Jippensha Ikku · 1802 · road

Jippensha Ikku's comic masterpiece, serialised from 1802, follows two hapless rogues, Yajirobei and Kitahachi, down the Tokaido road from Edo to Kyoto and the Ise shrines. Through fifty-three post stations they con, flirt, drink and blunder their way west, a string of bawdy misadventures that made it the best-selling Japanese book of its age. Known in English as Shanks Mare, it is at once a riotous picaresque and a vivid travelogue of Edo-period Japan, the same road Hiroshige would later paint.

1. 1
   Edo

   Two feckless friends, Yaji and Kita, flee their debts in Edo and set out west along the great Tokaido highway, bound for the shrines of Ise and the temples of Kyoto.

2. 2
   Hakone

   Over the steep, mist-wrapped Hakone pass and its dreaded barrier checkpoint, the first great trial of the road.

3. 3
   Shizuoka

   Past Mount Fuji and down to Sunpu, today's Shizuoka, trading bawdy jokes and bungling every meal and lodging they touch.

4. 4
   Hamamatsu

   On through Hamamatsu, forever scheming and forever found out, leaving comic havoc at each post station.

5. 5
   Miya

   To Miya on Ise Bay and the seven-league ferry that carries travellers across the water.

6. 6
   Kuwana

   Ashore at Kuwana, the holy precincts of Ise drawing pilgrims south.

7. 7
   Otsu

   Over the Suzuka hills to Otsu on the shore of Lake Biwa, the last station before the capital.

8. 8
   Kyoto

   And at journey's end the great bridge of Sanjo in Kyoto, the pair as broke and irrepressible as the day they set out.