The Legend of the Stone Pillar of Ubagaike Pond at Asakusa

Catalog note / 解説

This 'uchiwa-e' (rigid fan print) design by Hiroshige illustrates the story of the stone pillow. A traveller is invited into a remote house, offered a bed with a stone pillow, and then robbed and murdered during the night. The legend is found in various parts of Japan. This version relates to the Ubagaike Pond, which lay immediately to the east of the compound of the Asakusa Kannon Temple in Edo (modern Tokyo). Here you can see an old woman and her daughter beckoning a traveller into a dilapidated farmhouse. The characters on the torn lantern read, somewhat ominously, 'Hitotsuya', meaning 'Lone House'. The tilted hat, which resembles a halo, identifies the traveller. It is the deity Kannon,…