The 14th of ‘Utagawa Hiroshige: 100 Famous Edo Views’ is Forest Spring in Higurashi no sato temples. The original painting is here.
The area was called Higurashi no Sato (village of sunset) because the view from the top of Dokanyama hill was so wonderful that one stay forgetting about sunset. I have heard that the curent place name “Nippori (Higurashi in Kanji)” was added in later year to substituting Kanji character of orijinal name “Niibori”. However I am a little skeptical about whether it is true or not.
The original painting is said to be a view of Rinsen (forest spring garden) that several temples at the foot of the hill competed to create in order to create a landscape worthy of being called a famous landmark, but unfortunately they no longer exist. I had no choice but to take a picture of the scenery of Nippori Park and force it to look like Rinsen to make up for the lack of a view.
Hmmm, even with a lenient self-grading, this “looks” about a 3 on a scale of 100. It would have been nice if at least one of the weeping cherry trees had bloomed like the one in the picture, but it didn’t work out that way.
Nevertheless, this Nippori Park is definitely as close as possible to the original site of the painting. The small but serene park is located on top of a small hill, once upon a time called Doukan-yama, just beside the current Nishi-Nippori Station. The photo below was taken from the gate of the adjacent elementary school, looking southwest toward the hill…
First of all, I could see that I was “on top of a hill” and could recognize the topography,
Secondly, I noticed a cemetery on the right side of the school site, just beyond the roof. This is a temple, as seen on the map, and is believed to be the Seiunji Temple of the same name as the famous temple that competed to create Rinsens in this area during the Edo period.
I did not visit the temple itself this time because not sure how to get around the complicated residential area. Anyway, it would be interesting to dream that the site of the elementary school may have once been a magnificent garden with a pond, a hill, famous trees, and huge rocks around it.
![広重名所江戸百景 望月義也コレクション [ 望月義也 ]](https://thumbnail.image.rakuten.co.jp/@0_mall/book/cabinet/0032/9784772610032.jpg?_ex=128x128)
