Woodblocks and Justice

Today I had booked to go on a walk through the forest along one of Japan’s main medieval paths, but as I was feeling unwell, I decided to have a rest day instead. By late morning, I was feeling a bit better, so I walked to the Ukioy-e woodblock print museum. This is considered the largest private collection of woodblocks and woodblock prints in the world. 

On the way, I went along a major road and saw several petrol stations where the pumps were in the roofs. 

As I am coming to expect, the woodblock museum had very few items on display, a set of woodblock tools,

The current display was the sixty nine stations of the kiso kiado - a very famous set of woodblock prints, but with extras done by other artists

and a set of the beauties at the stations.

Next door to the museum is the Matsumoto Japanese Court and Architectural Museum. This was really interesting. The first building was the only remaining wooden court building in Japan. 

There were two rooms set up as courtrooms of the genji period, when the courthouse was used.

The next building I visited was a boy’s prison, where they were kept in solitary confinement.

Then there was a silk factory building complete with a spinning room,

a weaving room,

and a dyeing room.

And the house where Naoi Kinoshinta (an advocator for human rights) was born in 1869.

I went back a different way, and passed rice paddies and saw snow topped mountains in the distance.