Lifestyles

An urban culture developed that stressed an appreciation of nature and artistic cultivation. The banks of the Sumida River, with its great bridges, provided places for outdoor activities: daily strolls, spring cherry-blossom viewing, relief from the summer heat, fireworks on summer nights, viewing the moon in autumn and snow in winter

Following the lead of Chinese culture, women and men of all classes engaged in the traditional arts of music, painting, calligraphy, and games of skill. With their rapid accumulation of wealth, Edo townspeople also became patrons of art, creating a previously unprecedented artistic pluralism. For the first time, the aristocracy no longer dictated artistic trends and production, despite attempts by the shogunate to curtail artistic consumption among its subjects. The artistic trends in Edo reflected a growth in popular culture and a demand for art with mass appeal.

The shogunate built an extensive network of waterways and five major highways that connected the three major cities of Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka with smaller towns and ports, which facilitated increased travel among all classes. Besides business, pilgrimage was the most common reason for travel. Commoners made pilgrimages to sites of religious importance, such as famous Buddhist temples, ancient Shinto shrines, famous places such as Mount Fuji, etc. People often traveled under the pretense of religious pilgrimage, desiring to leave their routine life for awhile.

Publishers produced various types of guides and gazetteers that catered to the public’s fascination with travel and pilgrimage. Unlike earlier travel books, which were more like works of literature, Edo period travel books were practical guides for the masses that included not only lodging information and advice on road conditions, but also historical tidbits about a place and its references in poetry. They were usually illustrated with black-and-white woodblock prints.