The Tōkaidō (東海道, ‘East Sea Road’) is a route along the east coast of Honshu on the Pacific. At present, the Tōkaidō is the most frequented route in Japan, connecting the country’s largest cities: Tokyo, Yokohama, Nagoya and Kyoto.


The distance can be covered in three and a half hours by Shinkansen (bullet train), and takes a few more hours by car along Motorway One. The creator of the exhibition, Aleksander Janicki decided to follow the traditional route immortalized in the nineteenth century by Hiroshige in his series of woodblock prints The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō.

The route was known as early as the eighth century. When Edo (modern-day Tokyo) was made Japan’s capital by Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa, the Tōkaidō became the most important highway to Kyoto, the seat of the Japanese Emperor in the Edo period (1603-1868).

Along the road, stations called shukuba were established by the government, to offer travellers places to rest, meals and overnight accommodation. A set of Hiroshige’s series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō is an important item in Feliks’ ‘Manggha’ Jasieński’s collection, which has found its permanent home in the museum founded by Andrzej Wajda and Krystyna Zachwatowicz-Wajda.

The exhibition is a multimedia collage of motifs from the worldwide web, mixed with documentary photographs of the trip, blurring the difference between the real and the virtual in a scintillating mosaic; it is a form of kaleidoscope, with its characteristic multiplicity of reflections- after images of fixed pictures; photograph and video flashes- appearing suddenly and disappearing immediately afterwards; notations of emotions and after-images of what is remembered. It involves multiplied maps without specific dimension representation, or still lifes activated electronically through interaction with the viewer.

Come and join the trip!