KALAMAZOO, MI.- A new exhibition at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Gus Foster and Ando Hiroshige: The Tokaido Road, offers contrasting views of one of Asia’s great highways. The exhibition, a collection of 19th-century prints by Hiroshige and Foster’s contemporary, panoramic photographs, opens Saturday, September 8 and continues through Sunday, December 5.

Of the five main highways radiating from Edo (present-day Tokyo, Japan) during the Tokugawa era (1603-1868), the Tokaido Road was the busiest and perhaps most important. Along this route came great nobles from the western provinces, samurai warriors, masterless samurai (ronin), monks and various other travelers.

Fifty-three government post stations between the two termination points of Edo and Kyoto kept the highway safe and convenient. Here, travelers could find porter stations and horse stables, as well as lodging, food and merchants selling various wares. “There are countless humble inns, roadside food stalls, sake or beer taverns, cake and sweet stalls along our road,” wrote one traveler.

Today, a modern multi-laned highway follows the seacoast route of the old Tokaido Road, which connects Tokyo with Kyoto. A few stretches of the old road have survived, and are popular with tourists for walking or biking.

Hiroshige’s exquisite woodblock prints and Foster’s startling panoramic views offer opportunities to explore the parallels of time and space, as well as two centuries of shifting historical and cultural conditions, within this famously defined geographic area.

Gus Foster was born in Wausau, Wisconsin. After graduating from Yale University in 1963 with a B.A. in Art History, he worked for 10 years as curator of prints and drawings at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. In 1972, he moved to Los Angeles to set up his own photographic art studio. Foster has lived and worked in Taos, New Mexico since 1976. His work has been exhibited nationally and worldwide, and is part of numerous public collections.

Foster created a series of panoramic photographs taken on a 1991 walk of the Tokaido Road beginning in Tokyo and ending in Kyoto. Each print measures 1 foot x 4 feet, 8 inches, and cover panoramas ranging from 400 to 452 degrees.

Published in the 1830s, the famous series of woodblock prints of the Tokaido Road by Ando Hiroshige (1797-1858) view the Japanese countryside through an idyllic lens. No trace is visible of what was then already a century of urbanization, severe grain shortages that led to peasant riots, or impending threats of imperialist powers. This print series won immediate popularity among armchair travelers, and modern viewers in Japan and the West have seized upon Hiroshige’s countryside vignettes as emblematic of an enduring, “essential” Japan.

Gus Foster and Ando Hiroshige: The Tokaido Road is free of charge and open during the KIA’s normal gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.