Artist:Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando)
Medium: Woodblock print
Geograhical Locations:
Dates:7th month of 1856
Dimensions: Sheet: 14 5/16 x 9 5/16 in. (36.4 x 23.7 cm) Image: 13 3/8 x 8 3/4 in. (33.9 x 22.2 cm)
Collections:
Exhibitions:
Accession Number: 30.1478.51
Image: 30.1478.51_PS1.jpg,
Catalogue Description: This scene depicts part of the grand festival of the Sanno Shrine. The entire procession consisted of more than fifty large floats, some more than thirty feet high and all lavishly decorated at the expense of the sponsoring parishioners, who are shown wearing flowered hats. The midsummer sun beats down on the blue waters of Benkei Moat and on the high embankment along the southwest side of Edo Castle. In the distance, the festival procession enters the castle grounds from Kojimachi I-chome through Hanzo Gate. From there, it will pass under the personal review of the shogun himself at Inui Gate, an honor shared only by the Kanda Myojin Shrine festival, with which the Sanna festival alternated every year after 1681; the two together were known as the Tenka Festival, "Tenka" (All Under Heaven) being an honorary title for the shogun himself. The float in the distance, that of Minami Denmacho, represents a monkey, messenger of the Sanno god, wearing a gold "eboshi" cap and silk ceremonial gown with a sword in the sash and holding a wand of sacred gohei. In the immediate left foreground is the float of Odenma-cho, the so-called Drum-Bird, a large model of an ornamental rooster with outstretched wings (only the tip is shown here) on a large ceremonial drum. In Japan, the drum symbolized a well-ruled country where its use was no longer required. Historically, the Drum-Bird always led both the Sanno and Kanda Myojin processions, but Hiroshige re-arranged the floats to his own preference.