Pounding Silk by Tamagawa River 1829

Yamada Hōgyoku created this woodblock print titled *Pounding Silk by Tamagawa River* in 19th-century Japan. The work depicts tools for preparing silk laid out on a river bank, with a pail of water sitting nearby. This is a fine example of ukiyo-e, a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. It was aimed at the merchant classes that were newly rich enough to participate in urban amusements and cultural life. Woodblock prints were especially attractive, since they could be mass-produced and sold at relatively low prices. Though they are very beautiful, we shouldn't think of them as ‘high art’ in the Western sense, displayed in rarefied institutions. It is important to remember that these images did not exist in a vacuum. Prints such as this one offer a glimpse into the lives of ordinary Japanese people during this period and the economic structures that dictated those realities. A historian might study records of textile production to further understand the role of silk in Japanese society at this time.