Hiroshige’s Futagawa: Travellers on the Tōkaidō

A road through open country

Three travellers move towards a building at the left of Hiroshige’s Futagawa. They occupy a narrow strip of ground below a much larger landscape. Start with their feet, then follow the sloping edge of the path towards the right. The little group gives the open country a direction.

The impression shown here belongs to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its record names the print Futagawa, Saru ga Baba and dates it to around 1834. It is a woodblock print in ink and colour on paper, measuring 24.1 by 35.7 centimetres. The museum’s accession number is JP504. ^[1]

Follow the travellers

Look at the round hat in the middle of the group. Their close grouping makes each outline worth tracing. Two white head coverings catch the eye on either side. Long carried objects extend above the travellers’ shoulders.

Now look beneath the roof at the left. Another figure is partly visible inside the building. Compare the small gap between the approaching group and that opening with the expanse of landscape beyond them. The place to stop is close; the view still stretches far away.

Musicians on the road

RISD Museum’s exhibition label identifies the travellers in its impression as goze, blind female musicians. It describes musicians travelling in small groups along busy roads, playing the shamisen and singing in villages and towns. The label places Monkey Plateau, or Sarugababa, near the Futakawa station on the Tōkaidō road between Edo, now Tokyo, and Kyoto. ^[4]

The Five College Center for East Asian Studies’ Walking the Tōkaidō offers a different identification: probably two goze with a sighted companion who helped them travel safely. ^[5] Both accounts connect the group with travelling musicians. Their different readings leave a question to bring back to the print: what can the carried instruments and the figures’ arrangement tell us?

RISD also connects the teahouse with kashiwa-mochi, rice cakes wrapped in oak leaves. ^[4] Look again at the building, partly hidden behind the trees. A place of rest takes up very little of the image, yet it draws the travellers towards it.

Trees near and far

The large trees at the left interrupt the view. Their dark foliage and reddish trunks rise beside the teahouse, with some branches reaching towards the top of the sheet. Beyond them, much smaller trees repeat across the hills.

Compare one large foreground trunk with the scattered marks in the distance. Then follow the blue-green band across the middle of the print. The change in scale makes the country feel extensive without filling it with buildings or people.

One place, different prints

Hiroshige returned to the stations of the Tōkaidō in different series. ^[2][3] Allen Memorial Art Museum records a Futagawa print from Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, dated around 1833, accession 1950.824. Its recorded dimensions are 24.4 by 36.2 centimetres. ^[2]

Spencer Museum of Art’s Futagawa, numbered 1928.7350, belongs to the later series commonly called the Gyōsho Tōkaidō. Spencer dates it to the early 1840s and records an image measuring 19.5 by 31.5 centimetres on a larger sheet. ^[3] These are separate museum objects. Use their accession numbers to keep the impressions and series distinct when exploring the same place elsewhere.

Return to the Met sheet. Trace a route from the distant trees back to the tall trunks, then down to the three travellers. The landscape that first seemed almost empty has a destination and a small human journey within it.