#012 Ueno-yamashita

The 12nd of ‘Utagawa Hiroshige: 100 Famous Edo Views’ is Ueno-yamashita. The original print is here.

The picture looks like a view from Hirokoji, near the Shinobazu exit of JR Ueno station, looking toward the entrance to the mountain of Ueno. “Yamashita” was the name of a fire prevention area around here. The road from here may have been the gateway to Kan’eiji and some other temples and shrines.

Nowadays, this area is the southern entrance to Ueno Park, and there are no tea stores or restaurants as depicted in Hiroshige’s painting. If you ignore the very different atmosphere, you will get this image.

The reason why the area looks somewhat lively with so many lanterns lined up is because the cherry blossom viewing season has just started in Ueno Park. The area is always lively even if it is not.

On this day, it was still too early for cherry blossoms to bloom, so it was a bit unfortunate that many cherry blossom-viewing visitors who gathered here during the daytime on a weekend had to enjoy parties in the chilly weather without any flowers.

No, “unfortunate” is rescinded because it looks like a lot of fun in its own way (lol).

From the way it looked that day, the Someiyoshino flowers were still about a week away, but there was one weeping cherry tree at the entrance to the park that was just about finished blooming. There was no Hanami banquet around this weeping cherry tree, but there was a huge crowd of people who wanted to take pictures of the flowers with their smartphones.

I joined the crowd and took one photo facing the direction of Hirokoji.