Chuo-ku Tourism Association Official Blog

Chuo-ku Tourism Association correspondent blog

Introducing Chuo-ku's seasonal information by sightseeing volunteer members who passed the Chuo-ku Tourism Association's Chuo-ku Tourism Certification and registered as correspondents.

List of Authors

>>About this blog

Recent blog post

Walking the "Kidai Shoran"

[Ashuan husband] June 28, 2012 08:30

"Kyodai Shoran" is a difficult kanji that does not know what to read.

He barely remembered that the name of the fourth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, which he learned during his school days, was Emperor Koki.

Therefore, this character is read as "Kidai Shoran".


"Kidai Shoran" is the name of emakimono found at the Orient Museum of Berlin in 1999, and you can see replicas 1.6 times the size of the real thing in the passage of Tokyo Metro, near the underground exit of Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi.


When this painting was discovered, I didn't know which country it was, but experts found that it was a painting of Nihonbashi's Chuo-dori from Imagawa Bridge in the late Edo period in Japan. But I still don't know the painter I drew. In addition, the picture scroll says "Kidai Shoranten", and it is imagined that there is a "maki of the earth" or "maki of people", but it has not been discovered at this time. This picture scroll has the character of Culture 2 (1805) in the picture, and it is presumed that it was drawn at that time.


The depiction of Nihonbashi is concrete and lively. There are 88 stores, depicting 1,439 men, 200 women, and 32 children. In addition, 20 dogs, 13 horses, 4 monkeys, and 2 hawks are depicted in emakimono where you can see how life was at that time.


I happened to have been working under the former Imagawa Bridge until recently, and Nihonbashi is a familiar city, and it's really interesting to walk. Of the 88 stores depicted, only two today, Mitsukoshi and Kiya, still have Japanese shop curtain in Nihonbashi. Standing on Chuo-dori in front of this store and remembering emakimono, I feel like I became a person from the Edo period.

(modern wooden shop)                               (Kiya in 1805)

a51471e7b27151da35baf1be29ff190e. Thumbnail image of thumbnail image of JPG

(Modern Mitsukoshi)                               (Mitsukoshi in 1805)

a51471e7b27151da35baf1be29ff190e. Thumbnail image of thumbnail image of JPG

The year after it was drawn, it seems that many stores were burned down due to a large fire in 1806, but there is still a long-established store in the Nihonbashi area around that time, and I want to know the transition. If you think of a long-established store before the era when "Kyodai Shoran" was drawn, Ibasen was Tensho 18 (1590), Shin Shigeru was Genroku 1st year (1688), Kuroeya was Genroku 2 (1688), Ninben may be from Genroku 12 (1699). I hope you will find it.

"Kyodai Shoran" means "the scenery of Oedo where the Kagaya Godai wins". I would like everyone who gets off the subway at "Mitsukoshi-mae" on Tokyo Metro to see the lively appearance of Nihonbashi in the past.

 

More Walking the "Kidai Shoran"

 
1