The Feline Stare: Finding myself in Hiroshige’s Ricefields

Am I a cat? As strange a question as that may sound, the thought constantly bounces in my mind. I attended the “Art After Hours”event at the Benton Museum of Art, slithering my way through crowds of people at the exhibit and gazing at so many distinct woodblock prints at the exhibit, “An Unruly Assembly.”

Some artworks I recognized from my art history classes and some I had never seen before, but one was especially familiar. I stared at the piece, which felt so intimate to me:, the “”Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival”” by Utagawa Hiroshige. The piece is a renowned ukiyo-e woodblock print, a Japanese art form meaning pictures of the floating world or urban life, that depicts life in Edo, the city that later became Tokyo. 

In the foreground, the viewer starts inside what many believe is a bordello, a house that has brothel workers available, with a cat sitting on the windowsill. There is a bowl and a towel to the right of the cat. Decorated rake-shaped hair ornaments, a symbol of good luck, sit on the floor. Outside the window, toward the middle ground, a procession to the Otori Shrine takes place. This procession is part of the bustling Torinomachi Festival, celebrated in November, where people partake in rituals centered around good fortune and prosperity. The procession navigates through the ricefields while Mount Fuji stands high along a colorful sunset in the background.

Back in my world, moving from Tennessee to California has been quite the change. Coming from a Southern town to the West Coast feels like an entirely different world, a place that seems too difficult for people to claw themselves into. California is filled with significant opportunities at every corner, made scarce by the intense competition of millions of people trying to succeed.

Although many might not feel this way, I certainly do. Coming from hundreds of miles away from home, I feel like this competition sometimes boils down to pure luck, leaving you with a feeling of defeat if the tide doesn’t roll in your favor. I’ve felt the need to pounce at every opportunity to be given that small chance. If only the Torinomachi Festival could take place right outside my dorm window, giving me all the luck I need to triumph in this brand new world far away from home.

There have been so many instances that have reminded me of home — from a squirrel standing mightily on a rock while eating an acorn that would’ve made my sister laugh, to going to the Benton Museum of Art and seeing a treasured artifact from my childhood bedroom on display.

There is so much to love about the piece. The artist places the viewer not in the festival, but at a distance, in a home made of crisp diagonals that lead the eyes to the festival and the sunset that surrounds Mount Fuji. Those same diagonals draw our eyes to the curvature of the cat that is perched on the windowsill, overlooking the scene. The cat in the piece looks longingly at the festival happening below, its white fur contrasting the darkness of the bustling festival.

That cat is what draws me into the piece. It exists in the dichotomy of domestic homelife and the vibrant outside world. I can’t help but reflect on myself as the cat. Being from Arlington, Tennessee, there is truly not much that happens in my town. We often have to travel thirty minutes to Memphis to get into something exciting.

Yet, for the artist, Hiroshige, he sees excitement everywhere in the outside world. He does not put the viewer directly in the festivities, but includes the mundane of the bordello’s everyday business to invoke the desire for freedom. He aims for us to long for that excitement. 

That longing for excitement is something I have always felt. Though I never knew I would go as far as California, that craving always existed in my heart. I stared at that poster of the Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival, my eyes bouncing from the festival to the mountain, to the sunset, and finally to the yearning cat, for the last time, before I closed the door to my bedroom to leave for a new, vibrant world — California.

I left two cats behind at home that I miss every day. One is named Keanu — no, not named after Keanu Reeves — and the other Nina — yes, named after the most iconic show “Portlandia.” I can talk about them all day and show thousands of pictures like the crazy cat lady that I am, but I will spare you the pleasure.

My cats are both indoor and outdoor cats, and I would often watch them enjoy both of their worlds. They effortlessly acclimate, shifting from napping on their choice of beds and couches to chasing after birds in our neighbors’ front yards.

I admired them as they adjusted so easily between both worlds, and how they loved every minute of it. Still now, I envy them as I continue adapting to my two worlds. It has always been a dream to get out of my hometown, but as I sit in the lively outside world, I often long for my quiet domestic life once again.

The “Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival” is a part of a series of prints titled “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo,” which is not all featured at the Benton. There is a very tiny human presence in the series, as though Hiroshige’s point is for us to feel our human presence in different elements, like the cat on the windowsill. 

Hiroshige subordinates the human presence to the power of the natural world, to point out that there is so much more than just a domestic life. That runs back to the initial question I proposed: Am I a cat? Is that the question Hiroshige wants us to concern ourselves with when looking at this piece?

For me, those two worlds are Tennessee and California. They feel so different, yet so similar. I feel so different, yet so similar. I’ve come to realize that it may always feel that way. I may always be the cat that sits on the windowsill, pawing to find stability between the domestic and the outside world.

Meiya Rollins PO ’29 believes, like Michelangelo, that art takes time – most of that time being snack breaks and watching “Good Mythical Morning.”