Japanese Woodblock Print,Showa Era printing, Number 90 from the series One Hundred Views of Edo

SIZE IN INCHES: 4 x 6 inches

THE FULL MOON RISES HIGH in the autumn sky, its white perfection dimmed ever so slightly by a wisp of cloud slanting across its face. its rays bathe the street below with silver light, displaying an array of shadows that seen to have a life apart from the gray and black figures that cast them. These shadows are central to the magical quality of this unusual print. Both for Western viewers accustomed to pictures with shadows and for Edo viewers to whom they were a curiosity, these particular forms have the similar effect of conjuring up a world that is not quite of this world.

The place depicted shares this quality of a world apart, for it is Saruwaka-machi, the segregated theater district of Edo. Throughout most of the Tokugawa period, the officially approved kabuki and puppet theaters were located in downtown Edo, in two separate neighborhoods. Following an 1841 fire that destroyed one of the districts, however, the moralistic bakufu reformer Mizuno Tadakuni decided it was time to abolish the theaters and refused permission to rebuild. Thanks to the persuasive powers of another bakufu official sympathetic to kabuki, however, Mizuno agreed to relocate the theaters to Asakusa, already an established center of popular pleasure, on a lot just northeast of Asakusa Kannon Temple.

The new theater district was named Saruwaka-machi, after Saruwaka Kanzaburo, the recognized founder of Edo kabuki and first in the premier Nakamura-za lineage. As we see in this view, Saruwaka-machi was a single street, about 300 yards in length, with theaters and teahouses on either side. Although neither walled nor moated, it was, nevertheless, a world of its own, entered though a single gate at the south end (in the far distance here). The east side (to the left) appears as a solid row of teahouses, with waitresses seeing off guests from the veranda; in reality, the tea houses were interspersed with two puppet theaters.

On the west side, to the right, were the three official kabuki theaters, identifiable by the boxed turrets known as yaguar perched on the roof above each entrance and serving as the mark of bakufu approval. There theaters were arranged from the entrance gate in order of seniority: first, in the distance, the Nakamura-za, then the Ichimura-za and finally, to the immediate right, the Morita-za.

VG, minor flaws