ALLEN MEMORIAL ART MUSEUM 33 UtagawaHiroshige I 初代目歌川広重 (Japanese, 1797–1858) CamelliaHill and theHut of thePoet Bashobeside theWater Supply at Sekiguchi, no. 40 fromthe series OneHundredFamous Views of Edo, 1857 Color woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper MaryA. AinsworthBequest, 1950.1403 What looks like a small river angling through the landscape was actually an artificial canal, part of the Kanda aqueduct that carried water from a pond in the western hills of Edo to the northern part of the city. It was the city’s oldest aqueduct, with initial construction completed in 1620. The artist connects the cityscape to cultural heritage by featuring a hut associated with the renowned haiku poet Matsuo Basho. UtagawaHiroshige I 初代目歌川広重 (Japanese, 1797–1858) CherryBlossoms on the Embankment of the TamaRiver, no. 42 fromthe series OneHundredFamous Views of Edo, 1856 Color woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper MaryA. AinsworthBequest, 1950.1404 The northern part of Edo was served by the Kanda aqueduct, but more people lived in the southern part of the city and got their water from the Tama River aqueduct, seen here. The longest aqueduct in the city, it stretchedmore than 50miles. Left: UtagawaHiroshige I 初代目歌川広重 (Japanese, 1797–1858) Act 10, One of theRoninPrepares toSeizeOsono, Gihei’s Temporarily EstrangedWife, toCut Offher Hair, fromthe series Chūshingura, mid-1840s Color woodblock print (nishiki-e); ink and color on paper MaryA. AinsworthBequest, 1950.1093 Perhaps not surprisingly, few ukiyo-e prints highlight the important contribution of human manure collection to urban sanitation and rural agriculture. In this print, there is a small detail that also helps to the set the atmosphere of the scene andmay relate to this practice. Chūshingura is the beloved tale of the forty-seven rōnin, or masterless samurai, who exact their revenge on the man whose machinations force their lord to commit ritual suicide. In this scene, one of the rōnin is sneaking up on a woman, Osono, in order to cut her hair and, by rendering her unattractive by Edo standards, to save her frombeing married off to a man she doesn’t love. The dramatic tension of the scene is heightened by its location: a dark back alley by a canal in the middle of the night. Stray cats look on as the masked rōnin creeps up on the lone woman. She covers her face: is it against the chill, or due to fear? Or is she covering her nose because the low roofed boat behind her, at the left of the print, is a kasaibune 葛西舟, a special kind of boat for transporting buckets of human manure?
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