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2019. 4 - 7

Part of the picture scroll of “Princess Sazanomiya Leaving the Kyoto Capital”, Masatada Aoki,1804, collection of Tokyo Metropolitan Edo-Tokyo Museum

Mizuki Yamamoto × Satoshi Sugiyama (Tokyo Metropolitan Edo-Tokyo Museum)

An exhibition examining how the shogun and noble princesses travelled on the highways of Edo-period Japan

  • Sugiyama　 My name is Satoshi Sugiyama, and I’m the curator in charge of the exhibition “Traveling on the Edo Highways: A Journey of Shogun and Princesses”. Taking the highways of Edo as its theme, this special exhibition will use the Edo-Tokyo Museum’s collection to look at how the shogun and princesses travelled.
  • Yamamoto　 Why did they travel?
  • Sugiyama　 The shogun made visits to Kyoto to meet the emperor, and also made religious visits to Nikko’s Toshogu Shrine. The imperial princesses and daughters of nobles would make the journey from Kyoto to Edo to marry into the shogun’s family. Nowadays you can make that journey in 2-3 hours via Shinkansen bullet train, but at the time it’s said to have taken around 20-25 days. Though it’s thought that the processions of the daimyo (feudal lords) were made up of thousands of people, these weren’t all permanent retainers. Some were labourers hired to make up the numbers. The processions were very long, and it’s easy to imagine they would have left quite an impression on the people who lived along the highways.
  • Yamamoto　 I’m interested in the grandness and splendour of the princesses’ processions.
  • Sugiyama　 One of the highlights of this exhibition is a picture scroll depicting the procession of Princess Sazanomiya, who married the twelfth shogun, Tokugawa Ieyoshi. This time, we are exhibiting the full 24m length scroll, which gives a good idea of the decadence of these bridal processions. There are also detailed depictions of the post towns that welcomed them along the way.
  • Yamamoto　 It must have been tough, seated in a palanquin for such a long time.
  • Sugiyama　 I imagine it was. In the case of the princesses, they travelled by the Nakasendo highway which is a mountain route, so the palanquin would have jolted and swayed a lot. We will exhibit a palanquin belonging to the Shimazu clan of Satsuma Domain, which by itself weighs around 60kg. With a passenger, it would have weighed around 100kg, and been carried by four people.
  • Yamamoto　 Did the princesses have to marry, even if it was to someone they didn’t like?
  • Sugiyama　 Yes – marriages were arranged by consultations between the shogunate and the imperial court. Princess Kazu was originally engaged to Prince Arisugawa Taruhito, but the betrothal was broken off so that she could wed the fourteenth shogun, Tokugawa Iemochi. Princess Kazu was reluctant, but it’s said that in the end they became a happy couple.
  • Yamamoto　 It’s hard to say if the princesses in those days were really happy, isn’t it? When did the practice of travelling in processions die out?
  • Sugiyama　 The processions gradually became less common as the Edo period ended and the Meiji era began, and train lines started to open. Even so, people became nostalgic for the Edo period, with artists creating pictures of the daimyo’s processions, and festivals becoming a common event all over Japan. Before we end, I want to talk about one more highlight of the exhibition that we have used on the promotional materials for the event – a long-handled vermilion-coloured paper umbrella. In the Edo period, it was forbidden to directly depict certain noblemen in art. In place of that person, one of these vermilion umbrellas would be drawn instead.
  • Yamamoto　 It’s interesting if you study a bit beforehand, isn’t it? I’d like to look to see if I can find where the vermilion umbrellas have been painted myself.
Traveling on the Edo Highways: A Journey of Shogun and Princesses

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