Artist:Utagawa Hiroshige
Medium: Woodblock print
Geograhical Locations:
Dates:10th month of 1858
Dimensions: 14 3/16 x 9 5/16in. (36 x 23.7cm) Sheet: 14 3/16 x 9 5/16 in. (36 x 23.7 cm) Image: 13 1/4 x 8 3/4 in. (33.6 x 22.2 cm)
Collections:
Exhibitions:
Accession Number: 30.1478.41
Image: 30.1478.41_PS20.jpg,
Catalogue Description: Scene looks down on the Outer Moat of Edo Castle outside Ichigaya Gate (which is today Ichigaya station). In the street below there are tea stalls and various types of entertainment. Ichigaya was known throughout Edo for the prostitutes who plied their trade here, according to one 18th-century source). Above, behind a red gate and dark "torii" at the head of a steep stone stairway, are the red buildings of Ichigaya Hachiman Shrine. The red and yellow bordered cloud bands suggest a sense of distance and an aura of power around the shrine. The small yellow-roofed, lantern-lined pavilion, on the right, below the main shrine building, was one of the tea stalls, just outside the theater, located within the shrine precincts. In the Edo Period, Ichigaya Hachiman was one of the estates of the Tokugawa family of Owari (Nagoya). In the upper left there is a watchtower and part of the barrack walls of the Owari mansion, which became the Military Academy of the Japanese Army in the Meiji Period and at present are the barracks of the Self-Defense Force. It was here that the novelist Mishima Yukio performed his dramatic seppuku in 1970.