Morning Scene at Nihonbashi Bridge

Black wooden gates stand on the left and right of the picture, framing a straight view of Nihonbashi between them. On the bridge, the head of a daimyo procession, with feather-tipped spears (kegeyari) held upright, comes down toward the viewer, led by attendants carrying boxes. The sky is red with dawn at the bottom and indigo above, showing that this is a departure at daybreak.

In the foreground, fish and vegetable sellers pass with buckets and baskets slung from carrying poles, and a dog watches from the far right. A fish market once stood at the foot of the bridge, so the morning trade and the daimyo's departure share one scene. The vertical lines of the gates and the spears, set against the horizontal lines of the bridge planks, give the picture a tight structure.

The Hoeido edition of the Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido runs to 55 prints in all, beginning at this Nihonbashi and ending at Sanjo Bridge in Kyoto. As the first print, it serves as the starting point of the long journey ahead and shows both the bustle and the tension of an Edo morning at once.

As the title Morning Scene suggests, many prints in the Hoeido edition add the time of day or the weather to their titles. The dawn-red sky here leads into the next print, Sunrise at Shinagawa, and as you turn through the series you can feel the journey progressing from first light onward.