Rediscovering the Old Tokaido: In the Footsteps of Hiroshige

Like walking the Shikoku pilgrimage route, walking the Tokaido Road is another dream of mine. I have been at both Nihonbashi, a bridge in Tokyo, and Sanjo Bridge in Kyoto, the beginning and end of the route but it was the Shinkansen that linked the two places for me.

The Tokaido is one of the routes used to travel from Edo (currently Tokyo) to Kyoto. It existed before the Edo Era but became very heavily used during that time. The name means east sea road - it runs close to the coastline. Much of it had been paved over, built upon, suplanted by highways and rail tracks but Patrick Carey, an Englishman living and working in Japan endeavored to find the original road and walk the entire 303 miles. In places there were markers but much of show more the time he had to decipher the road from physical landmarks or helpful people that he encountered along the way.

This book is the account of his adventure. The author undertook this journey armed with an old map showing only vaguely the position of the road and a small book of Hiroshige's wood block prints of the 53 stations along the route. Hiroshige's father had been a fireman in Edo and because of that Hiroshige secured a position as a minor official in the shogun's government. In 1832 he was part of a group charged with taking two horses to Kyoto as a gift to the Emperor and along the way he made sketches that he later turned into wood block prints.

My only complaint about the book is that the photos of Hiroshige's prints do not correspond the pages on which the author is describing the particular station. For instance, the print of the station at Hakone is on page 11 but the text referring to that station is on page 41. This meant a lot of flipping pages back and forth, a little annoying but just a small quibble. show less

IF you have been to Japan, and know even a bit about the history of the Old Tokaido, this is an interesting read. I enjoyed it, but I have hiked various parts of the old road. If you're looking for better book to talk about the history of the Tokaido, 'Japanese Inn' would be the place to start. If you've read it and this one, I would also recommend 'Shank's Mare' a translated Japanese book about the travels and travails of a pair of Japanese guys.