Totsuka: Motomachi Fork (Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido)

By the time a traveler reached Totsuka, the sixth post station out of Edo, the day was usually ending. People who had left the shogun's capital at first light covered about 23 miles to get here, and this is where most of them stopped for their first night on the Tokaido, the great road to Kyoto. Hiroshige sets the scene at the Motomachi fork, just outside town, where a side road branches off. A man is climbing down from his horse in front of a teahouse, a servant steadying him, while a woman and a porter wait to the right. A wooden signpost stands at the junction. It is an ordinary evening on a road thousands walked, caught at the small human moment of arrival.