Ejiri in Suruga Province

The figures on this windswept plain near the Tokaido road are losing their travel documents. The Edo shogunate required permits called tegata to pass the formal checkpoints (sekisho) along the Tokaido highway between Edo and Kyoto. Travellers carried them in paper wallets at the waist. The papers blowing away across the print are the documents required to continue the journey; the wind is taking the bureaucracy. Now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York @metmuseum