Uyeno Park, Edo (Tokyo)

Category

Library Item

Item no

15134

Title

Uyeno Park, Edo (Tokyo)

Description

Five men (probably rickshaw pullers) stand on a path in Uyeno Park, Tokyo. They wear short blue kimono and one of them has a 'kasa', a large circular straw hat.
The tall trees (mainly pines) cast shadows over the path and a wooden fence can be seen behind the trees on the right.
The photograph was hand-painted with great care in orange, blue, and various shades of green.

Artist / maker

von Stillfried-Ratenicz, Franz

Date

1881

Size

24 x 19.5 cm

Type

Photograph

Location

Art and Design Library

This item is part of a collection of prints from the studio of Baron Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz, an Austrian photographer practising in Japan in the late 1870's. Von Stillfried ran a studio in Yokohama at the same time as his brother Raimund, who was also known as 'Baron Stillfried'. This caused a great deal of confusion with the local residents and visitors to Japan in the Meiji Period, and with art historians today.

This album, which dates from 1879-83, comprises 67 separate mounted prints presented in a lacquerware box. Albums of this kind were popular among foreign tourists, who frequently selected the individual prints they wished to include from the studio's collection. Many of these albumen prints were hand tinted. This was a laborious process for which von Stillfried employed, at the height of his success, a substantial number of Japanese workers. Contrarily to the many landscape pictures in the collection that have been left in black and white, this photograph has been hand-painted with great care and a subtle variety of colours.

A caption written at the bottom of the picture reads 'Uyeno' indicating that it was taken at Ueno Park, Edo (now Tokyo). Ueno Park belonged at first to Kaneiji, a Buddhist temple founded in 1625. Most of the temple got destroyed during the Boshin civil War (1868-1869) and in 1873, the government's council of state ('Dajiokan') turned it into the first public park of Japan.

Ueno park was a highly popular place in the Meiji Era, busy with rickshaws and visitors admiring the famous cherry blossoms. It is said that Tenkai (1536 - 1643), the famous Buddhist priest who founded the temple, planted the first wild cherry trees there in the 17th century. In 1717, a hundred more cherry trees were planted by order of the 8th Shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune, and in 1883, a thousand more cherry trees of the 'someiyoshino' species were added on the banks of the pond by Okura Kihachiro, a successful entrepreneur. The place became a fashionable promenade with many temporary food stalls and teahouses.

Another photograph in the Dyer collection (item no. 15149 shows a different view of Ueno Park from the top of stone stairs.

Exhibitions with this item

Other views of this item

Related images

Related subjects

Places > Asia > Japan

Plants > Trees > Trees

Sport and leisure > Sports and recreation facilities > Parks