Cherry Blossoms on the Shinjuku Embankment at Yotsuya

Catalog note / 解説

The evening view in this <i>uchiwa-e</i> (rigid fan print) design by Hiroshige is taken from the upper storey of one of the brothels in the Naito Shinjuku area in the north-west corner of the Yotsuya district in western Edo. The prostitutes on the balcony, one of them wearing an outer coat of tell-tale red that marks her out as such, are enjoying the cherry trees blossoming along the southern bank of the Tama River Water Supply. This went below ground at the Yotsuya Barrier, a little way off the left-hand margin of this print, and fed into a system of channels and pipes that supplied a network of wells in the south and west parts of the city. The cherry trees that made the embankment such a…