Kisokaidô: Mieiji - Station 55

Utagawa Hiroshige - Series of the 69 stations of the Kisokaido: Station Mieiji (57th print) (Mieiji)

© Trustees of the British Museum

The village is surrounded by three rivers : Kiso-gawa, Ibi-gawa and Nagara-gawa. The Miei-ji Temple, a temple, which gave its name to the station was built to offer prayers for protection against floodings. In Hiroshige’s view, two farmers (1), one with a hoe aver his shoulder, have stopped to give directions to a priest (2). Besides them on the right is a pair of camellia trees (3) in full bloom and beyond the trees grow stands of tall bamboo. Across the floodplain of the river to the left, the thatched roofs (4) of the station can be made on the horizon.

We have here a first edition print with a blue sky and a blue bokashi in the river going from the bottom upwards. In later impressions, the sky becomes orange and the gradation in the river is inversed from top to bottom. In still later impressions, the bokashi in the river is lost completely.

(Source: The 69 stations of the Kisokaido, Sebastian Izzard, Brazillier 2008)

A resting place on the road ca.1910

Boy carrying buckets on his shoulders (ca. 1895)

And now ?

Mieiji is located at 425km/265mi from Nihonbashi and 100km/65km remain until Otsu, the last station. Mieiji is now a section of Mizuho town and nothing remains from the old station. A temple named Miei-ji had been built in the 12th century and a statue of Kanshitsu Kannon Buddha was enshrined. The main temple was moved to Gifu in the 16th century and the remaining smaller temple gave its name to the station. The road and the station also gave their name to a local river, Goroku-gawa river. Goruku means fifty-six, since Mieiji is the 56th station of the road (when Nihonbashi is counted as #1).

Mieiji is located in the Mino plain and was frequently flooded. This station had a bad reputation, the worst of the whole journey due to the delays caused by the floods. There were eleven inns, but they were of low standing and travellers tried to avoid stopping there. Mieiji was also known as a thieves’ nest and there were establishments offering various pleasures, with the serving girls of the inn, known as “meshimori onna” (women bringing meals) complementing their income as prostitutes. To try to restrict this activity, the government had limited the number of authorized serving girls to two per inn. But besides the travellers, the station had pilgrims as the Mieiji Temple was part of the “Circuit of the 33 temples in Mino”. With the Toyokawa Inari Temple near Nagoya, the “Circuit of the 33 temples in Owari” and the “Circuit of the 33 temples in Mikawa”, this constituted the pilgrimage of the 100 Tokai Kannon Temples.