Page 253 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

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138 the greatest number of extant festival tival itself. Along with those of Atsuta
Tsushima Festival screens from this period depict the and Ichinomiya, the Tsushima Festi-
festival of Tsushima Shrine in the pros- val is one of the Three Great Festivals
Seventeenth century
Eight-panel screen; ink, color, perous port city of Tsushima, west of of Owari (part of present-day Aichi
Nagoya in central Japan. Tsushima
Prefecture). It is a river festival whose
and gold on paper Shrine enjoyed the support of the Oda purpose is to drive away pestilence
3
146 x 468.4 (57 V 2 x 184 /s) and Toyotomi ruling families in the
Private Collection, Kyoto and plague. Although the origins of
Momoyama period and then that of the festival are lost in the mists of
the Tokugawa shogun in the Edo time, documents describing the festi-
• Almost all of the festival screens period. In premodern times it ranked
remaining from the Momoyama to with the venerable Ise Shrine as a val date to the mid-sixteenth century.
early Edo periods depict festivals of pilgrimage site. This recently discovered painting is
the Kyoto-Osaka region, which is to be the left screen of what was originally
expected, given the prevalence of The festival depicted on this screen a pair; the location of the right screen
large-scale festivals and numerous (and on its missing mate) took place is unknown. From other examples we
painting workshops in the area. on the fourteenth and fifteenth days know that the right screen would
Beyond these metropolitan centers, of the sixth month in the lunar calen- depict an evening procession of five
dar, although the festival rites occur
for six weeks before and after the fes-