Cotton-goods Lane, Odenma-cho

On the right, large storehouse-style shops continue far back, with black noren curtains dyed with shop names hanging from their eaves. Ornaments like fire-prevention spikes line the roofs. At front left three women walk together, and a pillar at the left edge divides the picture vertically.

The repetition of black curtains and white characters gives the street's depth a pleasing rhythm. The gray-purple of the women's kimono and the red of their hems stand out in a picture of restrained color.

Odenma-cho was a town where Edo's cotton wholesalers gathered, and merchants from Ise and elsewhere kept shops there. The shop names seen on the curtains are said to be those of such wholesalers and offer clues to the actual appearance of the town at the time.

This is the seventh print of the Spring section, and with a censor's seal of April 1858 (Ansei 5) it was published relatively late in the series. It forms a pair with the Autumn section's Odenma-cho Kofuku Shop, which depicts the same town. The composition that sets a pillar at the left edge and lets the street show beyond it creates the feeling of standing under the eaves of a shop. Prints with large figures are not common in the series, and this one is also worth seeing as a record of the manners of the townspeople.