Station #52: Someone is in a hurry - notice how the rider in the kago grips the handle - and he has four porters, not two! Could he be rushing a secret message to a daimyo? A normal journey would take two to three weeks along the Tokaido from Edo to Kyoto. Often travelers took longer, enjoying the freedom from the restrictions imposed by the government in their home town or village. The rice-cake shop in this print is taken directly from the 1797 guide to the Tokaido. Plagiarizing was, at best, a nebulous concept in the Edo Period. It was not unusual for artists to use ideas from literary and artistic publications of earlier years. But Hiroshige added his sympathetic depictions of the common man - the hard-working kago bearers and freight carriers - and that endeared him to the public.

Image Copyright: Minneapolis Institute of Art