Page 265 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

264 fig. i
Muromachi period,
Scenes In and Around Kyoto,
detail from a pair
of six-panel screens;
ink, color, and gold on paper,
137.8 x 348.4 (5272 x 1377s),
National Museum of Japanese
History, Chiba

of the setting came the epistemológica! construction of the place's "meaning." The Chinese emperor
commissioned a scholar-painter to design the series Eight Views of the Environs of Beijing, thereby
"imposing a pattern of cultural references on a region previously thinly supplied with them." 12
The founders of Edo, after draining the swamps and filling in the marshes, symbolically trans-
ferred many of Kyoto's famous sites to the new center of power. Mount Hiei (Hieizan) was given
an eastern counterpart, "Eastern Mount [Hi]ei" (Tôeizan), in the Ueno district. The location was further
invested with a sense of antiquity by the construction of the temple Kan'eiji, dedicated during the
Kan'ei era (1624-1644), thus linking it with Mount Hiei's Enryakuji, created during the Enryaku era
(782-806). Edo's very own Mount Atago Shrine protected the Eastern Capital from fire, and its new