Built complexes and districts; streets; banners; women; men (male humans); palanquins; processions; floats (vehicles); soldiers; kimonos; trees; fans (costume accessories); blinds (coverings); hairstyles; hats
A grand summer festival with a parade of palanquins and floats was staged on the 15th day of the 6th month to celebrate the Mountain Deity (Sanno) of Hie Shrine who had protected Edo Castle since 1478. Ota Dokan (1432-86), the military governor of...
A man in ragged robes sits on the ground before a yellow-flowering bush watching sparrows flying above him. Sanekata was a poet and high-ranking nobleman of the Fujiwara clan. He died in exile in 994. Toward the end of his political career,...
A man in ragged robes sits on the ground before a yellow-flowering bush watching sparrows flying above him. Sanekata was a poet and high-ranking nobleman of the Fujiwara clan. He died in exile in 994. Toward the end of his political career,...
women; children (people by age group); kimonos; trees; shrines (structures); men (male humans)
A mother and daughter join others in a pilgrimage on New Year's Day to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in the auspicious directions from where they live, in order to obtain good luck and prosperity in the coming year. The hall at left is...
A woman with a large yellow and black umbrella (open) is accompanied by three white herons. The relationship of the animal kingdom to the world of human beings is close in rural societies. People feel a kinship with the wild creatures around them. ...
A woman, in a flower-covered red robe, dances, surrounded by small flames. Princess Yaegaki found herself in as difficult a situation as Romeo and Juliet, with whom this story from the play Honcho Nijushiko, or Twenty-four Examples of Filial Piety,...
women; men (male humans); folding screens; kimonos; knives
According to the text panel, which reads like a police report, Tokunaga Bin attacked and stabbed seven people at the Sugidoya in the New Yoshiwara pleasure quarters on the 23rd day of the 7th month of 1879. A native of Fukushima Prefecture, this...
actors; built works; trees; men (male humans); kimonos; hats; hair ornaments; flowers; arrows; bells (idiophones); swords
Actors gather outside the main hall of the Ooku residential area to give a special performance for the new year on the first "horse day" of the 2nd month (according to the zodiac calendar). One actor carries a hunting bird while another actor is...
legends (folk tales); women; rivers; waterfalls (natural bodies of water)
An image of a woman sitting in the base of a waterfall, praying as the water falls around her. Tamiya Gempachiro, a fencing master from the Ikoma clan in Sanuki Province, was put to death in 1624 by a rival. His wife was pregnant and after his...
legends (folk tales); women; kimonos; lanterns; children (people by age group); fusuma; interior spaces; foxes (animals)
An image of a woman, with a fox's head (seen through a screen) walking through a door, leaving her child behind in the house. Foxes, or kitsune, are mysterious, magical creatures with powers many times greater than those of badgers. Sometimes...
An image of monsters coming out of a basket, threatening an old man. An old man and an old woman were neighbors. Every evening the old man fed a sparrow that visited him. When he returned home one day he was disturbed not to see the sparrow and...
An image of two women. In a series of seven prints, Yoshitoshi depicted the consorts of the Meiji Emperor. These two women before a waterfall are thus identified with Wednesday (water day). While the new Meiji government allowed artists more...
An older woman with shaved eyebrows, indicating her married status, is nicely but conservatively dressed. Her plaid inner robe is typical of late Edo Period fashions in the city of Edo, often influenced by kabuki stage costume textiles. She might...
women; children (people by age group); men (male humans); swords; kimonos; costume; shoes (footwear); hairstyles
Choko and Chorei were two brothers who looked after their aged mother. One day Choko was bringing a cabbage home for their mother when he was set upon by robbers. Finding he had nothing to give them, they had decided to kill him but agreed to wait...
women; children (people by age group); kimonos; candles; candleholders; fusuma
During the Setsubun / "Change of Season" festival held at the end of winter by the lunar calendar, mame-maki / "bean throwing" is accompanied by shouts of "Fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto" / "Good fortune in, demons out!" The beans are usually thrown out...
Girls' Day (Hinamatsuri, also known as the Doll Festival) is an annual spring celebration where various ornamental dolls representing the Emperor, Empress, their attendants, ministers, musicians, and furniture are displayed on a stepped platform...
Holding a Kyoto style doll, Otefu of the Kadoebi-ro stands near a display platform where lacquered stands and covered bowls suggest a Girls' Day display. The publication date of the 3rd day of the 3rd month (Girls' Day) of 1884 reinforces this...
Huangxiang was so devoted to his aged father that he lightly fanned him night and day throughout the summer. Okyo might be similarly dedicated, but the look on her face and the sash tied in front suggest that she is a prostitute cooling her client.
In China and Japan, the constellations Vega and Altair are called the Weaver Maiden and the Herdsman. Legend says that after Shokiyo, the Weaver Maiden, fell in love with and married Kengi, the Herdsman, she became distracted and failed in her duty...
men (male humans); women; kimonos; musical instruments; Single Built Works; celebrations
In the 10th month, from the 9th to 11th, the Kompira Festival is held at the Kotohiragu Shrine dedicated to the guardian deities of mariners, and later on the 19th day special celebrations in Nihonbashi are held for Ebisu, one of the Seven Gods of...
