The Plum Garden at Omurai

Catalog note / 解説

The setting in this <i>uchiwa-e</i> (rigid fan print) design by Hiroshige is the Omurai plum garden behind the Azuma Shrine in the south-east corner of Edo's north-easterly Mukojima district. The courtesans in the foreground are well wrapped on the cold winter's day. Behind them, across a stretch of water, are small figures climbing up a grassy hill. This is, in fact, an artificial replica of Mount Fuji, one of many such constructions dotted about Edo in Hiroshige's time. The first of these was built in Takada in the western part of the city in 1779. It was the brainchild of a follower of a popular religious cult whose worship focused on Mount Fuji and for whom the climb to its 3,776-metre…