Station #36: In the evenings the inns rocked with songs and drunken laughter, and in some towns gambling was frenzied. The Director of the Dutch trading mission, Englebert Kaempfer, traveled the Tokaido to present gifts to the Shogun in 1690. He found the inns lively and wrote in his dairy: "they set after meals drinking and singing some songs to make one another merry, or else they propose some riddles round, or play at some other game, and he that cannot explain the riddle or loses the game, is oblig'd to drink a glass." To the left we see a man returning from the bath and a blind masseur about to minister to a traveler's sore muscles. To the right, the inn's waitresses are putting on make-up before entertaining the guests.

Image Copyright: Minneapolis Institute of Art