Sunday People

Over the years that I have lived in Tokyo, I have experienced that Sundays are the social highlight of the week. Most people work all week long, with long working hours, a lot of them even on the weekend. Sundays are special. People come out of their houses and flats in droves. The city center and parks are extremely crowded, and even if you leave the city to go to the beach, you will find masses of pleasure seekers. I created the base of my art work “Sunday People” with paper from Germany, Korea and the Himalaya and antique Japanese study book pages. The fairytale-like setting is created by woodblock prints by Japanese artists Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), both of them ukiyo-e painters and printmakers of the Edo period. The winter setting that forms the frame of this picture is made of several Hiroshige prints. On the left-hand side you see the “Meguro Drum Bridge”, which is part of the path to a famous temple in Meguro that is dedicated to the “king of esoteric knowledge” (Fudō Myōō). The fact that it was built of stone rather than the usual wood makes it a tourist attraction for pilgrims. The Shogoya teahouse, famous for its sweet bean soup (shiruko mochi), is shown only indirectly. On the right side of the bridge, a man is sitting on roof of the teahouse, drinking his soup. The tree-covered Sunset Hill (Yuhi no oka), which provides an attractive view down on the scenery of this artwork, can be seen at the upper left. Below the hill is the residence of daimyō Hijikata from Komono (in todays Mie Prefecture). There are people walking past the residence, heading towards Atago Hill with the brilliant red gate house that leads to the Atago Shrine (upper right). Snow-covered bamboo branches build a decorative foreground for the scenery. Combined with sparrows (bottom left), bamboo in snow is a symbol of placidity and friendship, and has an auspicious meaning. Below the bamboo, the “Bikuni Bridge in Snow” can be seen at the bottom of the outer moat of the shogun’s castle. In the 19th century the bridge was in a run-down district of cheap restaurants and brothels. The word “bikuni” had been used since about the 14th century to refer to an itinerant nun. In Hiroshige’s day, the name was also applied to prostitutes who, disguised as nuns, circumvented the ban on prostitution outside the licensed pleasure quarter of Yoshiwara. On the bridge there are simple restaurants offering popular winter specialties, such as the yakiimo, roast sweet potatoes, which are still sold on the streets of Tokyo today (the historical background information is taken from the book “Hiroshige”, 2019 TASCHEN GmbH, p. 538- 552) Fish creatures fly over the water scenery and Mount Fuji while humans and animals alike enjoy their Sunday. Since the picture was created in winter 2020, which was the year of the rat, the rats are the second largest group after humans and fishes. The rat is the first symbol in the Japanese zodiac. Legend has it that when God called for all animals to attend a New Year’s greeting, the rat arrived there first by secretly traveling on the back of the ox (zodiac of 2021). In my art work the rats are on an equal basis with humans: they work with them, they read, and teach. One group is trying to catch a giant bat. Until the 20th century, bats were very popular in Japanese culture. Under the influence of Chinese culture, the bat was viewed as a good-luck symbol. The people in red are taken from Hokusai’s Mangas. “The Hokusai Manga (北斎漫画, "Hokusai's Sketches") is a collection of sketches of various subjects by the Japanese artist Hokusai. Subjects of the sketches include landscapes, flora and fauna, everyday life and the supernatural. The word manga in the title does not refer to the contemporary story-telling manga, as the sketches in the work are not connected to each other. Block-printed in three colors (black, gray and pale flesh), the Manga comprise literally thousands of images in 15 volumes, the first published in 1814, when the artist was 55.” (Wikipedia)