The Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Hoeido edition)

This series depicts the Tokaido from Nihonbashi in Edo to Sanjo Bridge in Kyoto, one design per station, on horizontal large-format nishiki-e (multicolor woodblock prints). Publication began as a joint venture of the publishers Hoeido (Takenouchi Magohachi) and Senkakudo (Tsuruya Kiemon), and later Hoeido alone issued it. To distinguish it from Hiroshige's other Tokaido series on the same subject, it is called the Hoeido edition.

Rather than simply copying famous sights, each design conveys the atmosphere of a place through weather, time of day, and the people passing through. Changes of season and weather are woven into the same road: snow at night in "Kambara: Night Snow," morning mist in "Mishima: Morning Mist," and rain in "Oiso: Tora's Rain" and "Shono: Driving Rain." It is also distinctive for its fine depiction of life on the road, such as travelers struggling to cross rivers, customers eating local specialties at teahouses, and porters working in the post towns.

The series gained a reputation helped by the growing interest in travel at the time, and Hiroshige went on to produce a great many Tokaido series, said by one account to number more than twenty. The Tokyo National Museum, the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and others hold all 55 designs, and the Shizuoka City Tokaido Hiroshige Museum of Art has also shown the complete set in a collection exhibition.