The fifth of the 100 Famous Views of Edo by Utagawa Hiroshige is “Ryogoku Ekoin & Moto-yanagi Bridge”.
Ekyoin is an existing temple in Ryogoku that was built after the Meireki Fire that ravaged the city of Edo, when the fourth shogun, Ietsuna, held a grand memorial service to ensure that those who had died were given a generous burial. Hiroshige’s painting is a composition looking across the Sumida River to the other side of the river through the turret announcing the opening of the Sumo tournament, but unfortunately, the Sumida River cannot be seen from the existing Kaiko-in Temple, and the turret is not standing. What should we do now?
I had no choice but to give up on Ekoin Temple and went out to the bank of the Sumida River to take this shot.
I have to make a lot of excuses. First of all, I did not go through Ekoin Temple due to the above reasons, and although the location is Ryogoku, there is no Sumo turret standing, no Mt. Fuji across the river. In addition, the Moto-yanagi Bridge, which is the title of the painting, does not exist, so I could not take a picture of it. Instead of the turret, I borrowed only the shape of a signboard on the riverside that reads “This road will stop soon.”
It is said that the Moto-yanagi Bridge spanned the Yagenbori moat on the opposite side of the Sumida River, but not only the bridge but the Yagenbori moat itself does not exist. The site of the moat is now Nihonbashi Junior High School, which can be seen in the upper right of the photo. Come to think of it, I took a walk around Yagenbori & the school some years ago, where only the name of the moat remain. At this point, I would be happy if you could see the pedestrian bridge in front of the junior high school as the Moto-yanagi Bridge.
I apologize to Ekoin to go through it, so I’ll include a photo of the temple gate.
In the old days, the bridge over Yagenbori was called “Yanagibashi”. However, a later bridge built at the mouth of the river where the Kanda River flows into the Sumida River was named “Yanagibashi”, so the Yagenbori bridge is now called “Moto(ex.) Yanagibashi.” I couldn’t take a picture of the “former” one due to the above reasons, so I took a picture of the “present” Yanagibashi bridge.
This time, in terms of remembering the past, the photos are almost nil, but we had originally expected that there would be at least this many, and we will continue to do so without being discouraged.
![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)
