REKIHAKU

No.124 A Witness to History

Bird's-eye view pictures of urban centers
at the end of the Early Modern period

Even to modern man who finds nothing particularly out of the ordinary in aerial photographs, it is perhaps a little unusual to have an image that takes in a panoramic view of the area where one lives from the perspective of looking down from the sky. Unless we live on a hill or in a high-rise apartment building, the everyday view we get of where we live is no more than a "partial" view of a forest of apartment buildings and shopping districts with rows of boldly colored billboards seen from the perspective of less than two meters above the ground. However, the many folding screens of scenes in and around Kyoto painted between the end of the Middle Ages through the early part of the Early Modern period are clearly pictures of the city seen from the air. Although according to one theory the Rekihaku "A" version is a landscape viewed from the pagoda of Shokokuji Temple, it exhibits the traits of a conceptual product that combines views from the eastern and western sides of Kyoto with images based on knowledge of the layout of the town. When we take into account the detailed portrayal of famous sites such as temples and shrines and the hustle and bustle of merchants going about their business, there can be no mistaking that this screen is a fusion of the visual experiences and life experiences of a painter who lived there.

Figure 1: Reprint of a picture of famous sites of Edo (Museum collection).
This print is a faithful copy of Keisai's "Picture of Famous Sites of Edo" made by his grandson Keirin.

By the latter part of the Edo period there were many paintings of Edo, which had grown to a city inhabited by one million people, that were landscapes providing panoramic views surveying the entire city. A stereotypical schema is created by incorporating in a painting a bird's-eye view from high above the eastern banks of the Sumida River looking toward the West, scenes of a prosperous city centered around Edo castle, Mt. Fuji keeping watch over Edo from far off into the West, and many boats from provinces from all over Japan anchored in Tokyo Bay. Given that there are no high places that actually look over Edo from this perspective, the scenes in the pictures of Edo that were printed were created stereoscopically. Aside from maps, the oldest work that is a painting depicting this landscape is the "Folding Screen Depicting Edo" (Museum collection), which dates back to the early part of the Edo period. Paintings that became popular during the latter part of the Edo period are "Bird's-eye View Paintings", in which, in keeping with their name, there is also the allusion of a balanced treatment of space achieved through the method of perspective drawing. In terms of visual realism, nothing compares with the scenes in and around Kyoto if only because of the creation of a perspective that resembles a person's visual perception.

Figure 2: Print by Hanabusa Sanga(?) of a bird's-eye view map of Edo.
This is also a copy of Keisai's "Picture of Famous Sites of Edo". Among similar works there are the Koka era (1844-1848) pictures by Utagawa Kunimori.

This new "Edo Painting" that began around the beginning of the 19th century due to the ingenuity of Kuwagata Keisai (1764-1824), spawned various kinds of imitations in Edo. The extent to which it had spread is evident from the fact that this landscape composition was chosen for paintings depicting the urban area destroyed by fire as a result of the Great Earthquake of Ansei (1855). Keisai painted "Bird's-eye View Map of Edo" (Historical Museum of Tsuyama Region collection) on paper sliding doors in Tsuyama castle in Mimasaka Province. In addition, as illustrated by the case of a wealthy farmer from Shinano Province who traveled to Edo to commission Keisai to produce an Edo Painting ("The Acquaintances and Literary Interests of Yamada Shosai", by Ito Yoko, Nagano Prefectural Museum of History Research Bulletin, Vol. 9, 2003), miniatures of this prosperous city had also reached the regions.

Figure 3: View of greater Edo, 1855 (Museum collection).
This is a bird's-eye view of Edo showing the areas that were destroyed by fire as a result of the Great Earthquake of Ansei (1855)

It may be because of the abundance of precedents of this kind of "Bird's-eye View of Edo Painting", that when Yokohama opened its port and rapidly began to take on the appearance of a city around the end of the Edo period and the beginning of the Meiji period, numerous Nishiki-e (multi-colored prints) depicting bird's-eye view landscapes came to be produced. One representative artist of this genre is Utagawa Sadahide (also known as Gountei Sadahide and Gyokuransai Sadahide, 1807-?), who painted the town of Yokohama in detail adopting an adaptable perspective. Sadahide did not paint pictures of only Yokohama, but painted bird's-eye view paintings of other cities, including Osaka, Kyoto, and Nagasaki, and is a leading exponent of the "Ichiranzu (Panoramic View)", as bird's-eye view paintings were called at that time.

These bird's-eye view paintings of cities painted from the latter part of the Edo period through the early part of the Meiji period freely distort space and exaggerate specific objects while adopting the perspective drawing method of painting. As such, they are excellent resources for providing clues as to the images that the people of the day had of their cities and which area of these cities attracted their interest.

Figure 4: Panoramic View of the Port of Yokohama, c. 1860, by Utagawa Sadahide (Museum collection)
Bird's-eye view of Yokohama from somewhere near Koyasu village along the Tokaido Highway. Appears to be painted using the perspective method of drawing, but space is freely distorted in order to fit the necessary motifs into the center of the painting.

Figure 5: Landscape of Yokohama, 1861, by Utagawa Sadahide (Museum collection)
This clearly depicts the rapid transformation of Yokohama from a fishing village into a city. From the positioning of the Miyosaki district in the center of the painting, it is obvious what people were interested in.

(Jun'ichi Okubo, Research Department, National Museum of Japanese History)