Öi River

Catalog note / 解説

This print was conserved with the support of the Robert F. Lange Foundation. Travel literature such as journals and maps appeared long before the Edo period, but it was with Jippensha Ikku's comic series of 1802-09, Adventures Down the Tökaidö (Tökaidöchü hizakurige), that this genre reached its height of popularity. Public demand for illustrated versions of the series culminated a couple of decades later in Utagawa Hiroshige's popular Fifty-three Stations of the Tökaidö, some of which is displayed here. In the 1840s there were few Japanese who were not familiar with the author Jippensha Ikku's tale of the comically belligerent duo featured in the center of this print, Yaji and Kita. In thi…