Artist: Utagawa Hiroshige
Production date: 1851 (Kaei 4)

Kanagawa and Hodogaya, from the series Famous Places of the Toukaidou
The third and fourth post stations of the Toukaidou Highway, Kanagawa (Irregular kanji characters were used for Kanagawa) and Hodogaya are illustrated but separated by the mist illustrated between the stations. On the right below at the Kanagawa station, there is a notation of Asamasha indicates the Asama Shrine, and this place was flourished as a rest spot between the post stations. The right next to the notation, “Hito-Ana”(cave) is illustrated. Today’s research proves that the horizontal cave was an ancient tomb of a power holder but during the Edo period, it was connected with the Fuji-Shinkou (Worship of Mt. Fuji) and people believed that this cave is connected to Mt. Fuji through the underground tunnel.

This is an e-baisho (anthology of the seventeen syllables Japanese haiku poems with related pictures) that a variety of poems written by the notable contemporary poets from the haikai poetry circles are allotted with the pictures of famous places of the Toukaidou, as a hokku-shu (anthology hokku or haiku poems ) appears in pictures. This series was the changed title version of “Toukaidou Meisho Hokku-shu (The Hokku-shu of Famous Places of the Toukaidou)”, published by Eiraku-ya Jousuke in 1851, and originally the format of this picture was hanpon or book style. However when this version was made, the landscapes of Edo to Izu were re-edited as a gajou (folded picture book) format, thus the readers can appreciate each landscape as the independent picture. When Hiroshige produced this work, he was also commissioned to paint nikuhitsu-ga (paintings) from Tendou clan. Therefore the expressions such as the composition with natural dimension and bluish pale touch of the color in this series are influenced from the painting expressions.