Which ukiyo-e artist designed The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō, first published in the 1830s?

Utagawa Hiroshige designed The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō, first published in the 1830s.

The series depicts the 53 post stations along the Tōkaidō road connecting Edo and Kyoto, together with the route’s two endpoints. Hiroshige’s first Tōkaidō series was published around 1833–1834 by the publisher Takenouchi Magohachi of Hoeidō.

Travel had become a major subject in Edo-period popular culture. The Tōkaidō was an important road, and prints let customers imagine its landscapes, weather, inns, bridges, food, and travelers. Hiroshige became famous for transforming these route views into atmospheric scenes.

The series is sometimes confused with Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji because both helped establish landscape ukiyo-e. Hiroshige’s Tōkaidō prints, however, are organized around a road and its stations, not around repeated views of one mountain.