temporary exhibition

Directly following the Great Earthquake that devastated Edo in October of 1855, vast numbers of multi-colored woodblock prints depicting catfish sold wildly throughout the city. These namazu-e, or "catfish pictures", were produced without the permission of the Tokugawa shogunate, which took immediate steps to ban them, but in the mere two months in which they were available more than 200 versions seem to have been printed.

Our Fifth Exhibition features prints in a great variety of styles to reveal the charm of catfish pictures. The exhibition also introduces the social background of the day and the contemporary state of printing and publishing in order to cast a light on how it was possible for so many prints to be created in such a brief period of time and to give an understanding of how namazu-e were received by the populace of Edo.