Japanese Woodblock Print, originally published 5/1856, this Showa era from recarved woodblocks

SIZE IN INCHES: yatsugiri-ban approx. 4 x 5.8 inches

COMMENTS: Number 112 from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

THE CLUMP OF BAMBOO SHOWN ON THE RIGHT in this print was an established landmark that would have instantly identified the place to Edo residents. It was a small rectangular bed surrounded by a low fence as Hiroshige shows here. It lay just outside the northeast corner of the mansion of Kato, the daimyo of Minakuchi. Its function was to protect the mansion from the dangerous northeast, where the Kimon, the "devil's gate," lay. Why bamboo? Magazines from the time report a possible connection with the legend that Kato Kiyomasa, the first lord of Kumamoto and the Kato clan ancestor, had killed a tiger in a bamboo grove in Korea.

The bamboo gave its name to Yabu ("thicket") Lane, an alley that ran along the back wall of the Kato mansion toward the dam outside Toranomon Gate. Although it appears in the title, Yabu Lane is out of sight in this view, behind to the right, and we instead face south along the wider street heading toward Zojoji. The small gray building that spans the drainage channel to the right is a guardhouse, while the daimyo mansion across the street, its front gate just out of sight to the left, belong to Hijikata, the daimyo of Komono.

Fine, no flaws