Lecture 2000-11-13

The Tokaido: Changing Perceptions of Japanese and Foreign Travellers, 1691-1990

Prof. Patrick Carey

Summary of the November meeting:

Our President, Dr. Berendt, opened the meeting by welcoming everyone to Seisen University and telling a little about the history of the place. He also outlined future events, in particular the Annual General Meeting on January 22nd. This was to be held at the Canadian Embassy as last year, and once again we were to be greatly favoured as HIH Prince Takamado had consented to speak to us on netsuke, of which he was a great collector.

Our speaker was Mr. Patrick Carey, Associate Professor at Reitaku University, who had taken as his subject "The Tokaido: Changing Perceptions of Japanese and Foreign Travelers, 1691-1990". In introducing Mr. Carey, Dr. Berendt also drew attention to his recently published book "The Old Tokaido: In the Footsteps of Hiroshige" which was on sale at the meeting. Mr. Carey related the history of the Tokaido and the descriptions given of it by former travelers, and then gave a fascinating account of how he himself had had walked the whole road, finishing with the showing of slides contrasting what he himself had seen with the scenes depicted by Hiroshige.

The Tokaido had its birth in the 8th century when it was the route from Nara to the eastern provinces, and was comparable to historic routes in other countries. It grew in importance in the 12th century, when it became the main artery between the headquarters of the Kamakura shoguns and the Imperial court in Kyoto, but it lost its significance when the Ashikaga shoguns made Kyoto once again the unified capital, and by the 16th century the road had fallen into disarray. When Tokugawa Ieyasu set up his headquarters in Edo following his victory at Sekigahara in 1600 he reestablished the Tokaido as the principal link between his seat and the Emperor's court. Relay stations were set up at 53 towns and villages, with anything from 50 to 200 inns at each; the road surface was improved, and markers were set up at intervals of one ri (about two-and-a-half miles). All the feudal lords had to leave their wives and children in Edo as hostages, and were also obliged to attend on the shogun themselves every other year; this resulted in numerous processions along the Tokaido, each involving as many 1,000-2,000 people.

The Tokaido was also a business route and a pilgrimage route (pilgrimages were an excuse for tourism, since travel always had to have a purpose to make it respectable!), and by the 17th century Japanese were travelling the Tokaido in the thousands. The only foreigners to do the journey were the Dutch, who were commanded to present themselves to the Tokugawa shogun once a year. One of the members of a party that set out from Nagasaki in 1691 was the German physician Engelbert Kaempfer, who was attached to the Dutch trading station. He had been asked to make a record of his observations, and he produced a meticulously detailed document based on notes taken secretly, which provided the basis of Western knowledge about Japan for the next 100 years. As an outsider, he had the advantage of noting things that the Japanese themselves would not have considered worth commenting on. He noted that the highway was lined with pine trees, and that the one-ri distances were marked by little knolls with a tree planted in the centre. He counted the number of houses at each of the stopping places, and got the servants to measure the length of the bridges by pacing them. He also acted as a spy, noting which castles were fortified and which were just there for decoration. In Kakegawa he saw a house catching fire; on the return journey he observed phlegmatically that things didn' t seem to be too bad, only about half the city reduced to ashes.

On their arrival in Edo, the head of the mission had to pay his respects to the shogun, crouching on his knees with his head bent to the floor and then crawling back in the same position (as the Japanese daimyo also had to do). A few days later a slightly more elaborate ceremony took place at which the shogun spoke to the mission, addressing his words to a chamberlain who then passed them on to an interpreter; Kaempfer supposed that the words must be too exalted to be imparted directly. The audience then turned into "a farce", at which the Dutch were required to sing and dance and pretend to be drunk.

The second journey described by Mr. Carey was that of the Japanese artist Hiroshige, born in 1797 as Ando Juemon. He was interested in drawing, and joined the school of Utagawa Toyohiro, taking the name of Utagawa Hiroshige, though today he is commonly known by the hybrid name of Ando Hiroshige. In 1832 he traveled to Kyoto as a member of a retinue accompanying the shogun's gift of a pair of horses to the Emperor. Along the way he made sketches, and on his return to Edo these were attached to woodblocks and the images carved directly from them. The prints were published by Hoeido in 1833, and became an instant success, eventually becoming one of the greatest influences on the European Impressionists. Hiroshige depicted the scenes at or near each of the 53 stages of the Tokaido, and also added the Nihonbashi in Tokyo and the Sanjo Ohashi in Kyoto at the beginning and the end.

Like Kaempfer, Hiroshige is interested in everything he sees. He describes what he sees, and also sometimes what he does not see. He made his journey in late summer, but he depicts Mariko in the early spring, Chirifu (Chiryu) in May and Kambara in winter, blanketed in snow. His scenes show morning, noon and night, and the weather varies from snow to heavy rain to wind and early morning mist. People from every walk of life are seen going about their everyday business, sometimes very amusingly portrayed; but they are always overshadowed by the majesty of the landscape. Subsequent travelers would always see the Tokaido in terms of Hiroshige's 53 stages.

