About This Print

Source:Information on this station taken from the wikipedia article "53 Stations of the Tōkaidō."
The 53rd print in this series of 58¹ prints titled Fifty-three Stations of the Tôkaidô Road issued in October 1865, picturing Kusatsu the 52nd station along the Tōkaidō as well as the 68th of 69 stations of the Kisokaidō. It is located in the downtown area of the present-day city of Kusatsu, Shiga Prefecture, Japan.

Hiroshige II provides a similar view of travelers entering Kusatsu as that of his master Hiroshige I in his "Aratay" Tōkaidō series, shown below.


This collection's print is a chirimen-e or crêped print.  For the crêped version of the print, the same woodblocks are used as for the paper edition, but by the time the process is finished, the piece has shrunken considerably.  See chirimen-e in the Glossary for additional information on this type of print.

The non-crêped print measures 9 1/2 x 7 1/4 in. and the crêped version is 7 1/4 x 5 1/4 in., approximately
a 25% reduction in size caused by the crêping process.

¹ The 58 prints are made up of the 55 views of the 53 stations (includes two alternate states of prints for Minakuch station and Ishibe station) plus the Nihonbashi starting point print and two Kyoto terminus point prints.

About the Series

See the section titled "The 1865 Series Tōkaidō gojūsan eki (Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō)" under Utagawa Hiroshige II (1826-1869) for details on this series.

Print Details

IHL Catalog	#427
Title or Description	Kusatsu (Kusatsu 草津)
Series	Fifty-three Stations of the Tôkaidô Road (東海道五拾三駅 Tôkaidô gojûsan eki)
Artist	Utagawa Hiroshige II (1826-1869)
Signature	Risshō ga
Seal	none
Publication Date	after 1865 (Keiô 1), 10th month
Publisher	Maruya Tetsujirō
Impression	good
Colors	good
Condition	fair -  minor soiling; two remnants of previous mounting along top verso; pinhole in background
Genre	ukiyo-e, fûkei-ga
Miscellaneous
Format	vertical chûban
H x W Paper	7 1/4 x 5 1/4 in. (23.5 x 13.3 cm)
Literature
Collections This Print