Crowd Visiting Benzaiten Shrine at Enoshima in Sagami Province (Soshu Enoshima Benzaiten kaicho sankei gunshu no zu)
- Date:
- c. 1847/52
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; oban triptych
- Source:
Crowd Visiting Benzaiten Shrine at Enoshima in Sagami Province (Soshu Enoshima Benzaiten kaicho sankei gunshu no zu) is an 1842 woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige documenting one of the most celebrated pilgrimage events of late Edo: the periodic kaicho, or public unveiling, of the hidden Benzaiten image at Enoshima. Enoshima, a small island off the Sagami coast linked to the mainland at low tide, was sacred to the goddess Benzaiten, patron of music and water, and her shrine drew waves of pilgrims from Edo and beyond, especially during kaicho years. In this densely populated tableau, Hiroshige fills the page with travelers crossing the sandbar, climbing the island's stepped paths, and gathering on shrine precincts, an unusually figure-heavy composition compared with his more austere landscape print work. The artist nonetheless retains his characteristic spatial command: the island rises in the middle distance, the sea curves around it, and the picture's many small figures move along carefully judged paths that lead the eye through the scene. This impression is held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. Within Hiroshige's Edo ukiyo-e output, the print belongs to a tradition of meisho-e, famous-place pictures, that doubled as documentation of major religious and civic occasions. It reminds modern viewers that the landscape print, even at its most populated, was always closely tied to the social calendar of Edo Japan: festival, pilgrimage, and seasonal observance.
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Crowd Visiting Benzaiten Shrine at Enoshima in Sagami Province (Soshu Enoshima Benzaiten kaicho sankei gunshu no zu) was created by Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川広重) in c. 1847/52.
Crowd Visiting Benzaiten Shrine at Enoshima in Sagami Province (Soshu Enoshima Benzaiten kaicho sankei gunshu no zu) depicts birds & flowers and landscapes.
