道中画譜|Picture Album of Road Pictures (of the Tōkaidō Road) (Dōchū gafu 道中画譜)
1830s
Medium
Woodblock printed book; ink and color on paper
Dimensions
9 × 6 1/2 in. (22.8 × 16.5 cm)
Classification
Illustrated Books
Culture & Period
Japan · Edo period (1615–1868)
Department
Asian Art
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Mary and James G. Wallach Foundation Gift, 2013
Accession Number
2013.706
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Picture Album of Road Pictures ( the Tōkaidō Road)** (*Dōchū gafu*), created by Totoya Hokkei the 1830s, is a delightful woodblock-printed book capturing the bustling scenes along Japan's historic Tōkaidō Road. This vital route, one of the five main highways of the Edo period (1615–1868), Edo (modern Tokyo) to Kyoto, facilitating travel for samurai, merchants, and pilgrims the shogunate's *sankin-kōtai* system, which required daimyo to alternate residence in the capital. Hokkei's vivid illustrations feature lively vignettes of men on horseback, boats gliding through rivers, arched bridges, a...
About the Artist
Totoya Hokkei 魚屋北渓 (Japanese) · 1780 –1850
Japanese, 1780–1850