The Tokaido ran along the coast between Edo and Kyoto and was the busiest and best-known road in Japan, used by officials, merchants and pilgrims. Hiroshige's series gave each of the fifty-three official stations along it, plus the two termini, its own print, so that the whole journey could be owned as a set even by people who never made the trip themselves ^[1]. Hiroshige is said to have travelled part of the route in 1832 as part of a ceremonial procession carrying gifts from the Shogun to the Emperor, and to have sketched the stations he passed, though the extent to which he also drew on existing guidebook illustrations of the same places is disputed among specialists ^[2].

Before the Tokaido series, Hiroshige had worked mainly in figure prints and had only recently moved into landscape, following the example of Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido, published from around 1832, was an immediate popular success and made his reputation as a landscape artist beyond dispute ^[3]. It was followed by further station series, including the Sixty-Nine Stations of the Kisokaido and One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, but the Tokaido series remained the work most identified with him ^[3].

The Tokaido series was issued by the publisher Hoeido, whose name is often used alongside the series title to distinguish this edition from the later, differently sized Tokaido sets Hiroshige produced for other publishers ^[2]. Like all ukiyo-e prints, each station image was the result of a team, not a single hand: Hiroshige supplied the design, a block-carver cut it into cherry wood, and a printer applied each colour from a separate block, building the finished sheet in stages. Hiroshige himself never touched the woodblock or the ink.