Fukuroi (Figure 4), features the signpost at a height of roughly 10 feet that reaches behind a large tree at the center of the tea stall scene. Like a number of others, the print also includes a pentagonal signpost which was meant to display temporary messages or news items from the desk of the shogun.

The same is true of Station 37, Fujikawa (Figure 5), whose obelisk-shaped signpost emerges as a main element of the scene alongside the house-shaped bulletin boards.

Figure 5: Utagawa Hiroshige, 1797-1858, Fujikawa [Station 37]: View of Post Outskirts (Fujikawa, bohana no zu), from the series “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi no uchi),” also known as the Hoeido Tokaido, 1828-39, Color woodblock print; oban, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Harold G. Henderson, 1963.671
Meanwhile, Station 47, Seki (Figure 6), presents a more temporary sign whose outline juts out of the frame of the print. Crucially, Hiroshige chooses to face the written information away from the viewer.

Figure 6: Utagawa Hiroshige, 1797-1858, Seki [Station 47]: Early Departure from the Main Camp (Seki, honjin hayadachi), from the series “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi no uchi),” also known as the Hoeido Tokaido, 1828-39, Color woodblock print; oban, Clarence Buckingham Collection, 1925.3555
Though other signage in the series has only scribbled text, had the information been front-facing, the scene may have felt staged. Instead, the sign adds context to the direction of the path through camp: from the right of the trees through the center of the composition.

One step beyond the clerical action of Edo-period officials to design, standardize, and position such wayfinding elements is Hiroshige’s inclusion of such mundane signage in a series of scenes whose scapes are otherwise embellished.

Sophisticated mapmaking and an artist’s depiction of wayfinding infrastructure may be distinct processes, but once again, both reflect the power that the Tokugawa regime wielded in terrifyingly ordinary ways.

Efficient bureaucratic management — well kept paths, proper shade, and proper directional signage — enabled not only the high volume of recreational travel but also the mythology around such travel fostered in fictional dōchūki and The Fifty-Three Stations alike.

Hiroshige’s original Fifty-Three Stations garnered such attention that the artist reproduced the series in different forms throughout his career. And while his primary aim was always to sell prints, the mixture of fantastic and prosaic details requires investigation into the series’ role as a cartographic artifact.

Earlier, this article discussed the split consumer base of such a series: weathered travelers who may have enjoyed the series in commemoration and hopeful travelers who may have enjoyed the series in aspiration.

Dutch art historian Matthi Forrer establishes the much-discussed notion of Hiroshige's embellishments in the series: “Many of his landscapes do indeed tell of a reality that has been manipulated, for example by the selection of a particular vantage point or by the omission of parts that make the view lack ‘style’ or ‘meaning’” (23).

Should one use Forrer’s words against him, then to a certain extent, Hiroshige saw the governmental signage as meaningful — integral parts of the travel experience. While the prints introduced in this project are examples of specific stops along the road, many in the series tend toward more natural features.

If a station’s main attractions were an inland forest and a picturesque beach, Hiroshige would often bring the two, miles apart, into the same scene, with the Tōkaidō running down the middle, to capture the essence of the region.

The prints functioned as a series of postcards, both in their popularity as a memento among travelers and their willingness to bend the reality of a scene to deliver the most crucial information.

There is no evidence to suggest that Hiroshige sketched these scenes in real time, and perhaps more obviously, the characters he depicts in all 55 works are not real people.

One has no reason to doubt the existence of a tea stand at Fukuroi, but Hiroshige’s balance between fiction and non-fiction allowed him to show the different sorts of travelers along the route — in some cases the new throngs of leisurely travelers and in other cases, as in the Seki print, the dignitaries for whom the roads were originally constructed.

In reference to Figure 2, Vaporis explains, “We see very little evidence here of that lively bustle, and only a restrained view of the significant urbanization in the post stations that line the road” (45).

So while the kuniezu and other types of maps provided insights into the routes, Hiroshige’s series offered a more personalized, more editorialized, and ultimately more intriguing story about the Tōkaidō Road. Hiroshige was not commissioned by the shogun, and thus, his prints served the consuming public, as Smith highlights:

“Hiroshige was selling images of places, not documentary photographs. His depiction of many places outside Edo are far more important in revealing how his work promoted the visualisation of a new national space in the later Tokugawa period” (Forrer et al 39-40).

The Fifty-Three Stations was by no means a result of cartographic survey. Beyond two passes on his single round-trip journey between Edo and Kyoto, Hiroshige did not sketch these scenes from direct, prolonged observation, and some of the vantage points do not really exist.

But the series interacts with cartography nonetheless, its resonance with the Japanese public evidence of the series’ efficacy as a piece of “popular cartography,” where the idea of place is just as important as its reality.

Exigence

Japanese mapmaking followed a distinct historical path from its Western counterparts, but the proliferation of Dutch surveying methods at the front end of the Edo Period led the Tokugawa shogunate to organize representations of its land and its people under one project.

Kuniezu supported the Tokugawa’s ushering of a single national identity, but cartographic infrastructure and the travel it anticipated both played a role in the development of distinct local identities through nature, economics, and personalities.

Katsushika Hokusai and other heavy-hitting print artists checked the Tōkaidō box during their careers, but Hiroshige’s remains fairly singular in modern collective consciousness for its artistry and imagination.

Hiroshige’s Fifty-Three Stations offers a window into popular understandings of the various stops along Japan’s most famous road, reinforces the bureaucratic power of the Tokugawa shogunate, and exposes the possibilities of storytelling in a semi-fictional reality.

References

Fabricand-Person, Nicole. “The Tōkaidō Road: Journeys through Japanese Books and Prints in the Collections of Princeton University.” The Princeton University Library Chronicle, vol. 73, no. 1, 2011, pp. 68–99.

Forrer, Matthi, Suzuki Jūzo, and Henry D. Smith II. Hiroshige: Prints and Drawings. Prestel, 1997.

Fumiko, Sugimoto. “Visualizing the Political World through Provincial Maps.” Wigen, Kären, et al., editors. Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps. University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Goree, Robert. "The Culture of Travel in Edo-Period Japan." Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History. November 19, 2020. Oxford University Press.

Ken’chi, Satoh. “The Introduction of Dutch Surveying Instruments in Japan.” Wigen, Kären, et al., editors. Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps. University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Shores, Matthew W. “Travel and ‘Tabibanashi’ in the Early Modern Period: Forming Japanese Geographic Identity.” Asian Theatre Journal, vol. 25, no. 1, 2008, pp. 101–21.

Vaporis, Constantine N. “The Arms and Legs of the Realm.” Wigen, Kären, et al., editors. Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps. University of Chicago Press, 2016.