The 50th views in Utagawa Hiroshige’s “100 Famous Views of Edo” are of the Zojo-ji pagoda Akabane, the original picture is here.
The summer heat had momentarily eased (or so it seemed), so I set out to shoot with my Lumix S5, but I was betrayed by the heat that should have eased, and betrayed by the lack of scenery that should have been there.
First of all, as usual, it is not so easy to get an elevated overhead picture, so we can only look up from the ground. Well, even if I could look over with a bird’s eye view, the Metropolitan Expressway covers the flow of the Furukawa River, so I don’t think I would be able to see the river surface or the Akabane Bridge.
Above all, the five-story pagoda of Zojoji Temple (Daitokuin), which is the subject of Hiroshige’s painting, was destroyed by fire in the Tokyo Air Raid of 1945, and the remains of the pagoda do not exist. In this photo, I cropped the edge of the roof of the temple gate and adjusted the white balance a little to match the color tone of the original painting, but this is the limit.
It seems that the pagoda was originally rebuilt by the Edo Shogunate after it was lost in the great fire of 1806. I studied the history of the five-story pagoda only briefly at this site.
According to an old map, the original pagoda seems to have been located in the southwestern part of Zojoji temple grounds, which was quite large. It may still be on the outskirts of the temple grounds or in a corner of Shiba Park.
The gate of the former Daitokuin Temple is a valuable cultural asset that survived the Tokyo Air Raid. The former Daitokuin temple was the mausoleum of Hidetada Tokugawa, and the five-story pagoda was built as the treasure tower of the mausoleum.
It was too hot on this day to be quiet and dream of the five-story pagoda of yesteryear…. I will enjoy my dreaming at another time, but I must evacuate to an air-conditioned space as soon as possible.
The “Hundred Scenic Spots” of this time
