One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival
浅草田甫酉の町詣 · Asakusa tanbo Torinomachi mōde
Utagawa Hiroshige · 1857
What it is
From inside a room in the Yoshiwara, a white cat sits in the lattice window watching the Torinomachi festival procession file across the distant ricefields toward Ōtori Shrine, Fuji pale on the horizon.
Why it matters
The most quietly devastating design in the series: the room’s occupant — a courtesan on the quarter’s one busy holiday — is never shown, her whole life implied by the objects left on the sill and the cat that watches the world for her.
What to notice
The festival exists only as a line of tiny figures on the dike; everything near — the cat, the lattice, the hairpins by the window — belongs to the room, and the room belongs to someone we never see.
The festival passes. The cat watches. The room stays.
The record
- Artist
- Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川広重 (1797–1858)
- Series
- One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
- Date
- 1857
- Publisher
- Uoya Eikichi
- Medium
- woodblock print; ink and color on paper
- Source
- The Art Institute of Chicago · 1961.147
- bokashi
Impression note. Fine impressions keep the cat’s white body a clean reserve against the graded evening sky and hold the delicate row of festival-goers crossing the distant dike; the sunset tones are fugitive. Impression variance is real — printings differ in wiping and fading — and choosing the finest openly held impression is the curatorial act.
Public domain; faithfully reproduced.
Bring it home
Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm.
From the same series
One Hundred Famous Views of EdoSudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge and AtakeUtagawa Hiroshige · 1857
One Hundred Famous Views of EdoPlum Estate, KameidoUtagawa Hiroshige · 1857
One Hundred Famous Views of EdoMoon Pine, UenoUtagawa Hiroshige · 1857
One Hundred Famous Views of EdoFukagawa Susaki and JūmantsuboUtagawa Hiroshige · 1857The road at your moment — Painted Earth’s ukiyo-e style pack.