The Festival Day of Fudoson Temple, Yagenbori, Ryogoku — 両国薬研堀不動尊

The Festival Day of Fudoson Temple, Yagenbori, Ryogoku (Ryogoku Yagenbori Fudoson) belongs to Keisai Eisen's series Auspicious Festival Days for Good Fortune (Saiwai goyu en'nichi sukoshi). The Yagenbori Fudo, near the Ryogoku Bridge on the east bank of the Sumida River, was one of the major neighbourhood Fudo shrines of Edo and a popular destination on en'nichi - the special 'connection days' on which a temple's deity was held to be especially responsive to prayer. Such festival days drew large crowds and accumulated a small economy of stalls, performers, and visitors in their best clothes; in the Edo ukiyo-e tradition this turned them into ready-made subjects for bijin-ga. Eisen places a fashionably dressed woman in the foreground, with the temple precinct, lantern stands or a hint of the Ryogoku riverbank in the middle ground, so that the print works simultaneously as a portrait of a beauty, a record of the festival, and a guide to the city's sacred calendar. The figure is constructed with Eisen's mature Edo ukiyo-e mannerisms - elongated neck, small head, confident black contour drawing on the outer robe. The sheet is preserved in the ukiyo-e.org archive (Eisen Keisai, Auspicious Festival Days for Good Fortune). The series as a whole is a small but coherent project that links Edo's religious geography to its everyday fashion image.