Passing through the Tokyo Metro Mitsukoshimae Station, you may notice a huge paper scroll, over 17 meters long, displayed on the wall of the corridor connecting the station with the Mitsukoshi department store:
This scroll is called Kidai Shoran, Excellent View of Our Prosperous Age [in Edo] and it was painted in 1805, by an unknown artist.
Kidai Shoran illustrates, with amazing detail, scenes from the Edo period taking place along the Nihonbashi main street, more exactly between Nihonbashi and Kanda Imagawabashi.
The scroll from Mitsukoshimae is an enlarged copy of the original 12-meters painting owned by the Museum of Asian Art from Berlin.
The painting represents exactly 1671 people, of which 200 are women. Most of the people are merchants or regular citizens, but we can also find several samurai.
There are also animals: a monkey, 20 dogs - that’s more than you can meet in today’s Tokyo.
and my attention was caught by a lot of interesting scenes. Here’s a men with a tengu mask…
… a men in a wheelchair (I didn’t know they had such devices in Edo)…
… two komuso, with their tengai “basket heads"…
… and a samurai with a large hat (or a spy disguised as a komuso?)
If you have the opportunity, go to the Mitsukoshimae Station (Tokyo Metro Ginza and Hanzōmon lines) to see it, it’s well worth it!
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