The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kisokaido

The Nakasendo ran from Nihonbashi in Edo through Musashi, Kozuke, Shinano, Mino, and Omi to Sanjo Bridge in Kyoto, and because it passed through the Kiso Valley it was also called the Kisokaido. This series depicts the route on horizontal large-format nishiki-e, one design per station, numbering Nihonbashi as 1 and Otsu as 70. The route spans six present-day prefectures and metropolis: Tokyo, Saitama, Gunma, Nagano, Gifu, and Shiga. Designs from Shinano (Nagano), including the Kiso Valley, account for a little over a third of the 70.

The publisher was Hoeido, which had issued "The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido"; partway through Kinjudo joined, and later Kinjudo alone published the series. Keisai Eisen was engaged first and drew 24 designs, including the 11 from Nihonbashi to Honjo, but he was replaced partway by Utagawa Hiroshige, who drew the remaining 46. In Eisen's designs the title is written differently from design to design, as "Kisokaido," "Kiso Kaido," or "Shiso no Ji no Eki," while Hiroshige's designs are almost all standardized as "Kiso Kaido Rokujukyu-tsugi no Uchi."

Nakatsugawa has two designs with entirely different compositions. The design "Nakatsugawa in Rain," showing travelers hurrying through the rain, is said to have been replaced by one showing sunny countryside, and few impressions of it survive. This site presents each of the two as a separate work, for a total of 71 designs. The Tokyo National Museum holds the complete set including both, and the National Diet Library and the Art Institute of Chicago also hold many of the designs.