Cats as the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō

Cats as the Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō was created by Japanese artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861) in 1850 as a triptych. Each of the 55 cats represents a play on the names of the 53 rest areas—plus the two end points—along the Tōkaidō road, the coastal route that ran from Edo to Kyoto. Cats as the Fifty-three Stations is a silly spoof on Utagawa Hiroshige’s famous ukiyo-e series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō, which depicted views of each of the rest areas in great detail and was the best-selling collection of woodcut prints in ukiyo-e history. The different post stations provided food and lodgings for travellers, and while Hiroshige illustrated each with their distinctive landscapes, Kuniyoshi captured them through one of our favorite art forms: cat puns.