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,...
A woman, slightly bent over, grasps her hair at the river's edge. Kiyohime was the daughter of an innkeeper at the village of Masago. Anchin was a devout monk at Dojo Temple on the banks of the Hidaka river. Each year Anchin stayed at Kiyohime's...
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...
men (male humans); women; dresses (garments); hats; military uniforms; chairs; chandeliers; murals (any medium); vases
After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Emperor Meiji moved the Imperial residence to Tokyo (formerly Edo) from Kyoto. Here Japanese men and women in European dress attend a banquet in the new Imperial Palace in Asakusa in 1888, a residence modeled on...
legends (folk tales); men (male humans); armor (protective wear); Buddhas
An armored samurai is wrestling a red demon and multitude of skeletons under the gaze of a grinning yellow Buddha. Toki Motosada has seized the demon by the wrist and is throwing it down. Moths flutter around them under a full moon.
Where...
An image of a beautiful woman and an old crone with a lamp made of peony flowers. The Peony Lantern is a ghostly romance adapted from an old Chinese tale by the novelist Encho in 1884. The chilling story was extremely popular and was dramatized...
An image of a rat. Raigo was a stern man, a priest whose duties included maintaining discipline among the acolytes of Mii Temple. A member of the influential Fujiwara family, he became spiritual adviser to Emperor Shirakawa (reigned 1072-86). ...
An image of a warrior with sword and bow and arrows in the foreground, looking back at human/demon forms dancing in the background. Minamoto no Tametomo was, like Oniwaka/Benkei (7), an extremely violent youth. By the time he was fifteen he is...
An image of a warrior with sword and bow and arrows in the foreground, looking back at human/demon forms dancing in the background. Minamoto no Tametomo was, like Oniwaka/Benkei (7), an extremely violent youth. By the time he was fifteen he 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...
An image of a woman, bound, with hair in her mouth. Over the two-year period from 1887 to 1888, Yoshitoshi produced his last and most accomplished set of "newspaper prints" as supplements to the Yamato newspaper. Muraoka (1786-1873) was a...
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...
