Narita-san

This 1858 woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisato, held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (accession MFA sc138837), depicts Narita-san, the great Shingon Buddhist temple complex at Narita in Shimōsa Province (modern Chiba Prefecture). Narita-san Shinshōji had been one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in the Kantō region since the eighteenth century, drawing pilgrims from Edo and the surrounding provinces to worship at its Fudō Myōō hall, and the temple's name had become firmly associated with Edo theatergoing audiences through the Ichikawa Danjūrō line of kabuki actors, whose stage name Naritaya derived from their family devotion to the Narita-san Fudō. Kunisato's print belongs to the meisho-e (famous-place) genre and treats the temple complex with the documentary register of mid-Ansei Edo print production. The 1858 date places it within the same final-career period as the Sannō Festival series and the other late documentary prints. The composition is preserved at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as part of the museum's substantial Kunisato holdings, and the MFA's open-access digital program makes it visible at high resolution as a primary source for late-Edo pilgrimage and religious-tourism imagery.