Hiroshige. Mikhail Uspensky

nature”.

      In the 1850s the main attraction of Hiroo was the restaurant, originally called Owariya, which stood where Hiroshige depicted it, on the left bank of the Furukawa. The speciality of the house was an eel dish, highly prized in the Eastern Capital.

      The Furukawa River at Hiroo

      Hiroo Furukawa

      July 1856

      Colour woodblock print, 34 × 24 cm

      Gift of Anna Ferris, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York

      In Hiroshige’s time, Meguro was part of the quiet outskirts of forests and fields. From time to time the shoguns practised falconry here, while in spring the peasants gathered young bamboo shoots which they sold by the gate of the Ryusenji monastery.

      The history of the monastery goes back to the time of Ieyasu and his great adviser Tenkai, the monk who founded Kanyeiji. Tenkai believed that the new capital should be protected by divine forces as well as men, and he gave instructions for the building of five outlying monasteries. Meguro Fudo was the largest of the monasteries and considered the most important.

      The Chiyogaike Pond at Meguro

      Meguro Chiyogaike

      July 1856

      Colour woodblock print, 36 × 24 cm

      Gift of Anna Ferris, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York

      There were two structures connected with one of the most popular cults in Japanese folk religion, that of Mount Fuji. One of them, Shin-Fuji (“New Fuji”), is shown here. The cult of Fuji has its roots in mythological time. Pilgrimages up the mountain began in the ninth century and by the Edo period had become more common.

      The New Fuji at Meguro that Hiroshige depicted in the present print was raised in 1829. It took the form of an earth mound overgrown with grass.

      New Fuji at Meguro

      Meguro Shin-Fuji

      April 1857

      Colour woodblock print, 36 × 24 cm

      Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York

      Two fuji-zuka were put up at Meguro in the early part of the nineteenth century. The New Fuji was new in relation to the other artificial mountain constructed 17 years earlier, in 1812, less than a mile to the north. After the appearance of a second fuji-zuka, the older mound became known as Moto-Fuji, “the Original Fuji”. Moto-Fuji was intended not so much as a setting for the practice of religious ritual but as a pleasant place to spend time admiring the views across the water-meadows of the Megurogawa river.