52nd Station: Kusatsu

Here Hiroshige depicts a fairly large hatago for common travelers. The overall feeling in the scene is one of busy activity: horses packed to leave near the hatago, travelers walking along and porters passing in the foreground with a kago and a palanquin (norimono). The hatago is filled with people resting, eating and conversing and reflects the crowded scene that Hiroshige depicted in the first station, Shinagawa, outside of Edo at the other end of the Tokaido.

In addition to Kusatsu being the fifty-second of the fifty-three stations of the Tokaido, it was also the sixty-eighth of the sixty-nine stations of the Nakasendo Road. The Nakasendo Road, another large highway which ran through the mountainous region between Edo and Kyoto, joined the Tokaido at this station to form a single highway for the remainder of the highway to Kyoto, which explains the throngs of people.

In 1843, the post station numbered 2,351 residents and 586 buildings. One of the daimyo’s honjin was later repaired and opened as a museum in 1996.