Famous Views of Tokyo : Shinkai Pond with the Distant View of Kinryuzan Temple in Asakusa 東京名所浅草金龍山遠景新開池之図

It was in 1887 that the tile-roofed wooden pavilion that the Shinanoya, a lumber dealer in Honjo, had owned was rebuilt in Hanayashiki in Asakusa Park. Hanayashiki was a flower garden whose attractions included exotic displays made of chrysanthemums and other spectacles and which eventually developed into Japan’s first amusement park. As we can see in this triptych of polychrome prints, the pavilion, which was named the Ozankaku, was five stories tall and had a gold-plated phoenix atop its roof. Its interior was decorated with rosewood, ebony, and other fine woods and had paintings and antiques on display. The gallery on the fourth floor offered a full view of the park. When the pavilion was opened to the public in 1888, it became a popular attraction. It was Yamamoto Kinzo, a Fukagawa-area lumber dealer who had become manager of Hanayashiki in 1886, who decided to move the pavilion there. Kinzo’s energetic efforts to increase business, at the time that he opened the Ozankaku to the public, also included expanding Hanayashiki’s grounds and its gardens and adding to the varieties of animals on display. Kinzo continued to work actively to upgrade Hanayashiki, adding dioramas, in which oil paintings and beams of light create the illusion of seeing an actual landscape, and gramophones playing recordings of Kabuki actors saying their lines to the Ozankaku. Unfortunately, in 1890, a year after this image was created, what was then Japan’s tallest building, the twelve-story Ryuunkaku, was born. Popular enthusiasm shifted to that new recreational facility. Hanayashiki, between large investments in new facilities and Kinzo’s wasteful spending habits, went bankrupt and passed to other hands in 1894.