Whiskers & Wings · One Hundred Famous Views of Edo · Utagawa Hiroshige, 1857
Asakusa Ricefields and the Rooster Day Fair
A cat at the window, and no one else in the room.
The Work
A white cat sits at the window. Beyond the lattice: rice fields at dusk, Mount Fuji, and a line of people heading to the Rooster Day fair.
Look Closer
No person appears. Rake-shaped hairpins on the floor and a towel over the windowsill hint at who was here. The room is said to be in the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter.
The Artist
Hiroshige was born in 1797 into a family of Edo fire wardens. Orphaned in his teens, he took over the post, then studied under Utagawa Toyohiro.
The Artist
His Fifty-three Stations of the Tōkaidō, made in his thirties, was a hit. He became the master of landscape prints — rain, snow, dusk.
Japan at the Time
After the great Ansei earthquake of 1855, Edo rebuilt fast. One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is often read as a portrait of the revived city.
Culture & Values
The Rooster Day fair is held on the "rooster days" of November. People buy decorated bamboo rakes to "rake in" luck. It still runs every year in Asakusa.
Meanwhile, in the World
In the same year, 1857, Baudelaire published Les Fleurs du mal in Paris. It contains three poems about cats.
Afterward
Hiroshige died in 1858 before the series was finished. His pupil Hiroshige II is said to have completed the last few, for 119 views plus a contents page.
Listen while you look
Ten quiet minutes with this work alone, with Cat At The Window and Rakes For Good Luck — or keep going through the full hour of Whiskers & Wings.
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