Hiroshima castle picture folding screen

Paintings as historical materials In order to learn about the past of our hometown, we can refer to many things, such as old documents, old maps and other books, classical texts, tools used by people at that time, and materials obtained through excavation surveys. Among these, old drawings and genre paintings are some that allow us to see the appearance and behavior of people at that time. These paintings are not necessarily intended to record the state of the time. However, they are records that inadvertently give us who live in the present a vivid picture of the people of that time. In that sense, such paintings are extremely valuable not only in terms of art, but also as materials for learning history. However, unfortunately, there are very few such paintings remaining in Hiroshima. Among them, this Hiroshima Castle Town Picture Folding Screen is one of the few materials that allows us to know the state of castle town Hiroshima in the Edo period. This detailed folding screen is estimated to have been painted around the Bunka era (1804-1818) in the late Edo period. The artist and origin are unclear, but the painting vividly depicts the castle town of Hiroshima, with the Saigoku Kaido road running east to west through the city at its center. Construction of Hiroshima as a castle town began in 1589 by Mori Terumoto. The castle was subsequently lorded by the Fukushima clan and the Asano clan, but each successive lord devoted himself to the development of the castle town. When the Mori clan built Hiroshima Castle, the coastline was located around the current Heiwa Boulevard, but reclamation gradually created new land offshore, and the city area expanded. We can learn a little about this from old drawings and documents, but there are almost no documents remaining that allow us to see with our own eyes the houses, merchants' homes, and daily life of the castle town at that time. In that sense, a picture folding screen that vividly conveys the castle town's appearance, even though it is from the latter half of the Edo period, is extremely valuable. The vividly depicted folding screens depict the life of the time, depicting the scenery along Saigoku Kaido, the main street under the castle town, from Enkoubashi Bridge to Tenmabashi Bridge, from east to east, for each season of the year. Looking in detail, rows of merchant houses can be seen in Kyobashi-cho, Hashimoto-cho, Iwamiya-cho, Yamaguchi-cho, Higashihikimidou-cho, Ebisu-cho, Hirataya-cho, Harimaya-cho, Kawaya-cho, Yokomachi, Nakajima-honmachi, Tsukamoto-cho, Sakai-cho, and other areas, including many familiar shops today, such as fishmongers, greengrocers, confectionery shops, second-hand clothing stores, and liquor stores. Some, such as the "umbrella shop," show umbrellas being made in front of the store. These merchant houses are depicted below the center of the screen, and samurai residences can be seen lined up above them. In addition, the statues of samurai riding horses accompanied by attendants, street vendors, and people selling things in front of shops are also carefully depicted, vividly depicting the way people lived at that time.