Itabashi Station

A great tree with a thick trunk towers in the right foreground, and in its shade stands a teahouse with a reed screen. An empty palanquin sits in front of the teahouse, and at the horse's feet a packhorse driver crouches, fixing something. In the middle of the road, a traveler with a staff and a man carrying a load pass each other, and small figures line the row of houses leading to the back left.

In the field beyond the road stands a stone pillar that looks like a signpost, and behind it can be seen a cedar grove and a house with a blue roof. The lower part of the sky is stained red, which suggests dusk or dawn. The composition scatters people and horses over the wide white surface of the road and closes the picture with the great tree on the right.

Itabashi-juku was the first station on the Nakasendo and, together with Shinagawa, Senju, and Naito-Shinjuku, was known as one of the Four Stations of Edo. It bustled with departing travelers and those seeing them off, and the station's name comes from the plank bridge over the Shakujii River. Some also see the great tree on the right as the Enkiri Enoki (Divorce Nettle Tree) that stood in Kamishuku.

This is a print by Eisen, with the title written as "Kiso Kaido." It has no signature, and the Tokyo National Museum also regards it as an unsigned Eisen print. The signatures on Eisen's prints are said to have been removed in later impressions, and Eisen drew the first 11 prints of the series in succession.