Coming now to the 20th century, the next traveler was Frederick Starr from Chicago, who made the journey in November 1912, in the middle of the nation's preparations for the enthronement of the Taisho Emperor. He had originally intended to walk but soon found a "kuruma" (presumably a jinrikisha) more convenient, and sometimes he also took the train; he took eighteen days to complete the journey. He was interested in the many decorations, especially the fuda, good luck charms. In general he was sympathetic to the people and places in Japan, but he had an aversion to two professions: reporters and teachers. When he arrived at the Great Sanjo Bridge in Kyoto he was interviewed by a reporter who had his article already prepared regardless of how Starr might answer his questions!

The next description of part of the Tokaido came from staff of the Ford Motor Company who drove a touring car in 1923 and joined the Tokaido at Nagoya. They had "good motoring" from Nagoya to Okazaki, but after that they had to cross a rickety bridge, and the last stretch from Yokohama to Tokyo was "easily the severest reliability test" because of the "immense potholes"!

In 1964, William Zacha, an American artist, traveled the Tokaido. taking a train to Fujisawa to avoid the built-up area, and walking from there. His book Tokaido Journey consists of silk-screen prints of sketches he made at or near Hiroshige's 53 stages during this and later journeys, with captions appended. Zacha's view is that of a sympathetic observer of today's Japan with its mixture of old and new.

Mr. Carey then came to his own journey, which took him 25 days. It was once casually suggested to him that he should walk the 53 stages of the Tokaido while he was in Japan; but all the indications were that the old road no longer existed. However, one day he came across a book about the Tokaido in a secondhand bookshop in Jimbocho. It showed the modern road, with a thin line labeled "Old Tokaido" weaving in and out of it. Intrigued, he decided to try out the section near his home in Yokohama. To his surprise, just after Shinagawa station he found a sign "Kyu Tokaido (Old Tokaido)" pointing down a quiet meandering road. The Encyclopaedia of Japan had said the average width of the Tokaido was 18 feet, so he paced it out; exactly six paces! Further confirmation came later on in the form of shrines and temples by the roadside, and commemorative plaques set up by the local history society.

Later on, when he did the Tokaido journey proper, he found a site depicted by Hiroshige at Kanagawa that had eluded William Zacha. Kanagawa is now hidden in backstreets behind Yokohama station, but the road looks just as it did in Hiroshige's print. From Odawara to Hakone and over the mountain pass, the Old Tokaido exists almost in its entirety; but between Hakone and Mishima the pathway was overgrown and blocked by by a huge spider's web in one place. Mt. Fuji is generally on the right of the road, but at Yoshiwara Hiroshige shows the Tokaido looping to avoid a swamp, and Fuji is on the left, "Hidari Fuji". When Carey came to the spot, Mt. Fuji was not visible; but he found a corresponding curve in the road and the sign on the bus stop said "Hidari Fuji". At Kameyama both Zacha and Starr had seen crowds of children and their teachers, and Starr had lamented that no teacher was ever interested in him. Carey's own experience had been different. At Kameyama he had stepped into a primary school playground to photograph an interesting structure. When a teacher gesticulated violently towards him from a window, he took it as a sign that he was trespassing. As he moved off, however, he looked back and realized that she was beckoning him to come in. He joined the children at their lunch, and when the time for lessons came they all lined up to shake hands with him, and one girl presented him with a nafuda, a cloth name tag, which he wore for the rest of the journey. He had been impressed that, with no time for preparations or advance instructions, the children had all instinctively made him welcome.

Before coming to his conclusion, Mr. Carey showed slides of some of Hiroshige's prints side-by-side with his own photographs of the same places for comparison. At Hiratsuka the same mountain could be seen in the distance, though Hiroshige had made it hump-backed; at Hakone, Hiroshige had compressed a 130�B (degree)view into 45�B, making a central mountain rise like a pillar. At Mariko there was a modern tea-house where Hiroshige's tea-house had stood, selling the famous tororo jiru (yam soup), and the building with its thatched roof was clearly copied from the print. At Goyu a man could be seen in the picture having his blisters attended to; Carey took a picture of the same street, but no helpful maid came out to attend to his blisters! It was raining when he passed Shono, where Hiroshige shows travelers battling against driving rain. At Sakanoshita, he thought he had correctly identified "Fudesuteyama" in front of him, but was later told that he had actually been walking on the famous view that caused an artist to throw away his brush!

In conclusion, Mr. Carey said that he had learnt from his walk that Japan is not all postwar concrete; the Old Tokaido abounds in the architecture of the Edo, Meiji and Taisho eras. One also sees an abundance of small-scale industries and traditional crafts. The landscape varies too, as rice cultivation gives way to mikan groves and then to tea plantations. As regards the Old Road itself, reports of its death are a great exaggeration; 80% of the road still exists, with the original alignment, the original width, and sometimes, the original surface. Mr. Carey also said later that he had been fortunate in making the journey when he did; there were now modern surveys showing the exact course of the road, but if these had been available in 1990 he would have missed the element of exploration!

There was no time left for questions, and the meeting was brought to a close with a vote of thanks proposed by Mrs. Doreen Simmons, who observed that the Association of Foreign teachers, some of whose members were present on this occasion too, had been privileged to hear Mr. Carey speak in June 1991, shortly after he had done the walk. His talk had now been augmented by subsequent research into the travels of earlier adventurers; first-hand experience coming before second-hand had enabled him to write a book of his own, which was being well received.

Adapted from "The Asiatic Society of Japan Bulletin No. 10", December 2000, compiled by Prof. Hugh E. Wilkinson and Mrs. Doreen Simmons.