Page 222 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

independent subject matter in the Momoyama period. Festival screens are also indebted to the cultic
paintings known as shrine and temple pilgrimage mándalas (shaji sankei mandara), themselves descen-
dents of the more formal portraits of sacred space seen in thirteenth-century portrayals of famous
sites such as Kumano or Kasuga. Like these mándalas, festival screens represent a kind of persuasive
spiritual cartography, but one in which religious space, no longer confined to traditional institutional

boundaries, spreads beyond the gates of the shrines, affirming a continuity between the sacred and
the profane.
This religious populism is, as we have seen, inherent in the content of these images. They
make tangible the mass involvement in religious life: the ritual specialists and ordinary townspeople,
cat. 136 the men and women, the young and old, the warriors, farmers, artisans, merchants, and entertainers. 22 1
Hie Sanno Festival,
detail from a pair of six-panel In the Hie screens, for example (cat. 136), a visible syncretism is apparent in the participation of white-
screens; ink, color, and robed priests from the Shinto shrine and dark-clothed monks from the Buddhist temple of Enryakuji
gold on paper,
7
each 154.5 x 354.5 (6o /s x 13972), with which it is allied. The Gion screens (cat. 134) show a rite that began as a prophylaxis against pesti-
Konchi'in, Kyoto
lence and developed into a ritualized contest in the urban display of wealth, with neighborhood orga-
nizations of the merchant class vying with each other in the sumptuousness of their decorations.
Nowhere is the proliferation of sacred topography more evident than in the case of the Sumiyoshi
Shrine, which, by the Edo period, had established two thousand branches throughout the country. The
screens showing the festival of the Sumiyoshi Shrine (cat. 137), whose gods catered to the unlikely
mix of seamen and poets, follow the procession of four deities in their sacred palanquins, moving from
the shrine complex through the orderly streets of the prosperous port city of Sakai. Festivals mingle
the ancient with the up-to-date: the protection of the gods of the Tsushima Shrine against summer
plague is invoked on the festooned sacred boats by the display of the crowd-pleasing mechanical dolls
that were all the rage during the Edo period (cat. 138).
Festival screens are often remarkably faithful to the key sites and activities of the particular
festival portrayed. The topography, relative position of the shrine or temple and other buildings, and the

number of floats and their decoration and deployment are rendered accurately. This is true even in
cases where the painting, executed in Kyoto, is of a festival that occurs at some distance, such as the
Tsushima Festival (cat. 138): early examples were produced by someone who observed the two-day
event and made meticulous visual notes to produce such an accurate record. In fact, some festivals
performed today can be matched closely to the scenes found on screens painted three centuries ago.
Although depictions of food sellers, entertainers, and even fights are occasionally somewhat generic
in character and employed on screens of different festivals, these screens are masterpieces of near-
documentary detail combined with richly evocative atmosphere.