Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival, No. 101 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo

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."