#028 Gotenyama, Shinagawa,

The26th in Utagawa Hiroshige’s “100 Famous Views of Edo” is Gotenyama, Shinagawa . The original picture is here.

The number of the section jumped suddenly to 28th. In the spring section (#1 through #42) of the 100 Views, many of the subjects are places famous for their flowers, and there are many landscapes that I could not bear to photograph without flowers. I waited for the cherry blossoms to bloom, but I could not take pictures of all of them during the short blooming season.

However, the site of Gotenyama Hill is now covered with the busy streets & buildings of Shinagawa, and there is no trace of it left, so it would be difficult for anyone with advanced eyesight to see any trace of the past.

The somewhat dull image is not due to the cloudy weather, but rather to the photographer’s poor skill and the wire mesh near the railroad tracks, which is forcibly blurred out in the shot. The railway cutting across in the foreground makes the foot of the Gotenyama Hills skyscraper look a step higher, as if it were the cliff in the original picture, but it is not. The place where I am standing is still on top of the old Gotenyama Hills, and the old coastline is still far behind.

Today, that coastline has been reclaimed and the land has expanded. On this day, I was lucky enough to be able to climb to the upper floor of the building at a location that would have been the just location of Hiroshige’s bird’s eye viewpoint in the original painting. The shocking image I took from there is “Gotenyama 2024,”.

Do you see the street that crosses diagonally from lower left to upper right in the front third of the photo? A signboard at the site says that this street is “Ex-Beach street” so it is assumed that the old coastline was here.

It took more than a hundred years for the view of almost the same place to change like this. Do you feel it is long or short?

Nearby is the “Daiba Elementary School of Shinagawa Ward.” At the end of the Edo period, gun batteries were built at this very spot to face the sea to intercept foreign fleets. I feel a sense of a world apart.

The cherry blossoms at the school gate of the elementary school were in their 70% bloom at the time of the visit. It was a smiling scene welcoming the children who were about to start school.