help save Japan’s visual heritage of daily life
support
80115-0010 - Japanese Flower Peddler, 1890s

1890s
Flower Peddler

Artist Unknown
Publisher Unknown
Medium Albumen Print
Period Meiji
Location Outside
Image No. 80115-0010
Purchase Digital File
Author

A Japanese flower peddler wearing a happi coat pulls a boat-shaped cart filled with flowering branches.

A woman carrying a child on her back is carefully examining his wares. In the back two people can be seen observing the scene from inside what appears to be a shop.

Flower peddlers were very common on the streets of Japan. Some sold potted plants, others branches, and others again cut flowers. The flowers they sold changed each season, bringing the charm of the seasons to the people’s homes.

Flowers played an important role in the lives of people. They were generously used during funerals and on graves, but were also a major part of daily life. Fresh flowers were used in the tokonoma, a small raised alcove that was the center point of a Japanese home, and occasionally even on the kamidana, a miniature Shinto shrine inside the house, while ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement) was practiced by both men and women.

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), the unequaled interpreter of Meiji Japan, felt great admiration for ikebana. Compared to Japanese flower arrangement, “all flower displays you have ever seen abroad,” he wrote, “were only monstrosities.”12

I cannot think now of what we Occidentals call a bouquet as anything but a vulgar murdering of flowers, an outrage upon the colour-sense, a brutality, an abomination.

He would probably be deeply shocked to discover that the European “vulgarities” have made great inroads into modern Japan.

Flower sellers announced themselves by a call that reverberated through the streets. Edward S. Morse (1838-1925), who lived in Japan for some three years and published his remarkable observations, likened the call of the Japanese flower peddler to “the terminal cluck of a hen.” They usually also quickly clicked their scissors as they walked the streets, making a sound that was uniquely theirs.

Flowers were not the only product sold by street peddlers. There were peddlers of, to name just a few, vegetables, seaweed, amazake (sweet sake), fish, insects, pipes, baskets, toys, tsukemono (pickles), soy sauce, tofu, suika (watermelons), takenoko (bamboo shoots), soba (buckwheat), medicine, newspapers and even ladders. There were pipe-repairmen, shoemenders, barbers and so on, and so on.

All of them employed different street cries that added live and flavor to the sounds of the streets. Quite different from the monotonous noise of motorized traffic that we have grown used to in our modern cities. Thankfully, street cries have not completely vanished from Japanese streets, so we can still imagine how it was when the streets were filled with such calls.

Hearn marvelously described the voices of the street in Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, thereby keeping them alive for us to imagine3:

I listen to the voices of the city awhile. I hear the great bell of Tokoji rolling its soft Buddhist thunder across the dark, and the songs of the night-walkers whose hearts have been made merry with wine, and the long sonorous chanting of the night-peddlers.

“U-mu-don-yai-soba-yai!” It is the seller of hot soba, Japanese buckwheat, making his last round.

“Umai handan, machibito endan, usemono ninso kaso kichikyo no urainai!” The cry of the itinerant fortune-teller.

“Ame-yu!” The musical cry of the seller of midzu-ame, the sweet amber syrup which children love.

“Amai!” The shrilling call of the seller of ama-zaké, sweet rice-wine.

“Kawachi-no-kuni-hiotan-yama-koi-no-tsuji-ura!” The peddler of love-papers, of divining-papers, pretty tinted things with little shadowy pictures upon them. When held near a fire or a lamp, words written upon them with invisible ink begin to appear. These are always about sweethearts, and sometimes tell one what he does not wish to know. The fortunate ones who read them believe them-selves still more fortunate; the unlucky abandon all hope; the jealous become even more jealous than they were before.

Although the peddlers themselves lead hard and difficult lives, Hearn’s description nonetheless sounds quite wonderful. Who wouldn’t wish to be able to walk such streets once again?

Notes

1 Hearn , Lafcadio (1910). Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan. Bernhard Tauchnitz: 136.

2 ibid.: 150.

3 ibid.: 138-139.

4 Far Side Music sells a CD featuring 30 tracks of street selling songs and storytelling.

Published
Updated

Leave a Comment

Reader Supported

Old Photos of Japan aims to be your personal museum for Japan's visual heritage and to bring the experiences of everyday life in old Japan to you.

To enhance our understanding of Japanese culture and society I track down, acquire, archive, and research images of everyday life, and give them context.

I share what I have found for free on this site, without ads or selling your data.

Your support helps me to continue doing so, and ensures that this exceptional visual heritage will not be lost and forgotten.

Thank you,
Kjeld Duits

support

Reference for Citations

Duits, Kjeld (). 1890s: Flower Peddler, OLD PHOTOS of JAPAN. Retrieved on February 10, 2025 (GMT) from https://www.oldphotosjapan.com/photos/128/flower-peddler

Explore More

…

1890s
Oxcart with Rice Bags

A man stands next to an oxcart loaded with tawara (俵, straw rice bags). Tawara (also: hyo) were used for holding rice, charcoal or grain.

…

Kobe 1900s
Human Conveyor Belt (4)

A very rare view of boats with harbor workers on their way to a steamer at Kobe Harbor, visible in the back. This article looks at how Japanese coaling was done from the workers’ viewpoint.

…

1890s
Young Family

A charming studio shot of a young family “on the road” in late 19th century Japan.

Add Comment

There are currently no comments on this article.