Sugoroku of Looking Out from Ryōunkaku, Asakusa Park

Sugoroku is a popular Japanese board game played similarly to “Snakes and Ladders.” Edo-period publishers produced Sugoroku boards like this one in a variety of themes, everything from classical literature to erotica. Here, the game board is formed by a famous building, the Ryōunkaku, with players progressing from bottom to top along its windows, which are each numbered. Ryōunkaku was a twelve-story skyscraper—Japan’s first—constructed in 1890 in Tokyo’s Asakusa district. It was one of the city’s most visible landmarks until it was destroyed by the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923.