《Nononymous Flower Blooming Under the Moon: The Life and Shadow of an Edo Nighthawk (18th Century) 》

《Nononymous Flower Blooming Under the Moon: The Life and Shadow of an Edo Nighthawk (18th Century) 》

There was a nameless flower that bloomed quietly in the noisy nighttime streets of Edo. People called it the "nighthawk. Unable to get into the palaces of the Yoshiwara and unrecorded, they stood alone at the foot of bridges and behind temples, waiting for the darkness to fall, sinking into the valley of poverty and the system of the city. Their souls, with nowhere else to go, were still alive on the cold cobblestones.

A daughter who lost her place of apprenticeship in a farming village, a widow who lost her husband and was deprived of the means to support her family, and women who were chased to Edo, all had no choice but to live with their bodies alone. They stood on Ryogoku Bridge, behind the Asakusa Kannon, in Fukagawa's Kiba, and at Ushigome's Tsuji, where people were passing by but out of sight and sound, and in exchange for a few pennies of charity, they lived on without a voice.

The shogunate cracked down on them, banished them, and tried to protect its interests in Yoshiwara. But the nighthawks did not disappear. They kept their voices down, killed their footsteps, and survived the night in the city. Holding their hands over the fire of the nighthawk buckwheat noodle, they assessed the shadows of the men in front of them, sometimes laughing, sometimes refusing, and surviving with a certain grace. They were pathetic, but at the same time, they were very resilient.

Where the light of the city did not reach them, they certainly bloomed. They were nameless, unforgiven, and yet they did not disappear. Their appearance was another truth reflected on the underside of the city of Edo. Under the moonlight illuminating the cobblestones, the nameless flowers are still quietly blooming.