
Shibata Zeshin depicts a section of a sugoroku board game featuring the Tokaido highway. The game appeared early in Japanese history, and, by the early modern period, it had become widely popular. It was also traditionally played at New Year’s, making it a fitting subject for this print, which is dated from January. The Tokaido sugoroku pitted players against each other as they traveled along the highway stations on a large woodblock-printed board.
Zeshin inscribed the players’ markers with their names. As a joke, he wrote his own name and the name of the host of this surimono poetry gathering, Hirota Seichi, on two of the cards. The print demonstrates Seichi’s ability to gather a wide range of participants, likely his students and friends, of which Zeshin seems to have been one. They may also have gathered around a game of sugoroku in real life.

Komurasaki of the Miuraya and Shirai Gompachi (Miuraya Komurasaki, Shirai Gompachi)
Kitagawa Utamaro 喜多川 歌麿 Japanese, c.1753-1806

Hamamatsu, from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Tokaido with Poem (Kyoka iri Tokaido)
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重 Japanese, 1797-1858

Mitsuke: Ferries Crossing the Tenryu River (Mitsuke, Tenryugawa funawatashi), from the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi)," also known as the Tokaido with Poem (Kyoka iri Tokaido)
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重 Japanese, 1797-1858