One Hundred Famous Views of Edo No.102Minowa, Kanasugi and Mikawashima

Along the south bank of the Arakawa River (upstream of the Sumida River) and west of Senju station on the Nikkokaido Highway was an extensive paddy field called Mikawashima Tanbo (“tanbo” means paddy field in Japanese), so-named because a lord named Mikawa no Kami lived there from 1457 to 1460. The field was divided into three parts: Mikawashima, Minowa and Kanasugi.
Mikawashima village was abundant in ponds, marshes and swamps. Cranes, which are migratory birds, used to come to the field around October and stay until March. Thus, the area was very suitable for hunting cranes and for hawking, and the shogunate designated the field as a hawking ground for the shogun. With the aim of protecting the cranes from attacks by dogs and people, the shogunate fed the cranes and put up bamboo fences around the feeding place. Hawking was a favourite pursuit of Iyeyasu Tokugawa, the first shogun in the Edo period, and it was passed down to his descendants.
Old records reveal that shoguns came here for hawking 2,000 times over 150 years. The first two cranes caught by the shogun were put into white wooden boxes and carried by his special courier to Kyoto to dedicate to the Emperor and the Crown Prince.
The cranes were in the habit of flying away from 6 o’clock in the evening until 6 o’clock in the morning. In other words, the cranes stayed during the day and stayed away during the night. Commoners were only allowed to enter the area when the cranes were away.
In this print, Hiroshige has depicted two Japanese cranes.