The Venice of Japan
Mortimer Menpes
1901
Watercolour
Source: Japan, A Record in Colour, facing p. 102
Situated on what were originally wetlands, where two important rivers (the Yamato and the Yodo rivers) meet, Osaka was from the start the thriving second-city of Japan. This was Osaka as Menpes found it on his visit of 1888. [See his own description below.]
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"It was not until I arrived in Osaka, the Venice of Japan," says Menpes, "that I gave up dreaming and seriously began to work. Here was scope indeed!" He continues:
Osaka is the city of furnaces, factories, and commerce,— the centre of the modern spirit of feverish activity in manufacturing and commercial enterprise. Western ugliness has invaded certain quarters; yet the artistic feeling predominates. The Ajikawa is still the Ajikawa of the olden time, and on the eastern side of the city is the Kizugawa, into which — thanks to the shallowness of the bar — no steamer ever intrudes, while the city itself is intersected by a vast network of canals and waterways, all teeming with junks and barges, and crossed by graceful wooden bridges which lend themselves admirably to line. The Kizugawa fascinates the painter. Away from the bustle of the factories and the shrieking of the whistles, the great junks from northern Hakodate or the sunny Loochos lie sleepily silent. They are the Leviathans of their kind. Intermingling with them are innumerable barges and fishing-boats, stretching far up the river, their masts and cordage seeming one vast spider’s web. Not a single vessel is painted — from the huge sea-going junk to the narrow-prowed barge. Near the water-line the wood has taken a silvery tone; but above, it looks in the sunlight like light gold. And the cargoes of rice in straw bales, piled high over the bulwarks, are also golden. A steam-launch has in tow half a dozen barges, which, with their unpainted woodwork, rice bales, and straw-coloured connecting cable, appear against the dark water as a knotted golden thread. [102-03]
Even now, when flowing between unlovely concrete banks, waterways run all round the city centre. The best way to catch a glimpse of Menpes's Osaka is around Osaka Castle, where much has been (and is being) done to beautify the area. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Bibliography
Menpes, Dorothy. Japan: A Record in Colour. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1901. Internet Archive version of a copy in the University of California Libraries. Web. 27 June 2019.
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Created 27 June 2019