Annotation: "The people: The street is filled with people who are either shopping around the stores or heading toward the temple..."

Annotation: "The people: The street is filled with people who are either shopping around the stores or heading toward the temple..."

(Dai Tokyo) Asakusa Kanzeon nakamise to niō-mon enbō (2b9cab6f-871d-4000-bb91-a48abca8f356)

The people: The street is filled with people who are either shopping around the stores or heading toward the temple at the end of the road, suggesting that Asakusa was not only a place for Buddhist reverence but also a site of tourism and popular entertainment. Since the majority of these people are wearing colorful kimonos, there might have be a festival happening inside the temple or a national holiday (since I assume that in the 1900s, Japanese would transition to wearing modern clothing). Moreover, even though they all wear kimono, almost all the men also wear flat caps, which belong to Western fashion; this mixing of traditional and Western fashions shows that Japanese gradually learned from the westerners during the Meiji Period. However, the fact that only men are seen wearing caps in this religious setting while women dress traditionally implies that men might have started to establish patriarchy that placed them firmly at the top of modernization. It demonstrates that women might still adhere to the decorum of visiting religious sites. The practice of men taking off their hat at respectful places (a conventional practice in the western world) might not have spread to Japan yet. (Huong Le)

 

Lecture Week 9 (2019, April 1). Early Meiji