Eastern Shinagawa, on the western side of central Tokyo, is fast being transformed from a decaying industrial area of warehouses and rail marshalling yards into a modern business hub. One step beyond the forests of shining new high rises, however, the area's history as an Edo Period post-station town on the old Tokaido highway at the city's edge lives on here and there. Footprints of fishermen, found off the main roads, also tell of the happy days when people there lived close to the sea.
The summer festival of Ebara-jinja Shrine is a good opportunity to discover old Shinagawa. Held on the first weekend of June (May 31-June 1 this year), this reaches its climax on the Sunday, when the mikoshi (portable shrine) and its carriers all plunge into the sea. A tradition started by the local fishermen in 1751 to pray for good catches, the high-spirited mikoshi "procession" through the shallow waters just off the Shinagawa shore is vividly depicted in the 1830s woodblock print by Hasegawa Settan shown here. Nowadays, the tradition continues -- but the wading takes place at Odaiba about 4 km northeast in Tokyo Bay.
In this print, the male face on the roof of the mikoshi represents Susanoo, a mighty god in Japanese myths who sometimes figures as the younger brother of the sun goddess, Amaterasu, while at other times he's the god of the underground, the waters and agriculture. One local legend has it that a fisherman found a carved wooden mask of this god drifting close to the shore and had it enshrined at Ebara-jinja Shrine. Then the priest there heard a voice in a dream saying that the mask should be returned to the sea once a year -- hence the festival celebrated to this day.