Archery Contest at the Sanjūsangendō

This Archery Contest at the Sanjūsangendō, held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (sc169497), is an earlier and closely related version of the FAMSF Sanjūsangen archery print, with the museum recording 1759 as its date — that is, the apprentice period when Ōkyo was working at the Owariya toy shop in Kyoto. The composition treats the same subject: the tōshi-ya long-shot archery contest at the Sanjūsangen-dō temple, with archers ranged along the temple's 120-meter veranda firing toward a distant target. The perspective treatment uses parallel beams and floorboards converging toward a single vanishing point at the far end of the corridor, exploiting the temple's exceptional length as a perspectival demonstration. As with the other early megane-e, the print was designed for viewing through a nozoki-karakuri optical viewer fitted with a biconvex lens that produced an illusion of depth. The Sanjūsangen-dō (Hall of Thirty-Three Bays) is one of Kyoto's most famous temples, housing 1001 standing Kannon figures along its long veranda. The tōshi-ya archery contest, held annually in the eighth lunar month, was a major Kyoto spectator event from the Edo period; the record-holder Wasa Daihachirō (1670) is said to have shot 8,133 arrows the full length of the veranda in 24 hours. Ōkyo's megane-e treatment of the subject was repeated in slightly varying compositions across the late 1750s and 1760s.