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101. Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival (11th Month, 1857)
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Hiroshige here presents the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters on the single busiest day of the year. However, from the second story of a brothel, the noise and activity seems far away. In the distance, crossing the Asakusa Ricefields, is a procession celebrating the Torinomachi Festival. On this day, the Yoshiwara was open to everyone, including ordinary women. It was also a monbi, one of the special days on which each courtesan was required by tradition to take a customer—or to pay the fee to the brothel owner if she failed. Casually arranged in the foreground are a courtesan's accouterments. Peeping out from behind the border of a screen are tissue papers delicately known as "paper for the honorable act."
Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum