Picturing the Floating World: Ukiyo-e in Context 9780824889333

Citation preview

PICTURING the FLOATING WORLD

PICTURING the FLOATING WORLD Ukiyo-e in Context JULIE NELSON DAVIS

UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I PRESS

HONOLULU

© 2021 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 26 25 24 23 22 21   6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Davis, Julie Nelson, author. Title: Picturing the floating world : ukiyo-e in context / Julie Nelson Davis. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020048218 (print) | LCCN 2020048219 (ebook) | ISBN 9780824889210 (paperback) | ISBN 9780824889340 (epub) | ISBN 9780824889333 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9780824889357 (kindle edition) Subjects: LCSH: Ukiyoe—History. | Illustration of books—Japan—Edo period, 1600–1868. Classification: LCC NE1321.8 .D38 2021 (print) | LCC NE1321.8 (ebook) | DDC 709.52—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048218 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048219 University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources. Publication of this book was assisted by a grant from the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies. Cover art: Utagawa Hiroshige, Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival (Asakusa tanbo Torinomachi mōde), from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), 1857; published by Uoya Eikichi. Mary A. Ainsworth bequest (1950.1445), Allen Memorial Art Museum. Design by Mardee Melton

For all the students, teachers, collectors, and friends in this floating world, with thanks.

CONTENTS



ix Illustrations



xv Acknowledgments



1



22



53



82

114 153

Introduction Chapter 1: Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World Chapter 2: Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East Chapter 3: Making Famous Names Chapter 4: Expanding Horizons Epilogue: Evoking the Floating World

173 Notes 191

Works Cited 199 Glossary-Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), ca. 1831 Figure 2. Katsushika Hokusai, Fine Wind, Clear Weather (Gaifū kaisei), from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), ca. 1831 Figure 3. Kanamaru Hikogorō, Large Measured Plan of Edo (Bunken Edo ōezu), 1788 Figure 4. Utagawa Hiroshige, Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival (Asakusa tanbo Torinomachi mōde), from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), 1857 Figure 5. Hishikawa Moronobu, One Hundred Women of Our Country (Wakoku hyakujo), 1695 Figure 6. Hishikawa Moronobu, Full-Length Figures in Short-Sleeved Kimono (Kosode no sugatami), 1683 Figure 7. Hishikawa Moronobu, Genre Scenes in Edo, late seventeenth century Figure 8. Attributed to Okumura Masanobu, Untitled (Matsutsake hunt), from Twelve ōban sumizuri-e, ca. 1710 Figure 9. Kaigetsudō Ando, Standing Beauty, early eighteenth century Figure 10. Kaigetsudō Anchi, Woman Placing a Hairpin in Her Hair, ca. 1714 Figure 11. Miyagawa Chōshun, Standing Beauty, early eighteenth century Figure 12. Torii Kiyonobu I, Ichikawa Danjūrō II as Narukami Shōnin and Nakamura Takesaburō as Kumono Taemahime, 1715 Figure 13. Torii Kiyonobu II, Two Actors: Ichikawa Danjūrō II in the Role of Fuwa no Banzaemon and Segawa Kikujirō I in the Role of Burei no Ikkaku, 1734 Figure 14. Torii Kiyomasu II, Styles of Current Actors (Imayō yakusha fū), 1741–1744 Figure 15. Okumura Masanobu, Large Perspective Picture of the Face-Showing at the Stage Performance of a Drama (Shibai kyōgen butai kaomise ōukie), 1745 Figure 1.

ix

Torii Kiyomitsu, Actor Ichimura Uzaemon IX in the Role of Ichihara no Kidomaru, 1752 Figure 17. Katsuma Ryūsui, Treasures of the Sea (Umi no sachi), 1762 Figure 18. Suzuki Harunobu, Woman Riding a Flying Crane, 1765 Figure 19. Suzuki Harunobu, Descending Geese at Katada (Katada rakugan), third state, from the series Eight Views of Ōmi (Ōmi hakkei no uchi), early 1760s Figure 20. Suzuki Harunobu, Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges (Kotoji no rakugan), from the set Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei), 1766 Figure 21. Wrapper for Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei), 1766 Figure 22. Suzuki Harunobu, Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges (Kotoji no rakugan), from the set Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei), ca. 1766 Figure 23. Suzuki Harunobu, Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges, from the series Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei), ca. 1766 Figure 24. Attributed to Suzuki Harunobu, Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges (Kotoji rakugan), from the set Eight Fashionable Parlor Views (Fūryū zashiki hakkei), ca. 1768–1770 Figure 25. Suzuki Harunobu, Illustrated Book: Beauties of the “Azure Towers,” Compared (Ehon seirō bijin awase), 1770 Figure 26. Katsukawa Shunshō, Actor Ichikawa Danzō III, ca. 1768 Figure 27. Katsukawa Shunshō and Ippitsusai Bunchō, Illustrated Book: Stage Fans (Ehon butai ōgi), 1770 Figure 28. Isoda Koryūsai, Miyato of the Kado Tamaya (Kado Tamaya uchi Miyato), from the series Models for Fashion: New Year’s Designs Fresh as Young Leaves (Hinagata wakana no hatsu moyō), about 1775–1776 Figure 29. Kitao Shigemasa and Katsukawa Shunshō, Mirror of the Beauties of the Azure Towers, Compared (Seirō bijin awase sugata kagami), 1776 Figure 30. Katsukawa Shunshō, Beauties Admiring Pictures, late 1780s–early 1790s Figure 31. Utagawa Toyoharu, Perspective Picture of a Summer Evening at Eitai in Fukagawa (Ukie Fukagawa Eitai suzumi no zu), ca. 1772 Figure 32. Zograscope or perspective glass, made in England or United States, ca. 1780–1800 Figure 33. Torii Kiyonaga, Mid-Autumn (Naka no aki), from Fashionable Series from the Twelve Months (Fūryū jūni kikō), 1779 Figure 34. Torii Kiyonaga, Beauties Viewing Cherry Blossoms at Nakanochō in the Yoshiwara, 1785 Figure 16.

x

Illustrations

Kitao Masanobu, A New Mirror Comparing the Handwriting of the Courtesans of the Yoshiwara (Yoshiwara keisei shin bijin awase jihitsu kagami ), 1784 Figure 36. Santō Kyōden, Grilled and Basted Edo-Born Playboy (Edo umare uwaki no kabayaki), 1785 Figure 37. Kubo Shunman, Beauty and Demon, late eighteenth century Figure 38. Kitagawa Utamaro, Erotic Book: The Poem of the Pillow (Ehon utamakura), 1788 Figure 39. Kitagawa Utamaro, The Story of the Chūshingura Parodied by Famous Beauties: A Set of Twelve Prints (Kōmei bijin mitate Chushingura jūni-tsuzuki), 1794–1795 Figure 40. Kitagawa Utamaro, Three Beauties of the Present Day (Tōji san bijin): Tomimoto Toyohina, Naniwaya Kita, Takashima Hisa, ca. 1793 Figure 41. Eishōsai Chōki, Young Woman with a Fan, late eighteenth century Figure 42. Tōshūsai Sharaku, Ōtani Oniji III as Edobei, 1794 Figure 43. Tōshūsai Sharaku, Actor Sakakiyama Sangorō II as Michinaga’s Daughter Princess Otae, 1794–1795 Figure 44. Katsukawa Shun’ei, Actor Ōtani Oniji III as Ukiyo Tohei, 1794 Figure 45. Utagawa Toyokuni, Masatsuya (Actor Ōtani Oniji III as Ono Sadakurō), from the series Portraits of Actors on Stage (Yakusha butai no sugata-e), 1794 Figure 46. Utagawa Toyohiro and Utagawa Toyokuni I, The Lucky New Year’s Visit to Myōhōji in Horinouchi (Myōhōji ehōmairi no zu), ca. 1801 Figure 47. Shikitei Sanba, A Spurious History of Popular Illustrated Fiction: TwiceBaked Princess with a Pot-on-Her-Head ([Mata yakinaosu Hachikazuki-hime] Kusazōshi kojitsuke nendaiki), 1802 Figure 48. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, illustrations, and Hanabusa Bunkyō, text, Extraordinary Persons of Japan (Nihon kijin den), ca. 1849 Figure 49. Keisai Eisen, Amiable Looking: the Kinryūzan Sensōji (Aisō ga yosaso: Kinryūzan Sensōji), from the series Twelve Views of Modern Beauties (Imayō bijin jūnikei), ca. 1822–1823 Figure 50. Keisai Eisen, Fumi shikishi, ca. 1814 Figure 51. Keisai Eisen, View of Shogetsu Pond, 1829 Figure 52. Katsushika Hokusai, Shichirigahama Beach, Sagami Province (Sōshū Shichirigahama), Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), early 1831 Figure 35.



Illustrations xi

Katsushika Hokusai, Hokusai Sketches (Hokusai manga), vol. 11, 1835 Katsushika Hokusai, One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku hyakkei), vol. 1, 1834 Figure 55. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Extraordinary Persons of Japan (Nihon kijin den), ca. 1849 Figure 56. Utagawa Hiroshige, wrapper for The Tale of the Dogs (Inu no sōshi), part 14, 1851 Figure 57. Utagawa Hiroshige, Famous Places in Various Provinces: Catching Fireflies at the Uji River (Shokoku meisho: Ujigawa hotarugari no zu), 1835–1836 Figure 58. Utagawa Hiroshige, Shōno, from Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsugi no uchi), 1833–1834 Figure 59. Utagawa Hiroshige, Twilight Snow on Mount Hira (Hira bosetsu), from Eight Views of Ōmi (Omi hakkei), ca. 1834 Figure 60. Utagawa Kunisada, Takigawa of the Kukimanjiya Reading Inaka Genji, 1838 Figure 61. Utagawa Kunisada, A Rustic Genji by a False Murasaki (Nise Murasaki inaka Genji), 1830 Figure 62. Utagawa Kunisada, An Eastern Genji, Evocation of Flowers and Birds [(Kachō yojō) Azuma Genji], ca. 1837 Figure 63. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, The Earth Spider Conjures up Monsters at the Mansion of Minamoto no Raikō (Minamoto Raikō-kō yakata tsuchigumo saku yōkai no zu), 1843 Figure 64. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Miracle of Masterpieces by Floating-World Matabei (Ukiyo Matabei meiga no kidoku), 1853 Figure 65. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Scribblings on the Storehouse Wall (Nitakaragura kabe no mudagaki), ca. 1848 Figure 66. Katsushika Ōi, Hua Tuo Operating on Guan Yu’s Arm, 1840s Figure 67. Katsushika Ōi, Kyōka Selected from Our Country (Kyōka kuni tsukushi), 1810 Figure 68. Utagawa Hiroshige, New Year’s Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji (Ōji Shōzoku enoki Ōmisoka no kitsunebi), from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), 1857 Figure 53. Figure 54.

xii

Illustrations

Utagawa Hiroshige, The Ten Thousand Tsubo Plain at Susaki in Fukagawa (Fukagawa Susaki jūmantsubo), from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), 1857 Figure 70. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Chronicle of the Imperial Restoration (Kōkoku isshin kenbunshi), 1876 Figure 71. Utagawa Sadahide, An American Woman Playing an Accordion (Amerika nyokan akodeon wo hiku no zu), from People of Foreign Lands Drawn from Life (Ikiutsushi ikoku jinbutsu), ca. 1860 Figure 72. Kawanabe Kyōsai, Kyōsai’s Treatise on Painting (Kyōsai gadan), 1887 Figure 73. Kawanabe Kyōsai, Kyōsai’s Treatise on Painting (Kyōsai gadan), 1887 Figure 74. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Ishiyama Moon (Ishiyama no tsuki), from the series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (Tsuki hyakushi), 1889 Figure 75. Toyohara Kunichika, Actor Ichimura Uzaemon XIII as Carpenter, from the series Thirty-Six Views of the Eastern Capital (Tōto sanjūrokkei), 1865 Figure 76. Yōshū Chikanobu, Picture of Boys’ Festival (Tango no zu), from Edo sunako nenjū gyōji, 1885 Figure 77. Katsushika Hokusai, Fine Wind, Clear Weather (Gaifū kaisei), from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), ca. 1946–1957 Figure 78. Kawase Hasui, The Great Buddha at Kamakura (Kamakura Daibutsu), 1930 Figure 79. Yoshida Hiroshi, El Capitan, Yosemite Valley (Yosemittodani Eru Kyapitan), 1925 Figure 80. Bank of Japan, 1,000 yen note Figure 69.



Illustrations xiii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Let me begin by thanking my editors, Patricia Crosby and Stephanie Chun, for encouraging me to write this book and the team at the University of Hawai‘i Press for their many contributions. My colleagues Ayako Kano and Linda Chance helped me think through what a book about ukiyo-e, rather than the book about ukiyo-e, could do, and I thank them for their support in this and so many other projects. I am grateful to my many teachers, particularly Kobayashi Tadashi, Paul Berry, Peter Parshall, and Jerome Silbergeld, and the students, colleagues, collectors, curators, museum visitors, friends, and family who have shared my fascination with these prints, paintings, and illustrated books. A grant from the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies and funding from Penn’s University Research Foundation and the Department of the History of Art Lenkin Fund provided support for the production of this book, for which I offer sincere thanks. The colleagues, students, and undauntable staff of the History of Art Department likewise supported this work, making it stronger. I have benefited from discussions with colleagues in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, the Penn Forum on Japan, the Center for East Asian Studies, and the Workshop on Material Texts. The Wolf Humanities Center’s year of “Stuff ” in 2018–2019 (for which it was my privilege to be topic director) helped me to think beyond matter (and why it matters) in important and long-lasting ways. The annual Penn faculty weeklong summer writing retreat, sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education, along with unofficial pop-up retreats during other breaks, offered much-needed space and support. Colleagues in Japan, including Asano Shūgō, Fujisawa Akane, Fujisawa Murasaki, Matsumura Masako, Naitō Masato, Oikawa Shigeru,

xv

Ozawa Hiromu, Shindō Shigeru, and many others, have taught me much over many years, and I am grateful for their insights. Colleagues from around the world, including Frank Chance, John Carpenter, Tim Clark, Matthi Forrer, Sherry Fowler, Janice Katz, Roger Keyes, Inge Klompmakers, Angus Lockyer, Shirley Luber, Catriona MacLeod, Andreas Marks, Amy Newland, Gene Phillips, Morgan Pitelka, Tim Screech, Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Ann Sherif, Juliet Sperling, Amy Stanley, Gennifer Weisenfeld, and Stephen Whiteman, among many others, offered timely remarks and served as models of exemplary scholarship. Roger Chartier, Peter Kornicki, Suzuki Jun, Laura Moretti, Michael Suarez, Ellis Tinios, and, most of all, Peter Stallybrass fundamentally changed the way I think about books. I offer thanks to Quintana Heathman, Jeannie Kenmotsu, and Erin Schoneveld for bouncing ideas back throughout this process and to Jalen Chang for kindly checking the final draft. At the Center for Asian and Transcultural Studies at the University of Heidelberg, I sincerely thank Melanie Trede, Radu Leca, Katharina Rode, Shupin Lang, Annelie Schmidt, and an inspiring group of students. Students at Oberlin, Penn, and Rare Book School have shared so much in our conversations around things ukiyo-e. Thanks, too, to the anonymous reviewers for the press for their useful feedback and support of this project. Shirley and Marilyn Luber’s gift of the Gilbert Luber collection of reference materials on Japanese prints has transformed our library holdings, and their remarkable gift has led to other remarkable gifts. Many works featured in this book came to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries from donors Arthur Tress, Ann and Don McPhail, Tom Musco and Deborah D’Amico, and Cecilia Segawa Seigle. Thanks to their generosity, we can now teach from real things, giving students and teachers the opportunity to look more closely and to think through contexts and histories. Thank you so much for transforming what we can do together. I am grateful to colleagues at the Penn Libraries and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) for the opportunity to work with prints and illustrated books in their collections. At the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University

xvi

Acknowledgments

of Pennsylvania Libraries, special thanks go to Elizabeth Bates, Lynne Farrington, Will Noel, Jackie Parascandola, John Pollack, and Sean Quimby. Thanks, too, to our wonderful East Asian area studies team, Molly des Jardin, Rebecca Mendelson, Eri Mizukane, Mike Williams, and Brian Vivier. Naoko Adachi and Tim Zhang gave time and expertise in organizing the new collections. I am grateful to colleagues at the PMA, Shelley Langdale, John Ittman, Louis Marchesano, and Innis Shoemaker, for our work together on Japanese prints. Many prints, paintings, and illustrated books included in these pages were first encountered in work for exhibitions, catalogues, and collection development. I thank Michel Maucuer and Asano Shūgō for the chance to contribute to catalogues for the Musée Cernuschi and the Abeno Harukas Art Museum, respectively. At the Freer and Sackler Galleries, I had the good fortune to work on the Pulverer Collection online catalogue thanks to Jim Ulak, Nancy Micklewright, and Ann Yonemura, among others. I am grateful to have learned so much from Alessandro Bianchi through our collaboration. I am grateful, too, for the care, humor, and support of the Stockwell, Davis, and Vogland families throughout this and other endeavors. Thanks go to Camille for inspiring me to think more about books as well as to be braver and bolder on so many other fronts. To our basenjis, thank you for leaning in and leaning back. Most of all, thank you, Ray, for being my partner in all things, making this life both possible and wonderful. Of course, any errors are mine.



Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction Japanese prints were used as packing material around ceramics. It wasn’t until the Impressionists discovered them that they came to be seen as art. — overheard at a museum exhibition

I have often been asked if it is true that Japanese prints received so little appreciation in their home country that they were used as packing material to wrap ceramics or other goods for export. Usually, the question expresses disbelief: How could people do this to such marvelous things? For years I replied that I had never seen evidence of prints having been used in such a way, and I doubted it could be so.1 Prints were exported and sold to European collectors as works of art long before the Impressionists came on the scene, and it is quite clear from period evidence that people in Japan saw these prints as “art” centuries earlier. It has always seemed to me to be a myth. Yet it is so persistently and perennially invoked that I began to wonder: Where did it come from? This myth of prints as packing material probably originates in a misunderstanding of an event that in turn may have been mis­ remembered.2 The most likely source for the idea can be traced to this sentence written by Léonce Bénédite (1859–1925): “En raison de sa matière souple et élastique, il avait servi à caler des porcelaines expédiées par

1

des Français établis au Japon” (Because of its supple and flexible nature, it [a Japanese illustrated book] was used by the French working in Japan to wedge the shipped porcelains).3 Three points are worth noting here: the object included with the ceramics is an illustrated book, not a print; it was wedged into the box, not used for wrapping; and the people doing the packing were French exporters, not Japanese dealers. The book may have been used to fill a gap, but this case likely alludes to something else: the French exporters probably added the little book as a gift for a good customer. This tale of the little book that arrived with a case of ceramics was published in 1905. By then the story was nearly fifty years old and heard secondhand. Bénédite was recounting what artist Félix Bracque­ mond (1833–1914) told him about a visit he made to the printer Auguste Delâtre’s studio in 1859.4 The book in question was a volume from Hokusai’s Manga series. Art historian Toshio Watanabe notes that French merchants were established in Yokohama by 1859 and thus could have included the Hokusai volume in a shipment of ceramics. Watanabe also adds that prints and books like these were available and on sale in Paris as early as 1861.5 But if prints were not used in Japan for wrapping and packing, how were they used? In reply to this frequently asked question, many of us in the field propose that they were used just like posters, advertisements, flyers, and other ephemeral material, and thus we naturalize these things as everyday items. We often use pictures showing people looking at prints to illustrate this use. Yet asserting this based upon other images or proposing their use in a fashion parallel to our own does not offer enough evidence to make that claim stand. Let’s shift the question to ask, instead: How do we know how they were used? And how do we know how were they valued, if indeed they were? To answer these questions, we should ask related ones: How were they made, who was their audience, and who profited from them (and how)? These are complex and challenging questions, with answers that vary due to time, place, subject, and other matters. They also require us to examine disparate sources for data, from official records to popular texts, and to look at the works we are studying with attention to what they can reveal. This set

2

Introduction

of inquiries has also helped me to define the parameters of this book. My purpose is to do more than write an overview of ukiyo-e, these “pictures of the floating world”: it is rather a concise and critical inquiry into the genre’s formation, history, production, and reception in early modern Japan. Thus, as we look at ukiyo-e as pictures, we will also put them into the larger context of the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, gleaning answers from the works themselves as well as from related source material. (And I will stress here that this is an introduction, not the introduction to the topic and, while based on long study in the field, cannot be definitive. There is always more to say.) Ukiyo-e things were appreciated in their own time, collected, and put into albums and boxes. Yet there is no denying that their status as commodities—as stuff if you will—shifted dramatically in the second half of the nineteenth century. Vast numbers were exported for the international market, sent by astute dealers at a time when “things Japanese” achieved high prices unknown at home. Clever forgers also had a field day, and just how fakes were made—and just how many—remains an open and contentious question. These dealers’ opportunities were facilitated by efforts to promote Japan as a nation within a larger geopolitical competition that started in the later nineteenth century, a time when the Meiji government (1868–1911) recognized the value of mobilizing “art” as part of a larger, coordinated strategy of soft power. Where these works of art are owned, who owns them, and how those works were acquired is neither accidental nor neutral; art, like other valuable commodities, is made, traded, and stolen for profit. And the market for these pictures remains strong: in 2016 a single-sheet print by Utamaro set a new record at auction when it sold for €745,000 ($841,000).6 The mobility of and long-lasting engagement with these images is also worth consideration. Some have achieved the status of international icons. Hokusai’s “The Great Wave” is without a doubt the most recognized work of Japanese art worldwide; it is also one of the most imitated, adapted, and satirized images of the modern era (figure 1). Rightly so, we might say, for it is one of the most dynamic and thrilling images from the period. But, as Christine Guth has demonstrated



Introduction 3

Figure 1. Katsushika Hokusai, Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), from

Thirty-­Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), ca. 1831; published by Nishimuraya Yohachi. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 25.7 × 37.9 cm. H. O. Havemeyer Collection, bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (JP1847), Metropolitan Museum of Art.

in her book on the global reception of “The Great Wave,” its modern status is the product of a history of appreciation over time, one with its own merits, risks, and stakeholders.7 The title that appears on this print is not in fact “The Great Wave.” Rather, it is Under the Wave off Kanagawa (Kanagawa oki nami ura), and the title further indicates that it was part of the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei). This project of thirty-six compositions proved so popular that the publisher and artist extended the set by ten more views, for a total of forty-six designs (without changing the title, however). Clearly, Under the Wave off Kanagawa was intended from the start to be part of an extended study of the mountain, not a stand-alone image. Yet it has

4

Introduction

been so acclaimed that it is now seen more often separately than as part of the group. As a single image, it is thus out of its intended context, no longer part of an extended variation on a theme. What makes its status as a global icon even more peculiar is that it has not been the preferred image from the group in Japan. That honor goes to the print often called “Red Fuji” (figure 2).8 Why these two images are preferred above all others in these different contexts is due to various selections made by various individuals over time. But this preference may also rest, in part, on how the images are perceived. How we look at images—and what they show us as we do so—is culturally constructed. “The Great Wave” evokes entirely different responses depending upon how we look at it.

Figure 2. Katsushika Hokusai, Fine Wind, Clear Weather (Gaifū kaisei), from Thirty-Six Views

of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), ca. 1831; published by Nishimuraya Yohachi. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 26 × 38.4 cm. Gift of Mrs. Moncure Biddle in memory of Ernest Fenollosa, 1958, Philadelphia Museum of Art.



Introduction 5

When we read it in a manner familiar to readers of books set out like this one—in which the text proceeds across the page, left to right—the eye starts with the cresting wave and seems to ride, as though on a surfboard, with this impressive form across the image toward the wave on the other side. It is the graphic power of this immense breaking wave that captures the imagination (no wonder that it has become the emoji for surfing). We are swept up and over the curve of the blue striped wave into the jazzy pattern of curling foam. We see these forms as abstract elements, arc upon arc, a sequence of spirals, set against the stable pyramidal form of Mount Fuji on the horizon. But if we look at this image from right to left, as it would have been seen in its own time (as well as by many viewers in its home country today), our eyes start scanning at the upper-right corner and move to the lower left. This habit of looking derives from practices of reading and writing in East Asia, where texts are written starting at the upper right, and characters line up to form a vertical column reaching the bottom of the page, with columns of text stacking in vertical lines from right to left. (Imagine turning this page ninety degrees; the line on the bottom of this page becomes a vertical line, and you would start reading at the top right, go down the line, then proceed to the next column, moving by columns across to the left side.) Reading and writing from the upper right down the page and across in a leftward fashion (often abbreviated as top to bottom, right to left) was standard in Hokusai’s time, and he would have expected his audience to view the picture from the top right to the lower left. Today Japanese texts are often laid out following this traditional presentation—top to bottom, right to left—as are images. But in the modern era, Japanese texts are also set in the same way—horizontal lines laid down one below the other, left to right, top to bottom—and modern images might also be composed in this “Western” fashion. Readers today can seamlessly code-switch from one direction to another, one of many negotiations of practice that is part of daily life in Japan. Turning back to Under the Wave off Kanagawa and looking at it again, now using the top-to-bottom, right-to-left method that Hokusai’s viewers would have used, we begin with the swelling form of the

6

Introduction

next wave and slide with the boat full of men crouching in the hull down into the valley between the waves. Our point of view is under the cresting wave, its mass of energy rising above us. The crab claw tendrils of the spilling breaker reach toward our fragile craft, and we shrink under its impending peril; we see that the boat leeward of us might also be consumed by a smaller wave swelling like a mountain of water. (Note Hokusai’s deliberate compositional parallel between this smaller wave and the mountain itself.) Our boats might slip through the waves if our crew is skillful enough. Behind us, Mount Fuji is a secure, eternal presence, but its solid ground is too distant, now more memory than presence. Little wonder this image has also been adapted to serve as the international warning sign for high waves. Thus, these two modes of viewing demonstrate how a single image may produce entirely different reactions: one of admiration, a sublime frisson, at the wave that rips and curls, the other of terror at the power of the sea and the possibility of total destruction. With this understanding of how cultural differences have trained our eyes to “read” an image, let us turn to what has been the more preferred image from the series in Japan, known by its nickname of “Red Fuji.” Here, the trajectory of the eye across the image follows a similar pattern of sweep and fall, depending on where you start looking. The right-to-left viewer immediately confronts the hard surface of the mountain, visually running into the form. The mountain rises rapidly and soon crests, then descends on a long arc, turning from volcanic to forested terrain. By cropping the conical form dramatically on the right and layering horizontal mackerel clouds in a circle around the peak, with the pines in a parallel cresting pattern, Hokusai counterbalances arc and triangle, circle and rectangle. This is the mountain in Fine Wind, Clear Weather, as the cartouche reading Gaifū kaisei can be translated, and the printer’s art of subtle gradation of color and the carver’s retention of wood grain to suggest a rocky texture acknowledge the print as print, emphasizing its materiality. This is a mountain standing in majesty over its surrounding plain. Reading from the opposite direction, from left to right, the mountain form rises gradually to its apex and then drops off dramatically.



Introduction 7

The mountain is ever solid, the clouds and coloration a series of horizontal elements. Geometry, shading, and texture all remain present, but the mountain’s slow rise is less dramatic, less precipitous, and, dare I say, less inspiring, when read along this slower left-to-right trajectory. The experience of viewing, the pattern of crest and fall, is mirrored in these two images, the immediacy of the cresting wave seen from the left a compositional reflection of the right-read cresting mountain. Without entering into the complicated world of how the eye and brain perceive and respond to images, what is evident from eye-tracking studies is that each image excites a different mode of visual perception depending upon how one reads it.9 Perhaps it should not be so surprising, then, that each image has become iconic in these different realms. For the cooperatively conceived Hokusai exhibitions held at the British Museum and the Abeno Harukas Museum in 2017, these two works established key terms: London’s title, Beyond the Great Wave, was counterposed by Osaka’s Beyond Fuji. The titles reveal an awareness that the iconicity of each image is the product of a long history of modern appreciation and that each retains the power to bring in the crowds. But in context, in the early 1830s when both prints were produced, neither was designed to aspire to or achieve the status of individual icon. Neither was singled out for acclaim for its singularity and visual provocation nor repeatedly imitated, parodied, or cited in the manner that demonstrates appreciation in this genre. Rather, both were part of a larger project that, along with the other forty-four designs, was an extended rumination on the mountain—stanzas in an epic poem. Both were part of a larger context of what had, by then, become the genre of ukiyo-e, or the “pictures of the floating world.” The genre is often described as composed of prints that represent the entertainments and diversions of early modern Japan. In this line of discussion, the earliest known use of the term “ukiyo” for floating world is brought out as evidence of an ethos held by people “living only for the moment, like a gourd floating on a stream.”10 Works by ukiyo-e’s acclaimed masters—Hokusai, Sharaku, Hiroshige, and Utamaro, among others— are marshaled to support the claim that the genre expressed an attitude

8

Introduction

of delighting in temporary, transient escapes from reality. The fact that many ukiyo-e prints were produced in high numbers and sold at low prices is further used to emphasize the genre’s popularity. While ukiyo-e was often trendy, timely, and diverting, generalities like these can sometimes limit deeper understanding of this vibrant field. Prints were one of the genre’s most successful forms—and many of these were cheap and meant for widespread sale—but ukiyo-e also included a range of other materials, including paintings, illustrated books, broadsheets, high-end custom prints, and more. Many sheet prints and illustrated books, particularly those showing famous places and people, were marketed in tandem with popular entertainments and diversions. Others were private, expensive commissions of the highest quality for more discerning tastes. Many of these might have been mere stuff, but this was stuff made, bought, sold, and traded in high numbers for pleasure and profit. The number of images that remain today—and the extant writings about them—demonstrates that paintings and printed matter were regarded as worthy of display, collection, and discussion in their own time. These works were thus part of a more varied and complex artistic world— where some works were made for a commercial market, backed by savvy entrepreneurs seeking new ways to make a profit, while others were produced for private coteries and high-ranking individuals seeking cultural capital—in early modern Japan. Most modern scholarship about ukiyo-e has focused upon sheet prints, thus limiting further understanding of the wide array of things made at the time. By comparison to other fields in Japanese art history, both in Japan and beyond its borders, the study of ukiyo-e was for a long time taken much less seriously in the academy than were other forms of artistic practice. Part of the problem was that ukiyo-e images (especially prints) were too approachable, too plebian, too sexy, and too much fun for the kind of higher-minded study preferred by some in the academy. Closer studies were developed by curators, dealers, and collectors, often through exhibitions and catalogues. More recent trends across the field take up a more holistic approach, and, by integrating lesser-known figures as well as illustrated books and



Introduction 9

paintings into the discussion, have done much to advance the field. Yet some of these still replicate long-held tropes—from the “genius artist” to the “discovery of landscape”—often for the purposes of higher attendance at exhibitions and ready sales for catalogues. But within and beyond Japan, scholarly monographs on selected figures and subjects are increasingly populating library shelves, spurred on by larger academic trends in which studies of popular culture, gender and sexuality, performance, and others have opened up new zones of discussion. The chapters that follow are organized as historical clusters in accordance with a now-established chronology. While this book is limited by design to a select number of illustrations and words, my intention from the start has been to not limit the field to sheet prints but rather to embrace the broader expanse of the genre by including paintings and illustrated books. Prints, books, and paintings were part of an extended world of representation where differences between media related to matters of patronage and audience. While studying floating-world paintings remains challenging due to issues of authenticity, as well as to provenance, materials, and artistic practices, bringing painting into the discussion is vital to understanding artistic practice and aspiration.11 Illustrated books present another case—one that has more to do with modern practices of classification. As books they are often found in the library, more often than in the museum, and thus are not always included in ways that bring them into dialogue with sheet prints and paintings. Being materially and conceptually placed between modern disciplines such as art history, bibliography, literature, and others, illustrated books have frequently been overlooked as a result. Yet both paintings and illustrated books were vital sources for commissions and forms of expression for Edo-period makers and their patrons. What becomes more challenging is where to draw the boundaries around the floating world and these pictorial practices, for like the world we live in today, the makers and consumers of these media participated in overlapping social, economic, and political networks with less clearly defined limits. The lines drawn around what we now call ukiyo-e are as artificial as those around any genre.

10

Introduction

Ukiyo-e in Its Own Time Most of the ukiyo-e discussed in this book were produced in the Tokugawa period (1603–1868), and while the establishment of the shogunate as the political force ruling the country and the development of the city of Edo (modern-day Tokyo) have been better described elsewhere, a few key points must be recounted here. The Tokugawa clan selected the village of Edo for its political base at the end of the sixteenth century, and following their rise to political power over the next decades, Edo experienced rapid population growth. By the latter half of the eighteenth century, its population numbered 1.3 million people (figure 3). Not only did the late-eighteenth-century census confirm that Edo was the largest city in the archipelago itself, its numbers suggest that its population exceeded that of any other reported by census in the early modern world—far exceeding its rivals in Europe.12 Edo residents profited from its flourishing mercantile economy, making, selling, trading, and buying essential goods and services—as well as things ukiyo-e. Other forms of printed matter, from scholarly books to Buddhist prints, were produced in other locations, to be sure, but Edo eventually won the battle over which city would become the center for print throughout the country. It retained that status after Edo was renamed Tokyo in 1868 and remains the publishing capital today. All floating-world products were made through collaboration and as part of a larger social and cultural art world.13 Large numbers were made as commercial works, serving to advertise entertainments such as kabuki, the pleasure quarters, sumo wrestling, restaurants, sightseeing locales, and more. Others were made as private commissions, designed as gifts, commemorations, or vanity press items. Through close analysis of the material, textual, and visual elements of prints, books, and paintings, many contributors can be identified. Signatures and seals yield names of publishers, illustrators, writers, carvers, printers, and others. Individual style can often allow us to attribute an artist’s hand when no name is included. Patrons are sometimes identified by name in these works—for example, as poets in poetry albums—but frequently they, too, can only be deduced through association or provenance records



Introduction 11

Figure 3. Kanamaru Hikogorō, Large

Measured Plan of Edo (Bunken Edo ōezu), 1788; published by Suharaya Mohē. Woodblock-printed large format, ink and color on paper, 161.2 × 191.7 cm. Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library.

(the latter of which are admittedly rather rare). The many others, from the makers of brushes, silk, paper, ink, and pigment to the mounters, binders, distributors, dealers, and collectors, are less apparent in spite of their essential material contributions. How the broader audience for floating-world image and text responded is implied by what is visible (and, equally, what is not), and by subject matter and style as a product of taste, of what sold where and when. These makers likewise abided (or pretended to do so) by shogunal promulgations that served in effect as censorship practices. Thus, what is visible—and what may be invisible, too—are traces of many hands and minds. Yet it is the illustrator’s name that served as a kind of brand name, then as it does now, as we shall frequently see throughout the chapters that follow. In the serial The Bathhouse of the Floating World (Ukiyo-buro), begun in 1809 and continuing over thirteen years, Shikitei Sanba (1776–1822) wrote in the guise of recording what people from all professions and classes discussed in the bathhouse. In one notable passage, mothers complain that their children collect actor prints, saying, “Toyokuni’s prints are really powerful,” or “At our house everybody loves Toyokuni. We always take Toyokuni prints as presents when we go to Kansai or when we visit the master’s house.” Sanba expanded upon these mothers’ remarks (in words that seem familiar today): “Children have gotten really extravagant, the lot of them. My girl has a box full of actor prints that she bought, and my third boy buys multivolume illustrated novels (gōkan) whenever they come out. He’s collected a big box-full, too. These days children even remember the names of artists—‘I like Toyokuni’ or ‘I like Kunisada’—pretending they are so grown up!” Her companion replied: “You’re right. And to think, when we were kids all we got were those simple picture books.”14 Sanba’s report is also a little promotional: readers likely recognized that these two Utagawa school artists, Toyokuni and Kunisada, were also frequent illustrators for his texts. But this fictional account makes the point that people used the artists’ names in the same way we use them today—as markers for certain prints—and that “Toyokunis” and “Kunisadas” were known commodities.

14

Introduction

The skillful use of brush and ink to render an image was central to the ukiyo-e artist’s task. These illustrator-designers were trained as painters. The brush was their primary tool, its practice the foundation for their art. Nearly all were apprenticed as children or young adolescents to a more senior artist’s studio for training or serving as assistants, and for most their first images appeared as book illustrations. Establishing a separate studio was accomplished by developing a name and a market for one’s works, and this step was often achieved through close association with, and even promotion by, an influential publisher. By the later eighteenth century, being a master of the full-color print— what became known as the brocade picture (nishiki-e)­—meant having achieved a higher position in the print market than a book illustrator, and being established as a painting master (eshi) was the highest recognition of achievement. This hierarchy of practice was not dependent upon social status, but it did relate to economic success. Most ukiyo-e artists were from the merchant or artisan classes, while some were born to samurai status. All were professional artists working in exchange for payment, in kind or in cash. They were, in short, “brushes for hire.”15 Well-to-do townspeople, samurai, and even aristocrats, from within and beyond Edo, purchased ready-made works as well as requested special items from name-brand artists. The media of painting and printed works required different levels of investment. Paintings were more expensive, usually produced upon request by patrons, and were singular, unique items. Publishers typically bore the costs of printing, commissioning illustrations from these artists for sheets and books intended for reproduction. Few early drawings remain from the period; those used as sketches for prints were often destroyed in the process. Some ukiyo-e sheet prints and illustrated books show the artist at work. Most show the artist as a painter, not as a craftsman associated with the process of making prints. In these pictures of the artist at work, the painter, brush in hand, concentrates completely on the task before him, skillfully limning a marvelous image—such as a beautiful woman, a singular landscape, or a brilliant phoenix—on a sheet of paper, on a roll of silk, or even on the surface of a wall. These pictures of painters



Introduction 15

serve the rhetoric of artistic skill, suggesting that the work has been conjured from an individual’s talent (and perhaps even his genius). One print even shows the painting in progress coming literally to life as the artist draws it—as though his talent is akin to magic—employing a common trope borrowed from Chinese sources.16 Images like these replicated the long-held concept of the eye, mind, and brush of the artist as the originating place of picture making. And yet there was much more to the painter’s practice, for ukiyo-e artists, like all before them and all since, worked within an art world with its own rules, obligations, aspirations, and rivalries. Perhaps it is no accident that many of these images replicating the painter’s practice are not paintings themselves but prints that served to promote the artist’s image to a wide audience, marketing him as a master painter, worthy of renown. The hierarchies of art appreciation during that time granted painting higher status than illustrating for printed media, and being known as a painter bestowed equivalent capital to the respective makers. Indeed, the terms used to describe artists—often seen in book colophons as well as in signatures on paintings and sheet prints—indicate these differences. One term frequently seen in book colophons is that of gakō (picture maker); this designation defined the illustrator according to similar terms used for craftsmen (shokunin). This was clearly a rank below that of original masters of pictures (hon’eshi), another term used in colophons and signatures. These distinctions not only signaled differences in status but also directly affected the fees an artist might command.17 Moreover, paintings, as unique objects made of high-quality materials, were intrinsically more expensive than most woodblock prints and illustrated books produced as multiples. Whether a painting was the product of a commission or sold as a “ready-made” also signified specific social and financial distinctions. Paintings were typically more elite commodities than woodblock-­ printed multiples. Through the first half of the eighteenth century, artists often produced paintings made in advance and put them on sale, but after printing began to so effectively imitate the colorful effects of painting, the cost differential between prints and paintings widened.18 Individual artists negotiated that terrain differently—for some it meant

16

Introduction

building a clientele that allowed them to focus mainly on painting, while for others designing prints remained a vital part of their practice. Many also used the illustrated book as a means to disseminate designs for paintings, producing sketchbooks as well as printed albums showing their painting style. Some paintings, such as those made on a large scale or with special sumptuous effects, clearly argue for having been special commissions. While we may not yet be able to name their patrons, the fact that these would have required a large place for display—spaces like the architectural niche (tokonoma) shown in Shunshō’s painting of the daimyo mansion (discussed in chapter 2)—demonstrates that some patrons were from the political elites. Likewise, paintings made for large restaurants, elite brothels, theaters, teahouses, sumptuous parlors, and others indicate that these served as prestige objects for the floating world’s cognoscenti. Closer study of the issues in ukiyo-e painting, and to the meaning of the painting as the product of a special kind of social interaction, broadens our understanding of the “floating world,” its representation, and its distinct art world. Being known as a painter may have offered greater appreciation and social position, but names were typically and best made through the print trade. For most brushes for hire, their first printed illustration might be included in a book or even distributed as an inexpensive print. Securing an affiliation with one or more publishers willing to take the risk on a new talent would have been critical to making the transition from book to sheet print, just as securing a patron would make possible the leap to painting. Or at least that would be the most typical progress toward success. Not every named artist followed that pattern, with Sharaku being the exception that proves the rule (as we shall see). The next four chapters track the genre of ukiyo-e from its early formation into the modern era. Throughout, carefully selected and representative period documents will be brought into dialogue with images to establish the terms of appraisal used in their own time. Among these, the Ukiyo-e ruikō (Various Writing on Ukiyo-e), a manuscript text started in the late eighteenth century with additions made through the mid-nineteenth, functioned to construct the canon for its



Introduction 17

period audience. Written by contemporary participants and critics in floating-world circles, this document offers essential facts and insider knowledge. However, like others before them, its composers were neither unbiased nor immune to the kinds of errors made by copyists; we must remain attentive throughout to the fact that its evaluations, critical terms, and biographical information cannot be taken at face value.19 Yet the specific terms used to describe types of visual art (such as “Japanese-­style painting” and “lacquer prints”) show that these practitioners developed evaluative sets of categories to describe production, famous names, innovations, and more. Two versions of this manuscript will be repeatedly employed throughout the following pages and assessed for use: the earliest extant copy, dating to 1802, and the (arguably) most well-researched version, produced in 1844.20 Put against the visual evidence as well as against other period commentaries, we can see that “ukiyo-e” was being codified in the period as a discrete genre: defined by its materials, organized into typologies, with its own emerging canon of artistic practitioners. At the same time, these critics participated in a larger discourse about cultural production and what it meant for something to attain the status of “art”—even if such a word was not yet in use—and employed terms that laid the groundwork for all later organizational frames. Their schema constructing ukiyo-e further established the hierarchy of artists, writers, and publishers still in use. These documents further made the genre and its categories seem natural, rather than constructed, although these acts of writing the canon indicate that the field of ukiyo-e was under lively debate during the period. There was a lot at stake. This canon was brought wholesale to later ukiyo-e studies. Art dealers in Japan and Europe employed its typologies and hierarchies to promote the genre to an emerging market for Japanese art in Europe and North America in the later nineteenth century. Ironically, at the same time, foreign collectors were informed that ukiyo-e was little appreciated in Japan. Their definition of ukiyo-e’s categories and contours has remained influential in defining the genre ever since. The purpose of this book is to offer a new critical introduction to ukiyo-e. Throughout, these pictures are put into various contexts.

18

Introduction

When we speak of putting a work of art into context, we often mean that we are placing it back into its larger sociohistorical sphere, relocating it in its own time. Often, we present this context as though we have seamlessly been able to achieve an understanding of that past as it plays out with the work of art under consideration. Yet to do so may gloss over the fact that we have only a partial view of that past. Like the cat peering out over the cityscape in the Hiroshige-signed print, what we see is framed like a view through a window, and it is distant, with some things brightly illuminated and others in shadow (figure 4).21 We may see, as does the cat, the silhouettes of people walking in a festival procession, but we are unlikely to be able to determine individuals’ features and expressions. Bigger things (like Mount Fuji, historical events, or important figures) seem easier to discern, as well as larger than they were in real life. Meanwhile, we may grow so intent upon looking into the past that we forget that we are in a context too. Like the cat, we may turn our backs on elements of the present that in turn are framing us. That present is not only conditioned by where we are now but also constructed by the passage of time from then to now. In the same way, this image made its way from Hiroshige’s sketch to print to publisher’s shop to buyer, making its initial journey in the context of its own time. As a print it was one of many impressions—with the potential to circulate widely—and it may have even been carried beyond the borders of Edo to share this cat’s-eye view of the vast urban plain to the provinces. Like a letter, this picture sent a message meant to be read by its viewers. Yet the life of the print did not end there. Like so much other stuff, it left Japan, traveling into an international market of dealers and buyers. It made its way into the hands of Miss Mary A. Ainsworth, Oberlin College graduate of 1889, sometime after she made her first trip to Japan in 1905. It later came to rest in Oberlin’s Allen Memorial Art Museum as part of her bequest of 1950, and there I first saw it, in a seminar with students. In its present home, the print has been appreciated by students, faculty, and visitors to the collection. It has also been exhibited, published, and compared to other impressions in other collections. In 2019 Hiroshige’s cat returned to tour Japan in exhibitions at



Introduction 19

Figure 4. Utagawa Hiroshige, Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival (Asakusa tanbo

Torinomachi mōde), from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), 1857; published by Uoya Eikichi. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 37.4 × 25.9 cm. Mary A. Ainsworth bequest (1950.1445), Allen Memorial Art Museum.

the Chiba City Museum and the Shizuoka Museum of Art and, finally, it appears here viewed in yet another context. As a material thing, it has had a range of economic and cultural values placed upon it and accreted around it, and like a letter it has been read again and again, its meaning changing with each reader. These are among the many contexts that a single print might ask us to consider. But it has now entered yet another context as a digital image on its museum’s website. Indeed, that is where I encountered it once again, downloading it as part of a lecture to give at its present home in Ohio. The life history of Hiroshige’s cat is inflected by its journey from the past to the moment this page was printed, for nothing from the past that remains in our hands today arrived here by accident. Each iteration bears the marks of makers, producers, dealers, collectors, writers, and others—stakeholders profiting in both material and immaterial ways from its travels. Thus, throughout this book, these many contexts will affect (as well as interrupt) how we encounter these “pictures of the floating world.” More practically, since this book is intended as an introduction, the sources cited are designed to lead inquiring minds to the library, to the museum, to online resources, and elsewhere, giving privilege to accessibility (and those written in English, too). I have also chosen prints, illustrated books, and paintings often used in my teaching and have included a few I have discussed in print before—familiar old friends that have long been in service because they tell the story so well. This, of course, reflects my personal preferences, as does the approach taken throughout. The first reading of this book as a whole was for a seminar at the University of Pennsylvania. There, Hiroshige’s cat changed context once again. Together, we looked at the cat and wondered what he might see that we cannot.



Introduction 21

Chapter 1

Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World

Many modern accounts of ukiyo-e begin with Hishikawa Moronobu (1618–1694), positioning him as the “father” of the genre. Starting with Moronobu for ukiyo-e studies has become so familiar that it suggests a break, a moment of transition, even of the “birth of ukiyo-e.” Placed there as the point of origination, the argument goes, Moro­nobu became “an enduring influence on all later ukiyo-e artists.”1 While Moronobu was indeed a touchstone for many that followed, how and why those practitioners chose to reference his style is more complicated, imbricated within market considerations and genre constructions in their own time. Yet this shift from genre painting ( fūzoku-e), like many other moments in history that are now marked as a radical break, did not simply occur. It is part of a larger narrative that has been constructed over time, in which ukiyo-e needed to establish such a founding figure for its chronology. Looking to early modern documents, we can see that Moronobu was put into this position by later connoisseurs and cultural figures as part of their process of constructing systems for framing, ranking, and evaluating ukiyo-e. Indeed, by the later eighteenth century, documents show that these writers were making arguments for the genre as a separate and definable area of image production and championing particular named designers. The act of writing this list of

22

makers functioned to produce an early canon, if we might call it that, and was participating, too, in a longer history of writing about painting, calligraphy, and other art forms that can be traced back to early China.2 Thus, to begin this book with Moronobu as the “father” without engaging in how he was placed in that position would be to participate implicitly in a critical assessment begun long ago that continues to be reproduced for the present. To argue for the “birth” of ukiyo-e with Moronobu is, in short, to treat a moment of transition as though it were a fait accompli rather than one that was both gradual as well as defined over time by critical appraisers. Let us begin, rather, with that process of writing and ranking, seeking to understand how this articulation of the genre lays out what become critical points for ukiyo-e history. By the time samurai, critic, and cultural commentator Ōta Nanpo (1749–1823) put brush to paper to compose his catalogue of ukiyo-e practitioners in about 1790, the field of “floating-world pictures” had long been an established form of visual production, with a history that stretched back more than a century. Nanpo’s annotated list, the Studies on Ukiyo-e (Ukiyo-e kōshō), represented what he no doubt regarded as important knowledge. What appears at first to be simply a list is much more. Nanpo’s care in its composition demonstrates that he regarded ukiyo-e as a definable field of artistic production, with different forms worthy of distinction. What he could not know was that his catalogue of names would become the foundation upon which, through its many later iterations and accretions, our present canon has been built. Much of what is included therein has become, or has been treated as if it were, fact. Too often, little attention is given to what terms and which individuals are included, who made these distinctions, and how they came to be treated as the “standard.” Ukiyo-e, like other artistic discourses, was not something that simply emerged; it was produced through competition—in the market, in culture, and in practice. Nanpo recorded those he regarded as worthy of note. In other words, Nanpo listed the winners. Nanpo participated in various cultural milieux with contemporary artists, writers, publishers, and others. While he would have based his writing upon understanding gained through those experiences, texts



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 23

such as this one must be viewed as equally opinion and critique. Nanpo’s study of ukiyo-e is a form of ekphrasis, of writing that performs as rhetoric, persuading readers of a particular interpretation through the description of the work of art.3 This acknowledges that Nanpo’s text is the product of active evaluation rather than fact (just as is true for other writers, such as Giorgio Vasari [1511–1574] and Dong Qichang [1555– 1636], who wrote similar documents). Nanpo’s list was apparently so useful that several of his contemporaries continued adding to it. The earliest manuscript copy of this document includes notations contributed by Sasaya Shinshichi Kuni­ nori and Santō Kyōden (1761–1816) and may be dated to 1802. Shikitei Sanba (1776–1822) and Keisai Eisen (1790–1848), among others, added more. Saitō Gesshin (1804–1878) compiled the most thorough version, Collected Writings on Ukiyo-e, Enlarged and Revised (Zōho Ukiyo-e ruikō), by 1844. While each must be approached with healthy skepticism as well as put into period context, this gradual accumulation of information in pursuit of a canon testifies to an impulse to document and acknowledge ukiyo-e as a field of artistic production. For this earliest history, what Nanpo and his later compatriots knew and how they knew it cannot be determined. However, they were part of the same circles where such information was valued, may have also had access to earlier documents, and could vouch for ukiyo-e designers they knew. Yet even in the earliest version, we must regard the act of producing these notes as conveying his era’s assessment, as selection based upon appraisal. Since the contents of this document cannot be independently verified, all variations must be approached with some caution. It may be little more than informed opinion, after all. Its use value, rather, lies in what it reveals about the concepts and categories in play by the end of the eighteenth century and what was considered significant enough for notation. We can glean an overview of who and what (and how) was considered important by someone like Nanpo about this field and put it into an early modern discourse on ukiyo-e as “art.”4 This is a discourse of assessment. The document opens with a list of terms that demonstrate an ongoing process of classification. The first of these is ukiyo-e, the

24

CHAPTER 1

“pictures of the floating world.” It is not defined here nor elucidated later in the text. This lack of explication suggests that by now it must have been so familiar it needed no such treatment. Next follows Yamato-e, “Yamato-style pictures,” referring to the tradition of Japanese-style painting (employing the ancient name for Japan). This term, too, is left undefined on this opening page (but it is discussed further in the document in a later hand in a manner that suggests it was under negotiation). As organizing terms, both describe fields of artistic practice with recognizable styles, lineages, and markets, with all the stakes, rights, and politics therein. Following these large taxonomies are terms that refer to specific forms of production in a list that looks like a table of contents. Notably, these are listed in chronological order. They are rendered here in their closest equivalent terms in English, with their subdefinitions: Lacquered pictures (urushi-e): gilded, also pictures lacquered in black Single-sheet pictures (ichimai-e): called rose-colored pictures (beni-e) and Edo pictures (Edo-e) Illustrated fiction (kusazōshi): red-backed books (akabon), Chinesestyle covers (karashi-hyōshi), blue-backed books (aobon) —originally covered in light blue-green and called aobon —now the cover is yellow yet still called aobon Brocade pictures of the East (Azuma nishiki-e) Actor resemblances (yakusha nigao) Specially printed pictures (surimono-e)5

These are specific terms that demonstrate the degrees of difference recognized between these iterations of production (and many of these types appear throughout this book). Nowhere in this list are these works called prints (hanga). Indeed, the word hanga seems not to have been in use at all in the Edo period; instead it first appears at about the turn of the twentieth century. The term used today for “woodblock print” as mokuhanga seems to have been coined at the turn of the twentieth century, likely in order to discriminate between the forms of intaglio and planar print methods when those technologies came into active use in Japan.6



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 25

What we see in Nanpo’s document is a list of major shifts in forms of image making. Many are described as pictures (e), using the same term that appears in ukiyo-e and Yamato-e for “pictures.” Urushi-e, beni-e, nishiki-e, and surimono all refer to different manipulations of the woodblock printing method, from printed line with special effects and some color (urushi-e and beni-e) to five or more color blocks (nishiki-e) to the further refinement of full color (surimono-e). Ichimai-e makes clear that these are single-sheet pictures. Printed books, listed as a separate category, are distinguished by the colors of their covers in the period shorthand for this format. “Resemblances of actors” (yakusha nigao) lacks the marker for pictures, but put in context, it must be so; what is important here is that the subject is described rather than the technique, perhaps signaling that these “resemblances” were regarded as a new approach. Surimono, specially commissioned pictures, close out the list as an emerging adaptation. Finally, twice in this list these works are designated as the product of Edo: in Edo-e, more explicitly, as Edo pictures, and in Azuma, using the classical term for the East, or Edo in all but a word. Turning the page, we begin reading the discussion of individual practitioners; the rest of the document is organized as a series of names, modified by information about lives and works. Terms designating art forms, from paintings to illustrated books, are also included in these entries, and close study of these demonstrates hierarchies of production in play. By now readers may be wondering why I have started this chapter with a document, not an image, and one that dates from the turn of the nineteenth century. It would seem more logical to begin, according to a chronological structure, at the beginning with the first images associated with ukiyo-e. Indeed, how does discussing a text written one hundred years later help us understand the earliest images? By composing this list, Nanpo was defining the beginning of ukiyo-e: he was literally writing its origin story. Why he did so is not explained in the document, but since his name appears as patron and poet for many works produced by contemporary publishers and illustrators, we can surmise he had a vested interest in that history. Thus, he was making fast that lineage, securing it as an extension of the long-established,

26

CHAPTER 1

more highly valued art form of painting. According to this document, ukiyo-e is placed next to, and comes out of, Japanese-style painting (Yamato-e) (and is thus placed by implication in a longer historical dialectic with Chinese-style painting, Kara-e). And while this list of terms—from ukiyo-e to surimono-e—is unified by terms associated with picture making, further media distinctions are made. That specificity of difference is critical to his appraisal and historicity and, by extension, to that employed in the period. Let us return to the observation that nowhere in this start is there reference to print as a medium of production. Rather, things we know were made as prints—beni-e, nishiki-e, and so on—are treated as specific categories of pictures. Listing these forms of media at the outset demonstrates that these distinctions between forms carried cultural weight. Associating a name with a type differentiates practice (and value) accordingly. It cannot be said often enough or fervently enough that all ukiyo-e artists were trained in the practice of the brush as painters. But many, as this list demonstrates, did not achieve period recognition as painters; their names instead were aligned with specific forms of print media. Those who did achieve success as painters are cited accordingly in their individual biographical sketches. Most, however, worked as brushes for hire, commissioned by publishers to provide the sketches that would be rendered into prints by professionals, into blocks by carvers, and onto paper by printers. Yet for these illustrators, in both mindset and practice, their tool was the brush, not the carver’s knife or the printer’s rubbing pad (baren), and their contributions were ink sketches. How individual practitioners were defined on a list such as this relates specifically to the form for which they became known. Within the Edo market economy, those distinctions between forms of media signaled a system of ranking artistic production. For the names associated with painting, as Yamato-eshi, or “Japanese-style painting masters,” we can infer that these ranked highest, on a par with contemporary exemplars in other painting lineages. Those whose names were linked to forms of printed imagery were not regarded in their lifetimes as equals to painters, and we may well wonder (given the potentially high number of



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 27

forgeries in ukiyo-e painting as a whole) whether they received commissions for paintings or worked solely as illustrators for prints. The act of writing this compendium (that later became the framework for the canon) stands, regardless, as a signal that the field of inquiry is appreciated and considered worthy of record. It also points to an ongoing competition around image production in the larger sphere of practice, where it becomes necessary to place boundaries around a field of image making. What Nanpo was using for his assessment—opinion, research, personal affiliation, or the works themselves?—cannot be known, but his reputation as a critic and an ally of a number of names on the list granted him then, as well as now, the stature of someone whose opinion was regarded as worthy of attention. Nanpo’s canon likely represented his era’s standards, and these have, in turn, become our own. But this evaluation neither occurred ex nihilo, out of nothing, nor happened overnight. It is the manifest result of a long contest of effort for recognition and validation, with charged terms of appraisal marshaled for greatest effect. Making evaluations of type, material, and quality was essential in Edo culture, just as it was in other parts of the early modern world where goods and services were bought or bartered, establishing value as well as reputation. Ukiyo-e is sometimes defined almost exclusively as a print medium, and modern admiration for the graphic quality of the work on paper has eclipsed the fact that printed works were both priced cheaper and ranked lower than paintings. Paintings were one-offs and unique; they might also be manifest demonstrations of an individual artist’s skills. By the later eighteenth century, their quality signaled higher material costs as commissioned works. Prints, produced in multiples, were the product of collaboration. Publishers hired skilled labor— designers, carvers, printers, and others—to produce printed works for sale on the open market. Private individuals, from poets to painters, sometimes worked as contractors for things intended for private circulation; these were commissioned (and often produced through the aegis of the publisher) for clubby commemorations, gift exchanges, and the like. Some illustrated books replicated paintings in print, making “originals” accessible in multiple for an audience interested in the

28

CHAPTER 1

practice as well as the connoisseurship of painting, while others offered imagined other worlds of adventure, travel, fantasy, and more. If we take a quantitative approach to the larger world of Edo period visual production, the sheer numbers of works still extant that were produced as ukiyo-e leads us to the inevitable conclusion of a very large, acquisitive, and engaged market. The sheet prints that have become so widely appreciated (and appropriated) were part of a rapidly expanding print trade. Smart bookseller-publishers recognized the profits that might be yielded from the new urban and literate audience. But this, too, did not happen overnight. These were also part of a longer political and urban history under the extended military peace achieved during the Tokugawa shogunate and of a larger culture that valued literacy and understood the importance of documents.7 The shifts that resulted from Edo’s gradual economic and cultural dominance have been discussed thoroughly in many other publications and may be summarized here. What is significant for this study is how it is visible in the publishing trade. From the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the number of book publishers active in Edo increased significantly, while those in Osaka and Kyoto declined. In the seventeenth century, Kyoto publishers in operation numbered 701, while Osaka-based producers numbered 185, making this zone the center of production. By comparison, there were some 242 working in Edo. By the nineteenth century, Edo far and away surpassed the other two, with 917. Kyoto and Osaka publishers dropped to 494 and 504, respectively. At the same time, the number of publishers in the provinces increased, from 43 in the seventeenth century to 135 in the eighteenth century, climbing to 407 across ten provinces in the nineteenth, nearly ten times their initial number.8 It is often said that ukiyo-e represented the manners and customs of the city of Edo, as though designed to put on view the values of this urban population. There is some merit in that statement, but that model ignores the vital environments of Kyoto, Osaka, Nagasaki, and others, where similar printed things were in circulation. It also proposes a scenario wherein Edo’s illustrators were motivated to observe and document, as though their purpose was to record the reality around



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 29

them. To be sure, some were, and some did, depending upon circumstances and patronage. However, it seems increasingly clear that many, if not most, of these images served as advertisements, as works for hire promoting entertainments and products in a larger mercantile economy. Ukiyo pictures and stories put on view the amusing diversions, au courant fashions, and various entertainments on offer in the urban centers. These town-painters (machi-eshi), as they were known, had great success in depicting a wide array of scenes of contemporary life— including those of the theater, the pleasure quarters, and the celebrated entertainers—for their audiences. If “ukiyo-e” was worthy of definition as an image-making practice by the end of the eighteenth century, that assessment was part of a longer engagement in the market and in critical evaluation. This chapter will now turn to selected early practitioners to demonstrate how this style emerged, as well as how principles of painting were transferred into print. Here, as throughout, all manner of media will be considered as part of the ukiyo-e genre—sheet prints, illustrated books, and paintings—and careful attention will be paid to the ways that signatures and colophons used culturally significant terms associated with other zones of artistic production. How and why images depicted particular subjects in and for the floating world—and how that process, too, was negotiated within the larger field of publishing and collecting—will also be discussed.

Designing Pictures for Emerging Urban Markets For Nanpo, the three “founders” of ukiyo-e were Iwasa Matabei (1578–1650), Hishikawa Moronobu (1618–1694), and Hanabusa Itchō (1652–1724), and these three names have retained this stature ever since. In these brief biographies, Nanpo drops key terms that draw the boundaries and define the practices of ukiyo-e. Matabei, known mainly as a painter then as now, was so skilled at pictures of present-day customs ( fūzoku) that he began to be known as Ukiyo Matabei. A later hand adds that this “must be the first ukiyo-e” and that Matabei was reportedly good at Ōtsu-style pictures, a kind of folk art imagery featuring

30

CHAPTER 1

lucky, moralizing, or apotropaic subjects.9 While Matabei was worthy of note, it is with Moronobu and Itchō that Nanpo secures the start of the genre. Both Moronobu and Itchō are described by Nanpo as “Japanese-­style painters” (Yamato-eshi), signaling that these picture masters (eshi) studied traditional Japanese painting. Nanpo recognized, as we do today, that ukiyo-e as an artistic form was based upon two earlier material practices, genre painting and woodblock printing. Painters like Matabei and Itchō developed individual painting styles through adapting and melding period precedents, such as those the Kano and Tosa painting lineages advocated. For Nanpo, Matabei and Itchō serve as venerable hinge points to painting traditions, significant as such in this list. Neither painter produced sheet prints or illustrations for books. Instead, later admirers replicated their designs for paintings in the medium of the illustrated book. Copying these paintings for illustrated books distributed their imagery, commemorated their innovations, and reified their stature. Turning the masters’ pictures into print might serve as a guide for connoisseurs or as a memorial to mastery, but linking pictures with a name established the concept of an individual style. Thus, these books functioned as an incipient form of trademarking intellectual property (as well as securing positions for those very followers).10 Illustrated books made the styles of Itchō and Matabei available to a wider audience, but—if later ukiyo-e prints and books that include notations to the past are any indication— they are less often referenced as “founders” than is Moronobu. Rather, Moronobu is more often cited as a “father” or “founder” by later artists, perhaps because he was the first to use both painting and illustrated books as vehicles.11 He would have been working on commission for both, serving well-to-do patrons with his paintings and publishers with his sketches for illustrated books. It is this use of the print medium, I would argue, that renders ukiyo-e as a category distinct: from the start, while a number of its notable early practitioners made paintings, many more designed for print. For some of these, their artistic practice was almost exclusively for print. No other artistic form had this kind of reach and promise, engaging both media at once, and no other exploited so effectively the potential for sales in an emerging market of commodities.



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 31

If Nanpo recognized the value in defining some practitioners as Yamato-eshi, or their works as Yamato-e, so did Hishikawa Moronobu and his contemporaries.12 Indeed, Moronobu often included the term “Japanese-­style picture” (Yamato-e) in his signatures, and looking to these inscriptions, we can see that Moronobu and others were acutely aware of the value in asserting that connection to the past. Moronobu was born in Awa Province (modern-day Chiba Prefecture) into a family of embroiderers and textile producers, and throughout his paintings and illustrated books, he displays great sensitivity to depicting fabrics and the fashions of the moment.13 Moronobu made a large number of paintings and illustrated books that integrated, and thus revealed, his mastery of earlier painting styles. In particular, these draw upon styles aligned with the Kano and Tosa lineages. After moving to the shogun’s city as a young man, he rendered scenes of Edo city life in the hanging scroll, standing screen, and handscroll formats, as well as in illustrated printed books showing contemporary life, fashionable figures, and erotic encounters.14 Moronobu’s success as a book illustrator is evident in his name being assigned to about 130 titles made between the 1650s and 1694; these are either signed by him or attributed by style. A number of these were likely brought to completion by members of his atelier, copying from his designs.15 Projects finished through contributions within the studio were not unusual; such was the standard throughout the early modern world (as well as in some contemporary art practices today). By Nanpo’s time the illustrated book as an outlet was also worthy of note, as we can see in his list, and the word hanpon, describing a book printed from woodblocks, is used in his entry on Moronobu. It is worth noting that this term uses the character for “plank” (as a block book) rather than the han meaning imprint. These books, as well as his paintings, featured people from all walks of life. One of the most influential of this kind of book was surely the One Hundred Women of Our Country (Wakoku hyakujo) of 1695, where Moronobu sketched women in a variety of roles and occupations (figure 5).16 This book illustrated women appreciated as beautiful exemplars as well as those engaged in more sundry pursuits. It was part of a larger discourse around classifying individuals, wherein the concept

32

CHAPTER 1

Figure 5. Hishikawa Moronobu, One Hundred Women of Our Country (Wakoku hyakujo), 1695;

published by Matsue. Monochrome woodblock-printed book (sumizuri-e), ink on paper, fukurotoji binding, 26.8 × 18.4 × 0.4 cm. Purchase, The Gerhard Pulverer Collection—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Harold P. Stern Memorial Fund in appreciation of Jeffrey P. Cunard and his exemplary service to the Galleries as chair of the Board of Trustees (2003–2007).

of “beauty” became commodified. By this time the notion of the beautiful person (bijin) was well established. The term is gender neutral, thus it could refer to attractive women, stylish men, and those who negotiated the territory in between, particularly the young men called youths or wakashu.17 Pictures of these “beautiful people” also displayed the fashions of the moment, and as in all other eras and societies, the terms of beauty were culturally constructed; physical features were enhanced through stylish clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics, accomplishments, and deportment.18 The notion extended to professional “beauties,” such as the sex workers of the pleasure districts and actors from the kabuki



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 33

stage, as well as others. Not only did ukiyo books, prints, and paintings replicate these trends, they also contributed to a larger ongoing social conversation about what was considered attractive. Writers during this period—from Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) to Kaibara Ekiken (1630– 1714)—likewise commented on the ways in which bodily adornment and modification were part of this pursuit of beauty. Moronobu’s classification of women was part of this larger engagement with defining (and commodifying) typologies according to terms of gender, class, and occupation, as well as others. Moronobu’s training in the art of textile design is evident throughout this book and his oeuvre as a whole. His paintings often feature exquisite up-to-date designs in which the textile techniques have been carefully replicated. His books on garment design (hinagatabon) put that knowledge into circulation; they also demonstrate the commercial connection between ukiyo-e illustrations and the world of fashion.19 In a book on kimono designs, Full-Length Figures in Short-Sleeved Kimono (Kosode no sugatami), dated to 1683, Moronobu shows women and youths wearing stylish garments, with the textile’s color pattern and decorative features described in the accompanying text, as exemplars of all that it meant to be a bijin (figure 6). By the late seventeenth century, the rapid changes in fashion prompted one critic to comment wryly that the “women of today go to extraordinary lengths” to present themselves attractively—plucking stray hairs, turning away to hide blemishes, wearing long robes to conceal thick ankles—and in doing so were mimicking the fashions promoted in images of professional sex workers. Whether they were examples of vanity run wild or just keeping up with the neighbors depended upon one’s point of view. Moronobu’s beauties were regarded as sexy when clad and even sexier undressed. Contemporary novelist Ihara Saikaku described the allure of Moronobu’s figures in the erotic book Irozato mitokoro setai (Three Noteworthy Sexual Situations, 1688): “Looking at the ukiyo-e books from Hishikawa’s brush, there is a rich abundance of the flesh and roundness to the hips.”20 For works associated with the prostitution district, it is clear that the well-known advertising phrase “sex sells” was understood for images of that world too.

34

CHAPTER 1

Figure 6. Hishikawa Moronobu, Full-Length Figures in Short-Sleeved Kimono (Kosode no sugatami),

1683; published by Urokogataya. Monochrome woodblock-printed book (sumizuri-e), ink on paper, fukurotoji binding, 22.6 × 15.9 × 0.4 cm. Purchase, The Gerhard Pulverer Collection— Charles Lang Freer Endowment, Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Harold P. Stern Memorial Fund in appreciation of Jeffrey P. Cunard and his exemplary service to the Galleries as chair of the Board of Trustees (2003–2007).

Throughout the printed works we have encountered so far, we can see the attention that the block carver gave to the sketch submitted by the designer. In Moronobu’s kimono design book, for example, note how the articulation of the brush, in the swelling and tapering of the lines along the hem of the robe, has been preserved. Look, too, at the ends of some of these lines—it is as though the brush has been lifted from this piece of paper. This is an illusion, of course, for what is actually printed is the carefully carved taper of a raised block line. But it is in the written text where we might be most amazed—consider how this text is carved in reverse, retaining the flow of the writer’s brush down the page and the arrangement of the characters around the figure. Text



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 35

and image are rendered in the same block, giving equal attention and merit to both, with attention kept on the hand of the composer. Moronobu’s paintings often described the variety of entertainments on offer in the f loating world. In a pair of handscrolls now held in the Idemitsu Museum of Art, scenes progress from late winter through summer in one scroll, showing people and places of urban life, such as a fan shop, a barrel maker, a cherry blossom viewing, a boating party on the Sumida River, and the annual late summer Obon festival. With the second scroll, we walk through the Yoshiwara licensed prostitution district in autumn, ending our tour with an elaborate evening party as we are warmed by a hibachi burning charcoal and framed with a white plum in bloom, signifying late winter. Some features in these paintings are rendered in ways that indicate Moronobu’s students were contributing, offering their hands to keep up with demand.21 This was standard practice in the period, just as it was in early modern ateliers around the world, and Moronobu’s students would have had access to the master’s sketches as well as his printed books. Whether working in collaboration with their teacher or under his instruction, these works would have gone into the world under the Moronobu brand. His later students further refined his approach, making the Hishikawa style one of the most recognizable in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.22 Many of Moronobu’s works portray the customs and entertainments of the “floating world” of the licensed prostitution district, as seen in a painting dated to the late 1680s (figure 7). By the time Moronobu illustrated the most famous of these quarters, the Yoshiwara, it had long been established as Edo’s officially sanctioned, regulated, and commercialized brothel district. The “beauties” who worked as indentured sex workers in the licensed quarters—as well as in the unlicensed locales— become one of the genre’s most frequent subjects. In early modern Japan, they were known as yūjo, a word that translates to “women for play,” as well as by other terms, and are frequently described as “courtesans” in English. Often they are described in terms that render them agency as individuals and trendsetters. As has been discussed elsewhere, these women were ranked and evaluated according to their achievement

36

CHAPTER 1

Figure 7. Hishikawa Moronobu, Genre Scenes in Edo, late seventeenth century. Ink, color, and gold on paper, handscroll, 51.4 × 1,761.4 cm. John C. Weber Collection.

of culturally constructed notions of beauty, with their availability and price points assessed accordingly.23 Throughout this text, I have chosen to use the term “sex worker” instead of “courtesan” to describe the women employed in the sex trade. This is purposefully done, to avoid the glamorization suggested by “courtesan” as well as the potentially derogatory associations with “prostitute” and related synonyms. As will be discussed throughout, pictures were an effective mechanism for representing the women (and some men) indentured into the sex trade. Some of these printed works seem to reveal details about them— such as their crests, handwriting, and so on—but these points must be regarded with due skepticism since they are produced by, through, and for marketing their trade, often on behalf of their employers. Moronobu’s handscroll included notations about some of the places where sex was for sale, noting, for example, the names, kinds, and ranks of brothels and sex workers. For example, in this section of the painting, locations in the Kyomachi section of the Yoshiwara district are identified in the inscriptions: on the right is the Miuraya house, a middle-ranking brothel; in the center, the Takashima house (its name inscribed on the banner), at a lower rank; and on the left, marked by



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 37

the gray curtains, are the tsubone, the small “compartment” spaces at the lowest rank. Sex workers on display at the Miuraya wait for customers behind the lattice, perusing books or checking makeup in a mirror, while those at the following doorways attempt to engage clients. One of ukiyo-e’s related subjects was sex itself, and these have become so famous that they are known worldwide by their euphemism shunga, or “spring pictures.” Although edicts were regularly issued banning this subject, the production of erotica flourished throughout the period. One way of avoiding trouble was simply not to sign the work. Individual practitioners developed styles that were distinct, making attribution to specific hands possible. Erotic images were almost always produced in sets in the form of albums or books, not as individual sheet prints, but many have now been removed from these bindings to be sold as single works (see figure 8). Likely part of a set of twelve, this unique impression can also be attributed to the hand of Okumura Masanobu (1686–1764), one of the longest-lived and most prolific illustrators of the first half of the eighteenth century. Masanobu worked for over fifty years in the profession as a book illustrator, print designer, and painter, as well as established his own trade as a publisher, Okumuraya. After listing Masanobu’s artist names, Nanpo notes only that he ran a bookshop in Edo and that he used a gourd-shaped seal; this final detail was likely intended to confirm Masanobu’s practice.24 This example can be dated to Masanobu’s early career, when he was adapting the Moronobu style. In ukiyo-e, as in so many other endeavors, imitation is not only a sign of appreciation but also a means to attract customers seeking similar products. Here, a woman wraps her arms around a young man and tries to distract him from his book. Titled Purple Flowers (Hana murasaki), he is probably reading a book of erotica—was it the book Love’s Purple Flowers (Koi no hana murasaki) that was made in the 1680s? This young male figure is a wakashu, recognizable as such by his hairstyle, with the forelock sweeping back over the shaved top of his head. Shaving off the forelock to achieve a man’s hairstyle was typically done about age fifteen and regarded as part of the rite of passage to adulthood. These wakashu appear often in ukiyo-e, and it has

38

CHAPTER 1

been argued that they represented a “third gender” and were known for wearing more feminine-style garments (as may be seen here in his kimono with long sleeves) to enhance their sexual appeal to other men as well as women.25 The text above playfully shifts from seeming to float in air to looking as if it decorates the standing screen and is written in an expressive calligraphic style. It replicates the quality of the brush in use, with characters that appear applied with a freshly dipped brush and others where the writer has split the hairs through the action of his hand.

Figure 8. Attributed to Okumura Masanobu, Untitled (Matsutsake hunt), ca. 1710. Monochrome

woodblock-printed sheet (sumizuri-e), likely from an accordion-bound book of erotica, ink on paper, 26.2 × 36 cm. Gift of Dr. Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 39

Not only does this render respect for the calligrapher, it also attests to the high skill of the block carver. The text can be translated as: “Lost in the matsutake mushroom hunt, an audacious woman climbs Mount Koya.”26 The woman lying on top of the man is likened to her compatriots who transgressed the rules forbidding women to climb the sacred temple mountain; she is cast as audacious in her desire to “climb” this young man on her hunt for the phallus-shaped mushroom. Masanobu’s design cleverly invites the viewer to participate in her hunt, to distinguish between the layered garments and body parts and to reach below the folds. In doing so the picture also offers the masculine gaze the opportunity to imagine the pleasure of being sought after (as well as the possibilities of participation as a third party in the scene). As the previous examples demonstrate, from the start figures—­ regardless of gender position—from the “floating world” were objects of the eroticizing gaze. Over time, images of women became more often the object of the gaze (although men, particularly young men, remained fetishized too). Women who worked in the sex trade were being described and categorized in other media (such as guidebooks and fiction about the sex quarters), and their representation served to promote that trade. Yet whether professional prostitutes or not, most female figures are shown posing in a manner that encourages the viewer to appreciate selected parts of the female form—the face and hair, nape of the neck, feet and toes, wrists and hands—and of her costume— makeup, hairstyle and ornaments, flowing robes, and gorgeous obi. Earlier genre paintings often featured figures from the demimonde shown singly or in groups for such appreciation. While Nanpo does not mention the Kaigetsudō group of painters in his list of practitioners, period documents as well as visual citations of their style suggest that their treatment of the female figure set a new standard in ukiyo-e. Their images of elaborately clad standing beauties in alluring, twisting postures were, in effect, early eighteenth-century pinup pictures. Kaigetsudō Ando (active about 1704–1736), the founder of the lineage, worked exclusively as a painter, demonstrating truly skillful treatment of the subject of beauties.27 Ando, working from the models established by the earlier painters as well as Moronobu, further

40

CHAPTER 1

developed this manner of presenting the standing beauty (figure 9). With her arms extended to insert her tortoiseshell comb, the figure shown in this painting seems to have been captured at the moment she is making final adjustments to her costume before meeting her client. Close attention has been paid to describing her layered robes, with the uppermost combining pattern with zones of deeply dyed blue, and to her obi tied in front in the practice professional sex workers used for ease of dress as well as display of sumptuous fabric. Her tiny feet and hands, the exposed nape of her neck, and the folds around her bust and legs draw the eye to her desirable features. The painting invites the viewer to indulge in the fantasy of meeting, to look upon her figure with desire and imagine unwrapping those layers. While Ando and his students received commissions, many of their paintings, like the one illustrated here, were produced as readymades, available for purchase from a shop. Like Moronobu, their signatures assert their affiliation with painting, and in both paintings and prints, the Kaigetsudō often used the phrase “lighthearted painting in Japanese style.” From the number of works remaining, it is clear that the Kaigetsudō group produced images that period buyers appreciated. Ando’s followers in the Kaigetsudō school produced monochrome prints as well as paintings, and many of their larger-­ scale prints nearly replicate their paintings so closely that it seems likely that the prints served as cheaper alternatives (figure 10). Yet in his signature on the print, Anchi stakes authorial claim writing that this “amusing Japanese image is by Anchi, the Kaigetsudō’s last leaf ” (Nihon giga Kaigetsu matsuyō Anchi zu). Miyagawa Chōshun (1682–1752), working in the first half of the eighteenth century, is one of the rare ukiyo-e masters known only as a painter. Like the Kaigetsudō school masters, Chōshun’s subject matter was beautiful women, often the stylish professional sex workers, and he tended to employ a set of standard compositions. Like his contemporaries, Chōshun produced paintings put on sale in shops, rather than working on private commission.28 By varying the format and dimensions, as well as the details in his paintings, Chōshun’s works no doubt appealed to a variety of patrons and were sold at several price points.



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 41

Figure 9. Kaigetsudō Ando, Standing Beauty, early eighteenth century. Ink and color on paper, hanging scroll, 110.8 × 48.6 cm. Idemitsu Museum of Arts.

Figure 10. Kaigetsudō Anchi, Woman Placing a Hairpin in Her Hair, ca. 1714. Monochrome woodblock print (sumizuri-e), ink on paper, 57.8 × 32.4 cm. Harris Brisbane Dick Fund and Rogers Fund, 1949, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In the example shown here, Chōshun’s figure, with her obi tied in front, is a high-ranking sex worker, wrapped in layers of gorgeous kosode (short-sleeved) robes of the sort illustrated in period kimono pattern books (figure 11). Likewise, Chōshun’s paintings of beauties in interiors vary mainly in the details of their settings, garments, and the position of the attendants. All were part of the display of the female figure as an object of the gaze, in service to the larger sex trade. Chōshun was prolific, and by the late eighteenth century, a good Chōshun painting was regarded as a collectible. The writer Santō Kyōden (also known as ukiyo-e illustrator Kitao Masanobu, 1761–1816), a later contributor to Nanpo’s canon, owned a “good” painting, but he mused that the Chōshun market was problematic, for “badly executed pictures appear at dealers all the time, so prices are pretty low.”29 What these “badly executed” paintings circulating on the market might have been is not clear, but the possibility that these were copies made after the master complicates the study of ukiyo-e painting as a whole.30 Throughout the Edo period, most paintings were sold at much higher prices than contemporary prints. Little may be said with precision about prices for paintings, and the few remaining remarks about print prices are likewise inexact. However, generalizing from the extant data, it seems fair to say that even modestly priced paintings yielded five to ten times the fee for a single-sheet print, while exquisitely painted works must have been still more expensive.31 Although some painters made works in advance and in a number of variations, even these, as art historian Naitō Masato has pointed out, were meant to appeal to a specific market that preferred paintings. In this early period, however, we can see from the size, formats, and materials that paintings were not yet being challenged as a visual medium by the simple twocolor and hand-­colored woodblock prints of the time. Paintings, even when produced as ready-made, as seems to have been the case for many Kaigetsudō-signed paintings, were preferred by patrons with a little more cash in hand. By the early eighteenth century, several artistic lineages within ukiyo-e became associated with specific subjects and distinct visual styles. Like the Kaigetsudō painters, these “schools” were established



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 43

Figure 11. Miyagawa Chōshun,

Standing Beauty, early eighteenth century. Ink and color on silk, hanging scroll, 88.1 × 33.4 cm. Idemitsu Museum of Arts.

by a lead artist with an atelier of students and followers working in the same mode. The position of head of the school was usually handed down from father to artist sons, to sons-in-law, or to designated heirs. Apprentices usually entered the master’s atelier between the age of ten and early teens, and if they were found to be worthy practitioners of the master’s style, they would be adopted into the family and given its lineage name. In a few rare cases, women were also taught to paint, but as in most societies at this time, such opportunities were often more available to daughters and wives within the lineage than to others.32

Kabuki and Actor Prints These early schools also followed practices that exemplify how closely the craft of making images was tied to their markets. As we have already seen, some images glamourized the women in the sex trade, and more will be discussed in subsequent chapters on this topic. The other big “f loating world” was, of course, the kabuki theater. The history of kabuki is too vast a topic to discuss in full here, but this relatively new theatrical form, with its thrilling plots, stunning costumes, masterful musical accompaniment, and most important, the virtuoso performances of its actors, was widely appreciated in the major cities. It was also a place where fans might indulge romantic fantasies for the male actors (women were banned from the stage in 1629). Period scandals involving what were seen as improper affairs— such as between a daimyo and a young actor, or a court lady and her celebrity lover—and related injunctions meant to prevent sex trade related to the theater—likewise demonstrate that in Japan, as in the early modern world elsewhere, the theater was another zone of libidinous desire. With all this and more behind them, making pictures for kabuki was big business. The Torii school became one of the longest and most successful lineages specializing in kabuki topics for the city of Edo. Employed by theaters to advertise their performances, the Torii designed prints to satisfy the public’s desire to appreciate their favorite actors in exciting



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 45

roles. The Torii masters typically selected the most dramatic moment in the kabuki performance for their illustrations, representing these with strong outlines, bright colors, and striking compositions to make the image seem fresh for the commercial market. Among the rarest of their paintings that remain are the large signboards advertising the theater’s current offerings, and those that survive evidence the bravura style so familiar from their bold prints. Most of these seem to have served as advertisements outside the theater; some were also made as votive offerings for temples and shrines.33 Many prints show the actors onstage, as though captured in action. Nanpo deemed that the first of the Torii, Kiyonobu I (1664–1729), had not only founded the line but “should be called the founder of Edo-e,” with a distinction put forward for these pictures as “Edo pictures” representative of the city itself—high praise indeed.34 In this black-and-white hand-colored print, Kiyonobu depicts Ichikawa Danjūrō II leaning on the railing of a verandah in his role as Narukami Shōnin. He appears to be in conversation with Nakamura Takesaburō, who plays the female part of Kumono Taemahime, in the kyogen (short play) included at the performance of Bandō ichi kotobuki Soga at the Nakamura theater in Edo (figure 12). This program debuted at the new year and became a big hit for 1715, running through the seventh month.35 The Narukami story was first performed in 1684, in a version conceived by actor Ichikawa Danjūrō I. In this story the character Narukami has captured the dragon god, who controls rain, leading to a drought. Princess Taema (Kumo no Taemahime) is sent by the emperor to release the creature. She distracts Narukami with her sexual allure, plying him with drink until he falls into a stupor. She then frees the dragon, returning rain to the land. Then, in what must have been one of the most spectacular moments of the play, Narukami awakens, flies into a rage, and transforms into a thunder god, wreaking destruction on the land.36 This impression, likely the only extant copy, demonstrates how much its producers could rely upon the visual literacy of the print-buying audience. Nowhere in the print are the play or the actors named. True aficionados would have identified the actors by

46

CHAPTER 1

Figure 12. Torii Kiyonobu I, Ichikawa Danjūrō II as Narukami Shōnin and Nakamura Takesaburō as Kumono Taemahime, 1715. Ink and hand-colored woodblock print, ink and color on paper, large ōban format, 41.3 × 27.3 cm. Gift of an anonymous donor for the Henry LaBarre Jayne Collection, 1927 (1927-12-2), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

their mon (crests). Danjūrō’s pattern of three nested square measures (mimasu), boldly shown on both shoulders and the skirt of his robe, and Takesaburō’s lightning bolt with three commas in a circle, also on his shoulder, serve to identify these actors to their audience. Narukami’s position in front of the waterfall signals that he is in possession of its god, blocking entrance or egress. Takesaburō, in his role as Princess Taema, wears a loose robe, with the obi tied in the front in the style of a sex worker, and leans back provocatively. For playgoers, this scene showing the lead actors at the moment when Taema began her seduction must have signaled all that would subsequently occur. Kiyonobu’s rendering of this scene, with the actors set in diagonal opposition, with the waterfall behind, seems to have set the standard for showing this moment of the play, while his portrayal of the figures demonstrates his awareness and adaptation of period styles.37 Kiyonobu was also one of the most prolific designers of illustrated books, with many of these, too, taking as their subject the kabuki theater. His follower, Kiyonobu II (active ca. 1729–1760), continued in the same style, as may be seen in this example from 1734 (figure 13). Here, actors Ichikawa Danjūrō II and Segawa Kikujirō I are shown onstage in a hand-colored print enhanced with a mixture of ink and glue to produce a glossy black surface on Danjūrō’s robe. This technique so resembled lacquer that this kind of print became known as urushi-e, or “lacquer picture,” and was among the early forms noted by Nanpo in his list of print types. The actors are identifiable by their crests as well as by inscriptions on the print, and comparison of the print against kabuki playbooks demonstrates that this picture was made for a play performed in 1734.38 In these early years of kabuki actor prints, the weight of identification is typically carried by inscriptions or by the actor’s marks, as seen in the previous case, rather than by physical appearance. Instead, the preference seems to have been to render the facial features in conventional terms of attractiveness, and without inscriptions or recognizable brands, some figures, as in this example, remain unidentified (figure 14). Dated to the early 1740s, this print in the hand-colored beni-e, or “rose-colored picture” style (another category used by Nanpo), was

48

CHAPTER 1

Figure 13. Torii Kiyonobu II, Two Actors: Ichikawa Danjūrō II in the Role of Fuwa no Banzaemon and Segawa Kikujirō I in the Role of Burei no Ikkaku, 1734; published by Igaya. Hand-­ colored woodblock print with lacquer effect (urushi-e), ink and color on paper, hosoban format, 32.7 × 15.1 cm. Gift of Mrs. Anne Archbold, 1946 (1946-66-5), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Figure 14. Torii Kiyomasu II, Styles of Current Actors (Imayō yakusha fū), 1741–1744; published by Iseya Rihei. Hand-colored woodblock print, ink and color on paper, hosoban format, 32.9 × 14.9 cm. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald, 1959 (1959-93-20), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

produced in the narrower hosoban format. The bust-length view is rare for the period, made all the more compelling by being set within the contour of a fan shape. The title at upper right, Styles of Current Actors (Imayō yakusha fū), indicates that this was from a series, but the actor is not named, nor is his crest included (and the exact meaning of the inked inscription above also eludes the experts).39 The kerchief across his forehead indicates that this actor specialized in female roles; this bit of fabric was cleverly placed to hide the shaved portion of the hairstyle worn by men. The cherry-blossom-­ patterned underrobe was no doubt related to the feminine role he portrayed. What makes this example particularly clever is that it could be cut out along the curved lines and made into a folding fan. (Some later examples that use this design form give instructions for cutting out and affixing the design.) Buying this print and transforming it into an accessory would have marked its owner as a diehard fan, no doubt. The cartouche along the lower edge can be translated as “brush of Torii Kiyomasu” and shows his seal prominently featured at the lower left. This signature style and use of a seal mimics painting practices and is meant to remind the viewer that Kiyomasu II (1706–1763) is an accomplished painter. In the center of the cartouche is the publisher’s brand mark, followed on the left side by his name and location: “Iseya of Tōriabura-­chō.” Including the publisher’s information trademarks the print, but more importantly, it adheres to the 1722 shogunal edict requiring printed matter include the publisher’s mark and the name of the artist or author.40 This print would also have been available at the publisher’s shop, located in what was, more or less, the publisher’s row of Tōriabura-­chō. Some also might have been purchased from the peddlers that hawked prints outside the kabuki theaters.41 After this time, we can distinguish between prints made for open sale from those acquired through other means by the presence (or absence) of artist and publisher information. Regulations were promulgated throughout the subsequent history of the print trade, although somewhat irregularly and enforced inconsistently, along with other sumptuary restrictions.42 Yet these edicts demonstrate an



Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 51

awareness of the potential for print to take on restricted topics. Many of these regulations were issued during periods of larger-scale reforms enacted by the shogunate, with print production targeted as one of numerous kinds of consumption restricted for purposes of social control.43 In doing so, authorities tacitly acknowledged how prints, as a reproductive technology, could be harnessed to spread information and thus inf luence a broad audience. At the same time, a print like this one disseminated the terms of what it meant to be a handsome kabuki star to that wider f loating world for the purposes, of course, of material gain.

52

CHAPTER 1

Chapter 2

Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East

Onstage, the lead actor strikes a pose while the others behind him respond: this is a bravura moment on the kabuki stage (figure 15). Some members of the audience are rapt. Others are distracted, too busy hobnobbing and chitchatting to give the actor their regard. This print showing the interior of a kabuki theater is one of the rarest and largest still extant from the eighteenth century. To our contemporary eye, the print is all the more striking for its use of a perspectival scheme designed to focus our attention on the stage at its center. Regarded as a novel rather than a necessary means of describing space, this European method for suggesting recession through linear perspective arrived in Japan as a preexisting schematic practice. It came via trade, perhaps through its adaptation in Chinese art or directly from materials carried by the Dutch. Japanese viewers appeared to have found it a striking intervention in the representation of space, but having long used other means of describing space, this device seemed like more an invention, rather than a discovery. It was an artificial mode of viewing, strange and exotic, and classed as such along with other imported concepts and devices.1

53

For period viewers, such a print required a new understanding of how to look at images as well as a change in expectations about how pictures might behave. One of the terms in the inscription along the right, “uki-e,” was used for prints featuring linear perspective (and notably was one of Nanpo’s categories discussed in the previous chapter). Meaning “floating picture,” it suggested that what was in the picture seemed to “float” and was perhaps capable of rising up before one. It suggested, too, a sense of faddish brevity. Like imported source imagery using linear perspective, such as European veduta prints of cityscapes, locally designed prints employing this artifice were meant to be viewed through lensed devices, such as zograscopes and peep boxes (such as the example shown later in figure 32). Seen through these, perspectival prints become more three-​dimensional, with the effects of recession more pronounced, seeming to “float” or, as was also said, “sink down.”2 The designer of this print, Okumura Masanobu (1686–1764), began his career with simpler black-and-white art, emulating the Moro­ nobu style, as seen in his work of erotica discussed in the previous chapter. He is perhaps unique in the history of this genre for having become a publisher as well, a role he occupied from 1719 to 1739. In doing so, Masanobu achieved greater control over his own production as well as the ability to commission others. He retreated from the profession of publisher for the latter part of his career through the 1750s. Inscriptions on some of his prints claim stature for his innovations— for example, as the originator (kongen) of perspectival prints (uki-e) and long, narrow pillar prints (hashira-e)—demonstrating how cleverly the “new” was packaged to gain market share in the competitive world of printed materials. Yet the early document compiled by Nanpo and others reports little more about him than his personal name, studio names, use of a gourd-shaped seal, and the fact that he made many lacquer prints (urushi-e); a note that he ran a bookshop in Edo has been questioned by later copyists.3 Looking to his body of work, however, Masanobu’s trajectory as a designer spans the range of early print techniques and formats, making it possible to understand through his work alone the shifts from simple black-and-white publishing to the use of several color blocks.

54

CHAPTER 2

Figure 15. Okumura Masanobu, Large Perspective Picture of the Face-Showing at the Stage Performance of a Drama (Shibai kyōgen butai kaomise ōukie), 1745; published by Okumuraya Genroku. Hand-­ colored woodblock print, ink and color on paper, 44.5 × 66.7 cm. Gift of Elizabeth Matthews Jayne for the Henry LaBarre Jayne Collection, 1926 (1926-63-20), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Printed and hand-colored on a single, uncut sheet of thicker paper known for its size (44.5 × 66.7 cm) as tall and long (takenaga hōsho), this view of the kabuki theater interior is one of the largest eighteenth-­ century prints yet extant. The rarity of such large prints is likely due to technical demands and cost as well as to concerns about violating edicts prohibiting conspicuous consumption. Inscriptions along the borders include a variety of promotional terms that remind us this print was designed to market its subject and producer to the print-buying audience. The title at the upper right packs in a number of terms that would have been familiar to print and kabuki aficionados: this is a large perspective print illustrating the kaomise (face-showing) performance of a



Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 55

drama onstage. For this event each theater would produce a special program featuring the troupe’s biggest stars and presenting its new actors, launching the annual program. Typically, these events were held in the eleventh month of the year and were the most anticipated moment of the kabuki season. The subsequent passage along the right notes the publisher as Okumuraya Genroku and gives his location. Along the left, more information is provided about the designer himself, and most significantly, his signature states that this work is “from the true brush” of Okumura Bunkaku Masanobu and is followed by his seal. These pieces of text function, on the one hand, like proprietary designating information of any kind (consider, for example, title pages in books), but, on the other hand, they also elevate the designer as a “brush” and, with the inclusion of his seal, treat him in the manner of a painter. The image itself is replete with telling details about kabuki at the time. The description of the theater shows its architectural formation, with a covered stage at the center; the hanamichi (flower path), a runway passing from the rear of the theater to stage right; roofed balconies along the sides; and bench seating on the ground floor. Above the stage hangs an array of decorative lanterns, each bearing the crest of the stars in the troupe active in 1745 (and this detail cross-checked with kabuki records verifies the print’s date). Lanterns like these were among the many items given to the theaters by kabuki fan clubs as part of the annual retrofitting for the opening season.4 Onstage, Edo’s megastar, Ichikawa Danjūrō II, is shown in the arrow-polishing scene taking a mie pose—a stop-​action posture exemplifying the character’s bravado—for one of his most famous roles as Soga Gorō Tokimune.5 Ukiyo-e scholar Asano Shūgō has pointed out that while there is no record that this play was performed for the opening season in 1745, it was so well known that it became emblematic of the Edo kabuki season as a whole.6 And yet, while this may have been Danjūrō’s big moment, only a few members of the audience give it their full attention. Members of all classes and professions throughout Edo are at the theater; we can recognize samurai with their swords (note that some of these men came disguised under sedge hats), sex workers with their obis tied in front, monks with shaved heads and dark robes, well-to-do wives away from

56

CHAPTER 2

Figure 16. Torii Kiyomitsu, Actor Ichimura Uzaemon IX in the Role of Ichihara no Kidomaru, 1752; published by Nishimuraya Yohachi. Color woodblock print (benizuri-e), ink and color on paper, 41.4 × 29.1 cm. Gift of Dr. Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

home, and men of the town lounging and chatting. A boy hurries with his teapot to fill cups, another carries a tray of treats through the crowd, and yet one more rushes with a set of black lacquer lunch boxes down the hanamichi. This is an audience that, like those at Shakespeare’s Globe, came to chat, flirt, and people watch as much as to see the play. These are also the viewers for whom this print was intended: the purchasers who kept this world afloat. Within a few years, a new standard for printing transformed the genre. Called benizuri-e, these featured two to three additional blocks to print the color, rather than relying on hand coloring. What is surely one of the most exquisite large-scale examples is shown here in figure 16. While not quite as large as the previous example, it is on a grand scale for early color printing. Its green, red, and yellow tones, using one woodblock for each color, evidence an important move toward developing color printing. This required close attention to carve the blocks exactly the same size and establish a system for precise color printing. A clean copy of the designer’s sketch would be used to carve the “key block,” the woodblock that sets the contour lines for the design. Additional blocks were carved with relief areas for the zones of color, and precise registration was achieved through the innovation of two marks in exactly the same place on all blocks. These relief registration marks (kentō) were usually set to make a ninety-­degree wedge at the lower-right corner and a second straight edge on the right side. The printers used these as stop marks as they set the paper on the block, thus achieving exact alignment for each color.7 Multiple-block prints require acquiring and mixing colorants and pigments, as well as attention to their use throughout the production of the designated number of prints. This combined use of materials and labor—demonstrated in the paper size and multiple woodblocks and color selections—resulted from collaboration throughout the process. Striated clouds and cherry blossoms along the upper border set the scene of the actor’s dance as spring. Along the left his name, Ichimura Uzaemon, is writ large, and his actor’s mark appears above; to the right of his name in small script is listed his role here of Ichihara no Kidomaru, a warrior from the era of the Genpei wars (1180–1185).

58

CHAPTER 2

Along the lower left is the brushy signature of Torii Kiyomitsu (1735– 1785), who put this into picture (ga), with his seal “Kiyomitsu” printed below. In the lower-left sector are marks in a variety of styles that designate the publisher as the Nishimuraya shop, also known as the Eijudō. The image presents the actor as a child. However, when this print was issued in 1765, upon the occasion of Uzaemon IX (1725–1785) playing this role, he was by then already forty years old. It is clearly a commemorative, celebratory print recalling his more youthful appearance for what must have been a spectacular performance, a collectable even on the first day it was printed. Issued some fifteen years apart, the two prints discussed above represent the important early transition from hand coloring to limited color printing for floating-world consumers. Books and paintings likewise were being acquired by this avid market. But for some makers, being limited to a few color blocks must have seemed unsatisfying. Indeed, when the print of Uzaemon dancing was produced, it had recently been surpassed by a new development in printing. There may be no other moment in ukiyo-e that is more acclaimed—or regarded to be as great a watershed—than the year 1765 when the nishiki-e (brocade picture) first made its debut. The term describes prints made using five or more color blocks, often using brilliant hues, comparing them with brocade fabrics. As Nanpo’s list in the previous chapter indicates, they were called “Azuma nishiki-e” or “brocade pictures of the East,” claiming this technical shift for the city of Edo. These full-color prints were, at the time, the most technically advanced printing known in the world, and as Nanpo’s text and other period works indicate, to be a designer of nishiki-e conferred status. Being commissioned for nishiki-­e meant that one’s work was worthy of considerable investment on the part of the publisher.

Collaboration and the Brocade Print The effect of this technological development was significant throughout the broader field too. Illustrated books made for poetry clubs, actor fan clubs, or other select audiences exploited stunning visual effects to



Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 59

turn these works into fine print books. With prints now able to achieve color quality hitherto found only in the province of painting, painters notched their medium up another level, producing even more vivid work. By using gorgeous pigments ground from azurite, malachite, oyster shell, and others, painters could heighten their effects as well as increase the distance between what printing could achieve and what paintings might do, as we shall see. One artist’s name is linked to this watershed moment in printing: Suzuki Harunobu (1725?–1770). By the time Nanpo wrote his list, Harunobu was being described as the founder of nishiki-e, as well as appreciated for his many pictures of beauties (particularly the tea seller Osen and the toothbrush seller Ofuji).8 Harunobu is still often discussed in terms that accord him full responsibility for the innovation. It should come as no surprise, by now, that awarding credit for the innovation of “full-color printing” depends on how the terms are defined. In fact, the development of the color technique achieved with five or more blocks was not accomplished by a single individual but through collaboration and patronage. Figure 17. Katsuma

Ryūsui, Treasures of the Sea (Umi no sachi), 1762. Full-color woodblock-­ printed book (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, 30 × 21 × 0.9 cm. Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manu­scripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

60

CHAPTER 2

The most important precedent is the illustrated book of poetry Treasures of the Sea (Umi no sachi), published in 1762, made through commission as a specialty production. It employed this new full-color technique three years before Harunobu’s sheet prints (figure 17).9 The fish shown here is identified in the text on the right as suji katsuo, the striped bonito (Sarda orientalis), and mention is made in each of the haikai poems. It is rendered as though closely observed in the manner of a specimen under observation. The first Harunobu-designed single-sheet prints in full color were likewise made as specially commissioned works and calendar prints (daisho egoyomi) and produced as gifts for exchange within poetry circles (figure 18). It may seem strange to us now to produce special sheet prints to serve as calendars. Edo-period calendars were complicated. The basic construction adhered to lunisolar calendrical methods developed in China, where the length of the year was determined by a solar calendar and that of the months by a lunar one. In addition, various adjustments were made to deal with beneficial and harmful forces. Figure 18. Suzuki Harunobu, Woman Riding a Flying Crane, 1765. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, horizontal chūban format, 20.8 × 27.8 cm. Denman Waldo Ross Collection (06.482), photograph © 2021, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.



Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 61

The entire enterprise was regarded as so important to the political status quo that the shogunate made its articulation part of the work of the Office of Astronomy (Tenmonkata), a metaphorical and literal effort to appear to control time. Months might be short or long, from twenty-­ nine to thirty days, respectively, and occasionally an extra month would be inserted to fill in as needed.10 Select publishers, known as calendar wholesalers (koyomi ton’ya), received official licenses to produce calendars. In Harunobu’s time, these licenses were limited to eleven publishers. Yet, as in all things of this time, people found ways to beat the system—in this case by producing sheet prints that embedded hints for the long and short months. That they achieved some success with these handy calendars (and thereby infringed in spirit, if not in fact, on those licenses) is demonstrated by edicts issued in 1744 and 1784 reminding everyone that only those eleven publishers had the right to produce calendars. By 1831 the shogunate had had enough, forbidding further private commissions of calendars.11 These single-sheet prints bearing calendrical information cleverly incorporate the information into the design. Often the characters for short and long, and for the months, appear hidden among the fold lines in clothing, in wood grain textures, or elsewhere. In one notable case, these marks are made into the chest hair of Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of Zen Buddhism.12 In this example a beautiful woman rides on the back of a crane, in a composition that playfully substitutes her for the Taoist immortal Fei Zhangfang. Light-hearted and often parodic transformations of this kind—of one thing for or likened to another—were frequently done in the genre.13 She considers where to place the hairpin held in her right hand while she unfurls a long roll of text before her. The long months of the year 1765 are embedded as puns in the letter, as the first, second, fifth, sixth, eighth, and tenth months; period viewers would have realized those not included were the short months. On the right is the name Teichō, and since the term that follows designates him as the author, he conceived of and commissioned the design. At the lower left are the names of the other contributors, designated by role: Suzuki Harunobu, pictures; Morishita Richō, carving; Ogawa Hatchō, printing.14

62

CHAPTER 2

Making color prints relied upon the technical innovation of block registration. To produce prints with even more colors, the process was extended to more blocks. From this point forward, all further additions were a manipulation of the technique. But what is not readily apparent is that adding more blocks required thicker paper. The paper used for the previous type of printing was simply not strong enough to receive the pressure and stress of extra printing. And with this more durable paper, an array of techniques could be achieved: double printing (gomazuri) and gauffrage (karazuri and kimedashi), among others.15 As mentioned earlier, these even more colorful prints were soon dubbed “brocade pictures of the East” (Azuma nishiki-e). The term makes the claim that these pictures from the East (Edo) were equal to the famous brocade textiles produced in Kyoto.16 This was a bold, Edo-centric assertion. But it was not without merit: by now, Edo was surpassing Kyoto in publishing, and floating-world books and sheet prints alike promoted the shogun’s capital. Harunobu’s designs for the set of Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei), dated to 1766, is now acknowledged as one of the masterpieces in the genre. Much has been written about this Eight Views set elsewhere and is summarized here.17 Samurai Okubo Jinshirō Tadanobu (1722–1777; known by his poetry name Kikurensha Kyosen) commissioned Harunobu to make the designs for the set, following up on their productive collaboration on calendar prints in the previous year.18 The theme of Eight Views originally derived from the Chinese standard set of eight poetic phrases on the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, a long-standing painting theme. In Japan it was adapted to a variety of sites, most notably Eight Views of Ōmi (Ōmi hakkei), using sites in the Lake Biwa region near Kyoto. It became so well known that simply showing, for example, geese landing on a sandbank near a temple at dusk would be enough to signal the theme of “geese descending at Katata,” one of these eight views of Ōmi; here, the text also confirms the theme (figure 19). Kyosen’s innovation was to restage these landscapes into scenes set into domestic spaces. Harunobu was tasked with drawing these scenes, hiding references to the Eight Views in plain sight. These images were printed in the chūban size, equivalent to one-fourth of a standard sheet



Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 63

of paper, as vertical compositions, and this size became the one that Harunobu and his contemporaries used most frequently. For example, this picture shows a young unmarried woman preparing to play the koto (zither) while her older companion consults a songbook (figure 20).19 Here, we might appreciate Harunobu’s design, setting the two figures opposite one another on a diagonal line that parallels that of the exterior Figure 19. Suzuki Harunobu, Descending

Geese at Katada (Katada rakugan), third state, from the series Eight Views of Ōmi (Ōmi hakkei no uchi), early 1760s; published by Okumuraya. Woodblock print (benizuri-e), ink and limited color on paper, hosoban format, 31.4 × 13.9 cm. William S. and John T. Spaulding Collection (21.4589), photograph © 2021, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Figure 20. (Opposite page) Suzuki

Harunobu, Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges (Kotoji no rakugan), from the set Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei), 1766. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, chūban format, 29.0 × 21.7 cm. Clarence Buckingham Collection (1928.899), Art Institute of Chicago.

64

CHAPTER 2

wall, with the koto placed between them. The young women are shown in current fashion, their body types, young faces, and delicate hands all typical of Harunobu’s style. Upon closer inspection we can recognize that this scene is in fact alluding to the theme of the descending geese, likening the shapes of the koto bridges to the abbreviated form of birds alighting, the sandbar that is their destination rendered in the long sleeves of the figure behind. This kind of visual play—where one thing is transposed for another—required a high degree of cultural literacy appreciated in Kyosen’s social network. As art historian Jeannie Kenmotsu has discussed in detail, this set was so popular that it was produced in three separate printings. Fortunately, wrappers for the first two sets are still extant. The wrapper for the first state, now housed in the Art Institute of Chicago, gives the title for the set as Eight Views of the Parlor, lists the name of Kyosen as the agent of production, and describes the group as a “selection of up-todate pictures” ( fūryū e awase; see figure 21).20 This evidence confirms the reading of this image, as well as the others, as playful adaptations of classical themes. It also shows that Harunobu was not acknowledged as the designer of these prints yet; that honor, as the signature shows, went to Kyosen. No signature appears on the second state, but this time the wrapper gives the name of Harunobu as having provided the pictures, allowing for an attribution to the illustrator’s hand (figure 22). By the third state, Harunobu’s name has been added within the body of the prints (figure 23). When placed side by side, clear differences can be seen in the production values for the three prints too: the first is the most deluxe edition, the second a less expensive imprint, and the third even less so, likely as a more commercial product. The set was apparently appreciated enough (although by whom we cannot know) to be transformed once more, this time into an erotic version (figure 24).21 The scene of the descending geese has been turned into a liaison between a young, unmarried woman and her suitor embracing on the second floor of a well-appointed interior while a dog coyly looks away. In case the viewers did not get the reference, a subtitle has been provided: Geese Descending on the Koto Bridges (Kotoji rakugan). Behind, the standing screen shows the more typical treatment

66

CHAPTER 2

Figure 21. Wrapper for Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei), 1766. Woodblock print with ink wash, ink and color on paper, 35.4 × 22.8 cm. Clarence Buckingham Collection (1928.895), Art Institute of Chicago.

Figure 22. Suzuki Harunobu, Descending Geese of

the Koto Bridges (Kotoji no rakugan), from the set Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei), ca. 1766. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, chūban format, 29.0 × 21.7 cm. Clarence Buckingham Collection (1925.2041), Art Institute of Chicago.

Figure 23. Suzuki Harunobu, Descending Geese of the

Koto Bridges, from the series Eight Views of the Parlor (Zashiki hakkei), ca. 1766. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, chūban format, 27.8 × 21 cm. William S. and John T. Spaulding Collection, photograph © 2021 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

of the theme in ink paintings, making the parallel more evident. In the cloud form above, the poem explains: Perhaps attracted by the sound of the koto, this year’s first flock of geese descends together from the sky.22

The poem makes the parallel between the descending geese and the koto bridges once more and at the same time slyly puns that this might be the first sexual experience for both figures. Subsequent prints in the group of eight present more explicit scenes of erotic encounters.23

Figure 24. Attributed to Suzuki Harunobu, Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges (Kotoji rakugan),

from the set Eight Fashionable Parlor Views (Fūryū zashiki hakkei), ca. 1768–1770. Full-color wood­block print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, chūban format, 20.1 × 26.3 cm. Gift of Brian and Barbara Crisp in memory of their son Andrew, 2005 (20054G23), Art Gallery of South Australia.

68

CHAPTER 2

Collaboration with Kyosen and his circle helped make Harunobu one of the most famous names of his generation. His output totaled some twelve hundred sheet prints, twenty-five books, and a handful of paintings over a career that lasted only about six years, from 1764 to his death in 1770. Within two years of producing nishiki-e, his name was aligned with the medium, turning him into one of ukiyo-e’s brand names thereafter. As this poem by Ōta Nanpo makes clear, the era of benizuri-e was over: From the instant Azuma nishiki-e appeared Not a single sheet of benizuri-e can be sold Nor can the Torii line best Harunobu In replicating figures of men and women of today24

This poem underscores Nanpo’s familiarity with the ukiyo-e world that he later described in Ukiyo-e kōshō. Turning back to that document, first begun about a quarter century after the development of the nishiki-e, Nanpo says that Harunobu is “now regarded as its founder.”25 Harunobu’s five-volume set of illustrations of the women of the quarter, Illustrated Book: Beauties of the “Azure Towers,” Compared (Ehon seirō bijin awase), published in 1770, set a new standard for luxury (figure 25). With evidence pointing to financial subvention by brothel owners, this project shows the extent to which the representation of the quarter was organized in collusion with those who profited from its trade.26 Due to these innovations in technique as well as style, Harunobu is among the most closely studied figures in the field, appreciated for his graceful figures, poetic references, and contributions to the visual revolution of the full-color print. He in turn had gained much from his study of an earlier Kyoto-based master, Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671– 1750), as studies by Fujisawa Murasaki and others demonstrate.27 Thus, it is evident that his figure style was the result of evolution rather than wholesale innovation. Yet his treatment of the female figure was particularly influential; his significance is even better gauged by how many



Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 69

Figure 25. Suzuki Harunobu, Illustrated Book: Beauties of the “Azure Towers,” Compared (Ehon

seirō bijin awase), 1770. Full-color woodblock-printed book, ink and color on paper, fukurotoji binding, 26.7 × 18.7 × 0.8 cm. Purchase, The Gerhard Pulverer Collection—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Harold P. Stern Memorial fund in appreciation of Jeffrey P. Cunard and his exemplary service to the Galleries as chair of the Board of Trustees (2003–2007).

later masters mimicked his style. In ukiyo-e, as in so many other fields, one of the surest signs of commercial success and aesthetic appreciation is imitation.

Facing the Stage The nishiki-e technique was rapidly and widely adopted for sheet prints and illustrated books. Theater prints were likewise being transformed in a representational shift led by Katsukawa Shunshō (1726–1792). His training links him through his teacher Miyagawa Shunsui (act. early

70

CHAPTER 2

1740s–early 1760s) to Chōshun, discussed in the previous chapter, and he was, like Harunobu, familiar with the work of Sukenobu. Shunshō’s students, such as Shun’ei (1762–1819), Shunkō (1743–1812), and Shunrō (later known as Katsushika Hokusai), made the Katsukawa one of the era’s most influential lineages.28 Shunshō was highly appreciated by Nanpo, warranting these remarks: “In the Meiwa [era, 1764–1772], [he] drew the ‘likenesses’ (nise) of kabuki actors and became very popular. The first to make five male-figure pictures. At that time, he was residing with a person called Hayashiya Shichiemon in Ningyōchō. Having no painting name, taking the seal of Hayashiya he stamped Hayashi in a jar (tsubo) shaped seal. Commonly called ‘Tsuboya,’ his student Shunkō is called ‘Little tsubo.’ Also made pictures of warriors well.”29 Several elements described by Nanpo are present in Shunshō’s bold print of Ichikawa Danzō III from 1768 (figure 26). The description of the actor’s countenance as shown here—with its features of a long, narrow nose and an expressive mouth set into a wide jaw— suggest that Shunshō was attempting to capture in broad strokes the facial characteristics associated with the actor. Although perhaps more like a caricature in its brevity, enough is included here to signal the attempt at resemblance. This print, like the five-panel set Nanpo mentioned, emphasizes the figure by setting it out of space and time against a plain background. This impression does not include the name of the actor but embeds the second character of Danzō in the center of the Ichikawa crest on his sleeve. The print, too, is unsigned. It is marked instead, as Nanpo described, by Shunshō’s motif of the small jar with the character for “Hayashi” in the center. Actor prints increasingly focused on individual facial features, signaling that Shunshō’s “resemblances” likely served as good advertisements, as well as fulfilled the desire of kabuki fans to see their favorites up close and personal. In 1770, publisher Kariganeya Ihei issued a three-volume illustrated book that paired Shunshō up with actor-print designer Ippitsusai Bunchō (act. c. 1755–1790), setting a new standard for color printing (figure 27). Bunchō was a prolific designer of actor prints, but he warranted only the comment from Nanpo that he made “pictures of contemporary scenes of men and women and kabuki



Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 71

Figure 26. Katsukawa Shunshō, Actor Ichikawa Danzō III, ca. 1768.

Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, hosoban format, 32 × 14.7 cm. Gift of Dr. Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Figure 27. Katsukawa Shunshō and Ippitsusai Bunchō, Illustrated Book: Stage Fans (Ehon butai ōgi), 1770; published by Kariganeya Ihei. Full-color woodblock-printed book (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, fukurotoji binding, 28.5 × 19 × 0.9 cm. Purchase, The Gerhard Pulverer Collection—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Harold P. Stern Memorial fund in appreciation of Jeffrey P. Cunard and his exemplary service to the Galleries as chair of the Board of Trustees (2003–2007).

actors, both in an inept way.”30 How the two designers collaborated on this project, or how the assignments to represent individual actors were allotted, is unknown. It seems likely, however, that this project might have received some form of underwriting, perhaps by kabuki aficionados or fan clubs. Neither signed their individual designs, using instead their seals: here, Bunchō’s square seal reading mori is on the right side of the opening while Shunshō’s is the Hayashi jar on the left. The colors are particularly well preserved in this impression of the book, with the purple still vivid; traces of the very fugitive dayflower blue, now faded to tan, that served as the background for the fan shapes, are visible on



Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 73

some pages. The names of the actors are present in the interior curve of each fan. Facing off here are two members of the Ichikawa acting line: on the right, Ichikawa Danjūrō V (1740–1806), and on the left, Ichikawa Danzō. Here Danzō’s expression is so similar to that shown in the single-sheet print, with the same facial features, that it is easy to see how characteristic expressions and abbreviated features came to serve as iconic elements for actors.

Modeling Style, Marketing Sex By contrast, pictures of beauties continued to portray these figures according to period ideas of attractiveness. As previous examples have demonstrated, making images for the Yoshiwara must have been a profitable enterprise for publishers. Just as superstars and models do today, actors and professional sex workers modeled current styles. Often their pictures include brand names or other hints for shoppers aspiring to be in vogue. How much the actors and beauties might have contributed to their own representation is unknown—one might well wonder to what degree their pictures were produced to feed the celebrity machine, in the manner of modern-day paparazzi photography, or how much those images were made in tandem with their employers, like old-style Holly­wood images. Isoda Koryūsai became one of the most prolific illustrators of this subject. With the key word for pattern (hinagata) in its title, there can be little doubt that the longest-running series of sheet prints for the entire Edo period, Models for Fashion: New Year Designs Fresh as Young Leaves (Hinagata wakana no hatsu moyō), advertised fashionability as part of the appeal of the woman displayed (figure 28). Here, the sex worker Miyato of the Kado-Tamaya house in the Yoshiwara district (the subtitle identifies her by name) is shown with her trainees (kamuro) in a print dating 1775–1776. All three figures are shown according to standardized ideals for beauty. Miyato is wearing layers of robes, each one a finely patterned and expensive garment, with an outer robe (uchikake) decorated with a dandelion print on its lower section. This pattern is repeated in those

74

CHAPTER 2

Figure 28. Isoda Koryūsai,

Miyato of the Kado Tamaya (Kado Tamaya uchi Miyato), from the series Models for Fashion: New Year’s Designs Fresh as Young Leaves (Hinagata wakana no hatsu moyō), about 1775–1776; published by Nishimuraya Yohachi. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 37.1 × 24.4 cm. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald, 1959 (1959-93-23), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

of her assistants, as it was a custom for leading figures like Miyato to outfit herself and her trainees in matching styles.31 Likewise, Miyato’s coiffure is elaborately arranged, with three large tortoiseshell combs and numerous pins; her female trainees sport the style favored by male youths in a deliberate and sexy bending of gender. In case one needed further confirmation that these are members of the Kado-Tamaya, each also bears a house crest on her robe.



Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 75

Miyato is shown writing Chinese characters on a large Chinese-style standing screen (tsuitate) while one of the trainees grinds the ink stick on the ink stand. She quotes a poem by the rather obscure Tang dynasty poet Lu Zhuan (known as Rosen in Japanese) that begins: “Leaving my country (province) for the distant Sanba/climbing the tower . . . ,”32 and the line she has yet to write would have continued with “a ten-thousand league spring.” The houses of the Yoshiwara were often made to sound classier by using the Tang dynasty term “azure towers” (seirō) for brothels, with the allusion deliberately underscored through the poem. Art historian Tanabe Masako has suggested that a picture like this would have been issued the moment the lead figure made her debut as an independent name, when she moved up in the Yoshiwara system from her previous status as a trainee (from the shinzō rank) to a fully-fledged sex worker. She would have acquired a newly designed kimono for the occasion.33 This shift in rank would typically have been underwritten by the sex worker’s patron (najimi), a wealthy man whose support granted him an exclusive relationship with the woman and who surely yielded esteem from this capital investment.34 The print suggests that Miyato was a skilled calligrapher, positioning her as a hand in her own right, but whether she was one so accomplished cannot be affirmed through independent evidence. It is useful to bear in mind that this picture would have functioned as part of Yoshiwara’s marketing. It would have behooved the Tamaya—as well as Miyato’s najimi—to show her as an accomplished woman. As mentioned above, this print series became the longest-running of the era. Initially, it was produced as a collaboration between the publishers Nishimuraya Yohachi and Tsutaya Jūzaburō, two of the most important and influential publishers of their generation, in about 1775.35 We know they worked together to start this series because the first ten compositions bear both publisher’s marks. Subsequent pictures were issued only under Nishimuraya’s seal; this suggests that the project quickly shifted from a collaboration to a single proprietorship. However, Tsutaya, with his deep personal and social ties to the Yoshiwara, probably continued in the role of liaison between Nishimuraya and the district.36

76

CHAPTER 2

Period viewers of this print might have consulted one of the guidebooks to the Yoshiwara, finding that Miyato was listed as the top-ranking professional at the Kado-Tamaya house.37 The allusion in this series’ title to period pattern books (hinagatabon) not only points out that these are the latest fashions but likely also indicates that garment makers funded the series as well.38 Some previous analyses of prints like these have suggested they were made out of admiration for the licensed prostitutes, as though the artists had the women sit for “portraits,” but such a reading seems more and more unlikely. Rather, these were designed to promote the sex workers as new important names in the quarter, as Tanabe indicated. There is no evidence that Koryūsai— or any other ukiyo-e artist—drew “portraits” of these women from life; indeed, rendering the visage of an individual while in his or her presence in the manner of a portrait painter was a rare occurrence in this period, limited only to elites. Rather, it is more likely that images such as these were subsidized—here by brothel owners and textile dealers— and were part of a strategic program of marketing the quarter. Koryūsai, born to the rank of samurai, was also an accomplished painter and one of the rare ukiyo-e masters to have been acknowledged for his skill, for in about 1781, he was granted the rank of hokkyō (bridge of the law). This honor bestowed by the imperial court was given to master painters and sculptors—not print designers. Shortly after receiving this honor, Koryūsai departed from the print trade to focus entirely on painting, a fact noted by Nanpo in the first canon.39 Nishimuraya continued with the series, employing later artists such as Torii Kiyonaga (through 1784), Katsukawa Shunzan (through 1787), and others. In total, this series numbered more than 130 compositions.40 In 1776 Tsutaya brought out his first full-color illustrated book, in alliance with publisher Yamazaki Kinbei. They hired Kitao Shigemasa (1739–1820), one of the most prolific book illustrators of the period and head of the Kitao school, to collaborate with Shunshō on the Mirror of the Beauties of the Azure Towers, Compared (Seirō bijin awase sugata kagami; see figure 29). Deliberately mimicking the title as well as the conceit of Harunobu’s precedent, discussed briefly above, this title seems likely to have also been financially underwritten by the brothels



Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 77

Figure 29. Kitao Shigemasa and Katsukawa Shunshō, Mirror of the Beauties of the Azure Towers, Compared (Seirō bijin awase sugata kagami), 1776; published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō and Yamazaki Kinbei. Full-color woodblock-printed book (nishiki-e), ink, color, and mica on paper, fukurotoji binding, 28.1 × 18.7 cm. Source unidentified (2006.1749.1–3), photograph © 2021, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

of the Yoshiwara district it depicts.41 Unlike the collaboration between Shunshō and Bunchō, however, with no seals or signatures included the pictures do not emphasize the contributions of individual hands nor is there further explication within the book to allow us to distinguish them. Rather, the conceit in this collaboration is that this view of the hidden world of the quarter’s most elite sex workers is presented without drawing attention to the artist’s names. In this picture of the middle-ranking women of the Maruya house, much of the color remains fresh and bright—note the reds and purples—while the delicate

78

CHAPTER 2

blue fades to grays. This page also features mica dust in the white pigment along the sheet of ice being pulled from the garden basin, one of the many special effects included in this deluxe book.

Painting for an Elite Patron One of the remarkable shifts in this moment in artistic production occurs in the medium of painting, as mentioned previously. Once fullcolor prints could be produced affordably and in significant numbers, “ready-made” paintings like those of earlier generations seem to have rapidly disappeared from the market. Painters responded by making works that surpassed prints; some paintings, for example, display the use of luxury materials, while others emphasize the skill of the artist with his brush. As art historian Naitō Masato wrote, the gap between print and painting increased: “After the mid-Edo period, around the time that nishiki-e were invented, the two types became increasingly differentiated so that the divide between low-priced, generally popular commodities (such as prints) and high-priced, specially commissioned commodities (such as paintings) widened even further.”42 But what must be added to this observation is that it also signals differences in patronage and intended use. Paintings displaying high-quality materials, such as silk grounds and mineral pigments, are the product of a contractual agreement and meant to display wealth in a private setting. Commissioned prints, from calendars to surimono, were intended for exchange, while commercial prints were designed for sale. For their illustrators, establishing a career in print might lead to a prosperous future as a painter; Koryūsai pursued just such a path, as did Shunshō. By the last decade of his career, Shunshō was working primarily as a painter, having left the profession of illustrating kabuki themes to his talented students. About one hundred paintings by the master yet remain, but this likely represents a small portion of his total production in painting—perhaps as little as 10 percent, according to curator Timothy Clark. Shunshō’s work was clearly appreciated and sought after, as suggested by the fascinating remark made in 1775 that “a scroll by Shunshō costs one thousand gold pieces.” The price quoted here



Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 79

is inflated, praising him through exaggeration, for such a price would likely be beyond the scope of an ukiyo-e painter.43 Shunshō’s Beauties Admiring Pictures most vividly conveys his accomplishments (figure 30). Shunshō’s arrangement of the composition, moving from right to left, as well as from interior to garden, and his use of recessional lines resemble a construction often seen in full-color triptychs of the late 1780s and early 1790s, the later years of his career.44 Placed in clusters in the garden, on the verandah, and in the interior, the figures’ brightly colored forms are set like brilliant gems against the backdrops. The scene is a magnificent interior, with a high-ranking woman seated at the center surrounded by members of her household. All are treated as beauties and shown taking pleasure in admiring ink paintings, as though they are connoisseurs. Two of the ink paintings are open enough to recognize their subjects—a crane and Jurōjin, one of the seven gods of good luck. The signatures within their frames assign these paintings-within-a-painting to the great Kano Tan’yū (1602–1674). The size and quality alone of Shunshō’s Beauties Admiring Pictures are evidence that it was an expensive commission. The colors here are made from grinding precious materials into powders, such as cinnabar for the reds, azurite for the blues, and malachite for the greens.45 These are employed on a silk ground, resulting in a rich and polished jewel-like array of color. These costly pigments further point to likely contractual engagement with a patron. Shunshō had a number of well-to-do patrons, several of whom were ranked as lords (daimyo). Art historian Naitō Masato has argued, quite persuasively, that this painting may have been owned by the daimyo Yanagisawa Nobutoki (1724–1792) and may have even replicated features of the lord’s garden at his Edo residence.46 It is intriguing to speculate that perhaps this painting was made to adorn an interior similar to the one it describes. In Shunshō’s later work, the connections to the daimyo as patrons demonstrate to what extent his paintings were being commissioned, collected, and appreciated as works of art.47 Likewise, the collecting of printed material—from specialty calendar prints and deluxe illustrated books to poster-style illustrations—shows that these, too, were receiving similar appraisal.

80

CHAPTER 2

Figure 30. Katsukawa Shunshō, Beauties Admiring Pictures, late 1780s–early 1790s. Ink and color

on silk, hanging scroll, 69.4 × 123.2 cm. Idemitsu Museum of Arts.

The development of the more complex process of printing color—resulting in the famous product of Edo, the Azuma brocade— changed everything. For a short while, prints eclipsed paintings in their vibrant appeal. It was, in short, a signal moment for floating-world art. Thereafter, ukiyo illustrators were classed according to whether they had achieved the status of designers for full-color prints and, even more, whether they had ascended beyond that to the status of painters. As Shunshō’s painting shows, these paintings, prints, and illustrated books were part of a larger conversation about the status and purpose of the arts writ large, in a world where floating-world paintings could command patronage from the same men who supported more prestigious art forms. This competition over patronage and purses demonstrates, too, how much was at stake for all who benefited from this art world.



Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 81

Chapter 3

Making Famous Names

Within a few years, nishiki-e became the expected standard for sheet prints. Publishers selected designers who would fulfill commissions and yield profit and continued to use the strategy of leveraging connections in the ukiyo-e sphere. As they had done so successfully throughout, publishers relied upon sponsorship and affiliations to produce full-color books and prints for poetry groups, kabuki fan clubs, Yoshiwara brothel owners, and others. At the same time, publishers relied upon profits from a range of other works—theater playbills and programs, travel guidebooks, review compilations, light fiction, poetry, and others—to contribute to a steady income stream. Turning illustrators and writers into famous names likewise was good for business. Publishers such as Nishimuraya Yohachi and Tsutaya Jūzaburō further redefined the visual field by promoting Utagawa Toyoharu (1735–1814), Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815), Kitao Masanobu (also known as Santō Kyōden, 1761–1816), Kitagawa Utamaro (1753– 1806), and Tōshūsai Sharaku (active 1794–1795), respectively, among others. These businessmen and their peers made pragmatic decisions about how much and how long they would back emerging talent. For some, these became career-long collaborations, yielding hundreds to thousands of print designs. Some publishers, on the other hand, seem to have dropped artists after taking a flyer on a print or book (or a few

82

of both) that did not sell as expected. Publishers also forged alliances with each other, sharing the production costs, from materials to labor, as well as benefiting from their distinct audiences and shop locations. All these initiatives were strategic means of developing and responding to their markets. This final quarter of the eighteenth century has often been defined as a paradigm, wherein a period of cultural flourishing was followed by harsh crackdowns. It was, of course, more complicated than this suggests. Through much of the Tenmei (1781–1789; an era name meaning “heavenly brightness”), fewer restrictions were enforced around floating-world texts and images. Drawing broad strokes, it can be characterized as a moment when the shogunate, under the guidance of Senior Councilor Tanuma Okitsugu (1719–1788), turned a blind(ish) eye toward cultural production. With earlier edicts not diligently enforced, writers and illustrators expanded their expressive reach. Looking at it from the other side, this period is blackened by the tarnish of corruption, nepotism, and backroom dealing. When natural disasters struck—volcanic eruptions, famines, and epidemics—the shogunate’s inept responses resulted in uprisings, riots, violence, and commodity speculation, to name a few. Writers satirizing this darker side often drew dangerously near to crossing the line.1 By 1789 Tanuma was out. Under the new administration led by Senior Councilor Matsudaira Sadanobu (1759–1829), shogunal administrators were tasked with halting venal self-interest, corruption in all forms, and critiques of their regime, among other reforms. This pivot required a change of name: Kansei, now proclaimed as an era of “generous governance” (1789–1800). This era name likely seemed inappropriately optimistic to many. Shogunal restrictions designed to rein it all in—targeting personal consumption, public performance, and the print trade, among others—were once more enforced. It was an era of both discipline and punishment, regarded then, as well as by many today, as regressive and stifling. And yet writers, artists, performers, and others found ways to skirt, flout, and reject those restrictions to creative ends (as people have always done and continue to do under repressive regimes).2



Making Famous Names 83

Significantly, Nanpo starts writing the list of ukiyo-e (that we have encountered several times) at the turn of the Kansei era. His comments on the figures of this generation are particularly worth close attention, as he was personally acquainted with many. The writers who added to the oldest extant version of this document (dated to about 1802) likewise participated in these same social and professional circles.3 Were we to construct a network analysis of this floating world, we would see that writers, artists, poets, and publishers, as well as brothel owners, kabuki fans, actors, merchants, and named women from the sex districts, were all connected, directly or indirectly, by a few degrees of each other as well as with Nanpo. (Indeed, it may be possible to conceive of a game of “six degrees of Ōta Nanpo” in this period.) Lineages established in earlier generations, such as the Katsukawa and Torii, continued to maintain their strong affiliation in the kabuki sphere, while new names worked to establish competitive studios to train the next generation and establish position. One among these, the Utagawa, achieved success at building a lineage that lasted through the end of the nineteenth century.

Representing Place In the Shunshō painting that closed out the previous chapter, we could speculate about the patron’s identity through the telling details of the garden in the background. That backdrop turns into something more in the hands of the artists of this generation: now representing named places (meisho) becomes a stand-alone theme. While the pictures of actors and prostitutes we have seen so far likewise advertised their respective sites of entertainment and diversion, these landscapes flipped the terms: the space of place is no longer the backdrop; it is the subject of engagement. That mode of inquiry into place, with its various natural and man-made forms, tapped into a long tradition of “named places” in poetry and painting.4 Representing location was likewise featured in illustrated books, aligned with a period interest in the pleasures of travel, and becomes even bigger business from this point forward.5 Text in these representations often includes terms that describe them as views or scenes in ways parallel to early modern European

84

CHAPTER 3

terms for landscapes. The subject of pictures of “named places” develops over the following decades into what we now think of as “landscape,” becoming one of ukiyo-e’s most popular and renowned achievements through to the present. Here, landscape may be defined as images in which the outdoor world takes precedence, as a view or scene. While the human figure may be present, it is shown within and as part of that space rather than being the topic itself. The world out there, whether called scenery, views, or landscape, had long been part of the painter’s practice in East Asia. These pictures might present the greater cosmos or address established themes (such as the “eight views”). Painters might also illustrate the flora and fauna of the seasons, sites of personal resonance (as memories of place), or present other topics equally allusive. Indeed, where and when representing place begins depends upon how those terms are defined.6 A sense of place as the subject of interest may be traced back to exemplars in Chinese art as early as the later Han dynasty (particularly in the Eastern Han, 25–220 CE) in tomb decorations, with the subject coming to fruition in large-scale paintings in the Northern Song (960–1279 CE).7 In Japan, poetry about place dates to the Nara period (710– 794), while poetry and paintings remaining from the Heian (794–1185) likewise attest to its appreciation at court.8 Landscape was a consistent subject for painters thereafter, described in various period terms, and it was among the subjects for ukiyo-e’s rival image makers—the many painters working in a wide range of genres—throughout the period under discussion in this book. And although it takes new precedence, describing place in images was not a new topic in ukiyo-e, as we have seen in examples such as the handscroll by Moronobu of travel to the Yoshiwara. Indeed, it was so familiar as a concept that making visual puns about place might also be an effective gambit, as in Harunobu’s Eight Views of the Parlor, discussed in the previous chapter. However, place as the main subject had yet to be fully exploited for sheet prints and illustrated books. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that with the ascension of Edo, and of ukiyo-e as a genre, that sheet prints promoted selected sites in the megacity as new meisho. Publisher Nishimuraya Yohachi backed Utagawa Toyoharu in this new



Making Famous Names 85

venture in a variety of nishiki-e.9 Toyoharu’s pictures of Edo combine enough telling site specificity with idealized rendering to make these function like early modern travel advertisements. Taking just one example here, the Nishimuraya produced and Toyoharu designed print Perspective Picture of a Summer Evening at Eitai in Fukagawa (Uki-e Fukagawa Eitai suzumi no zu) presented the Nakazu embankment as a new “famous place” (figure 31). Nakazu, an island in the Sumida River, could be reached by crossing the Shin-ōhashi or Eitai bridge (the latter visible on the left side). Known for its summer entertainments along with its restaurants, teahouses, and street stalls, Nakazu was also the location of one of Edo’s several unlicensed sex districts (okabasho). On several occasions when the Yoshiwara burned to

Figure 31. Utagawa Toyoharu, Perspective Picture of a Summer Evening at Eitai in Fukagawa (Ukie Fukagawa Eitai suzumi no zu), ca. 1772; published by Nishimuraya Yohachi. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 24.8 × 37.5 cm. Gift of Mrs. Anne Archbold, 1946 (1946-66-50), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

86

CHAPTER 3

the ground, temporary residences for the licensed quarter were relocated there. However, Nakazu’s reign as an entertainment zone was short-lived, from the 1770s until it was destroyed in 1790 in an effort to widen the river.10 Just as Okumura Masanobu’s print of the kabuki interior used the term “uki-e” (floating picture) to describe its use of perspective, so, too, does the cartouche label this print using the same term. Here, Toyoharu set the point of the recession behind the bridge on the left side of the picture, as though we are viewing the island from the bank of the Fukagawa district. Although it may be noted that the schema is not as effectively deployed as it was in contemporary European models, the overall effect is of space receding in the manner of one-point perspective. Toyoharu was familiar with European prints employing this technique, as well as with the contemporary interest in Rangaku, a term meaning “Dutch studies” but that referred to the larger study of European knowledge. Like others at the time, Toyoharu was also responding to the ways that telescopes, microscopes, zograscopes, peep boxes, and other viewing devices offered a new way of seeing.11 When seen through a zograscope viewer, for example, the illusion of recession would be enhanced (figure 32). Some uki-e thrilled viewers with glimpses of exotic locales, such as Amsterdam or the West Lake, but others, like this one, turned the ordinary into the extraordinary. Toyoharu imitated other elements of European prints in the treatment of the clusters of trees at the center and along Figure 32. Zograscope or perspective glass, made in England or United States, both sides, in the rounded forms and ca. 1780–1800. Wood, glass, and metal, two shades of green that mimic the 68.90 × 31.12 × 22.23 cm. Bequest of Francis du Pont (1958.2414), contours and shading common to Henry Winterthur Museum. Author’s copperplate printing. Unfortunately, photograph.



Making Famous Names 87

the print has faded, and the blue horizontal band that set off the cluster of buildings at the center has now turned to a pale tan, but when this was fresh, it must have seemed like a vivid rendering of this local site. Pictures like these were closely allied with guidebooks that described major sites and offerings in the cities and provinces in Japan. Those of more distant locales, such as China and Ezo (now Hokkaidō), and even some imagined worlds, were also discussed in gazetteers. Maps included notations about places to see and when to see them.12 Showing such moneymaking operations as shops, restaurants, theaters, and others in prints, maps, and guidebooks may lead us to speculate that these were subsidized by business owners or neighborhoods, as discussed previously. Printed matter, often taken as souvenirs by those returning home from Edo, further marketed the pleasures of the city to an audience beyond its borders. On Toyoharu, Studies on Ukiyo-e (Ukiyo-e kōshō) included these few comments: “Recently drawing ukiyo-e in nishiki-e. Better than the ukiyo-e [he made in the] Hōreki [1751–1764] era. Lives in Nihonbashi.”13 Although rather telegraphic, these lines demonstrate a shift in Toyoharu’s stature in the profession—from his earlier, less accomplished work (in the commentator’s opinion) to the improved designs in the nishiki-e medium. From our current vantage point, these comments likely seem too brief for the figure, who with his colleague Toyohiro began the Utagawa lineage, one of the genre’s most productive and profitable through to the modern era. The Utagawa line, as we shall see, transformed the ukiyo-e genre, producing some of its most iconic images.

Designing Beauties The Torii masters we have encountered thus far made works associated with the kabuki theater. For most, this was their primary occupation. Yet one stands out in this period not for his actor prints but for his pictures of beautiful women (bijinga). Just as Nishimuraya Yohachi was influential in sponsoring Toyoharu’s career, he also backed Torii Kiyo­ naga (1752–1815). Through this affiliation, Kiyonaga became one of

88

CHAPTER 3

the most highly regarded designers in this subgenre in the 1780s. Born the son of Edo bookseller Shiroya Ichibei, Kiyonaga was adopted at the age of ten by Kiyomitsu I into the Torii line.14 While he was no doubt trained in their stock-in-trade of actor prints, theater programs, and the like, Kiyonaga was not designated as the next master of the school. Instead he started as a book illustrator and by the later 1770s transitioned to designing full-color prints showing the beauties of the day. Like his contemporaries, Kiyonaga worked initially in a style that mimicked Koryūsai and Shigemasa, but he subsequently became a trendsetter on his own. Yet about Kiyonaga, the early ukiyo-e canon wrote only that “Kiyonaga was also called Shinsuke, recently has become a famous hand [master] of colorful nishiki-e.”15 Many of Kiyonaga’s sheet prints were produced in sets, from variations on the eight views to the four seasons to the twelve months. Initially, these were issued in the chūban format (about 29 × 22 cm in this era) and show how he was adapting the Shigemasa style (figure 33). By the early 1780s, Kiyonaga’s designs were being produced in the larger ōban format (about 38 × 25 cm) and in the pillar print (hashira-e) format (about 70 × 13 cm), and as the sheet size increased, so did his rendering of figures to grant them taller proportions.16 By mid-decade Kiyonaga’s designs were being extended to cover three panels of ōban sheets. This widened the horizontal space without violating size restrictions. It also allowed him to create arrangements of elegantly placed figures, as though onstage. In this Nishimuraya-published triptych, Kiyonaga presents three of Yoshiwara’s most famous licensed sex workers with their trainees and companions (figure 34). They are shown appreciating the spectacle of the cherry trees in full bloom; every year these trees would be carted in, temporarily planted along the main avenue of the quarter, the Nakanochō, and removed after the conclusion of the short blossoming season. Given the lanterns beside them, the scene is meant to suggest they are viewing the flowers at night, illuminated from below. Each panel features the lead figure gorgeously attired in layers of robes, with her brocade obi sash tied in front and her two child trainees (kamuro) wearing garments of the same pattern. This triptych fully represents what



Making Famous Names 89

Figure 33. Torii Kiyonaga, Mid-Autumn

(Naka no aki), from Fashionable Series from the Twelve Months (Fūryū jūni kikō), 1779. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 26.3 × 19 cm. Gift of Dr. Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

came to be regarded as the characteristically elegant Kiyonaga type, often imitated by his contemporaries and followers. That these tall figures share an uncanny similarity to figural proportions described in European books circulating in Japan has led to suggestions that he may have been adapting foreign precedents.17 Although the composition has suffered some fading, the color here is well preserved for a print of its time, notably in the pink blossoms and light blue sky, drawing our attention to the use of hue and tone to enhance visual impact.

90

CHAPTER 3

Figure 34. Torii Kiyonaga, Beauties Viewing Cherry Blossoms at Nakanochō in the Yoshiwara, 1785; published by Nishimuraya Yohachi. Full-color woodblock triptych, ink and color on paper, ōban format, each 39.4 × 25.2 cm. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald, 1959 (1959-93-22a-c), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The triptych also produces the illusion of these women coming together to view the blossoms—more likely an imagined rather than a real possibility. In the right panel, Nioteru of the Ōgiya turns to the right to chat with a woman clad in all black, likely the trainer for the house (yarite); her kamuro, Namiji and Ōmi, are posed prettily on either



Making Famous Names 91

side while a teenage trainee (furisode shinzō) stands to the rear. In the center, Utahime of the Matsubaya watches as one of her child trainees, Konomo, is boosted to tie a fan to the cherry tree and the other, Kanomo, offers advice. Senzan from the Chōjiya watches from the left side while her child trainees, Yasono and Yasoji, follow behind; to her left is another teenaged trainee and to their rear is a recently launched trainee (tomesode shinzō). Recognizing their house crests on their garments and looking to the guidebooks for the quarter, as a period reader would have done, we can ascertain that each of the lead figures is of higher (chūsan) rank. With these three all named in the guidebook for 1786 (and not in the previous year’s issue), we can also confirm the date for the print.18 That Nioteru appears as a new name in 1786 might also suggest that this print was designed to promote her as one of these selected beauties. Just like period readers would have done, I used a Yoshiwara guidebook (saiken) published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō to confirm the status and identities of Kiyonaga’s figures. Tsutaya had gained the right to publish these bestsellers, and his trade relied upon this regular income. From the mid-1770s onward, Tsutaya was also publishing evaluation commentaries (hyōbanki) that offered an insider’s critique of the famous names and customs of the quarter and style books (sharebon), guides on the art of being fashionable and suave. Tsutaya became one of the leading purveyors of floating-world prints, counting writers Hōseidō Kisanji (1735–1813) and Koikawa Harumachi (1744–1789), poets Ōta Nanpo and Akera Kankō (1740–1800), and many of the most famous illustrators among his contributors. In 1783, when Tsutaya bought out the shop of Maruya Shōbei in the Nihonbashi district of Edo, he acquired with it all the rights and privileges of full-color publishing and citywide distribution.19 Tsutaya’s production through the rest of his career, until his death in 1797 from beriberi, attests to his ambition and skill at spotting and developing talent. In the back of a Yoshiwara guidebook issued for the spring of 1783, Tsutaya included an advertisement for a new project: one hundred large pictures, in full-color printing, featuring the sex workers (here called yūkun, or “play pals”) with their own calligraphy, from the

92

CHAPTER 3

brush of Kitao Masanobu.20 Only seven of the one hundred double-­ ōban size diptychs were completed that year. By the next year, these were put on sale in a bound album titled A New Mirror Comparing the Handwriting of the Courtesans of the Yoshiwara (Yoshiwara keisei shin bijin awase jihitsu kagami), with a preface by Nanpo (figure 35). Each opening featured two named beauties from a single house, with a poem by each written in her own hand and replicated in the space above. Some of these licensed sex workers were trained as calligraphers, even

Figure 35. Kitao Masanobu, A New Mirror Comparing the Handwriting of the Courtesans of the

Yoshiwara (Yoshiwara keisei shin bijin awase jihitsu kagami), 1784; published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō. Full-color woodblock printed, ink and color on paper, tokuōbon, 37.9 × 25.9 × 1.1 cm. Purchase, The Gerhard Pulverer Collection—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Harold P. Stern Memorial fund in appreciation of Jeffrey P. Cunard and his exemplary service to the Galleries as chair of the Board of Trustees (2003–2007).



Making Famous Names 93

receiving lessons from known masters, and calligraphy was one of the accomplishments expected of those at the highest ranks.21 In this opening, Azumaya plays her shamisen while her attendant holds her pet mouse, on the right, and her companion speaks to the servant carrying a tray of dishes. In the foreground, a kamuro reaches out to grab a book from the hands of another child. The book in question is recognizable as a kibyōshi, a popular illustrated novel form that became the particular specialty of this print designer in his guise as the writer Santō Kyōden. Kyōden’s first hit as a writer (issued under the Masanobu name) came the year before in 1782, in a book called Those Familiar Bestsellers (Gozonji no shobaimono). In this title he sets up a scenario in which floating-world books and prints representing the trends in the Osaka-­Kyoto and Edo regions do mock battle.22 Just a few years later, in 1785, Masanobu was relaunched as Kyōden with the bestseller Grilled and Basted Edo-Born Playboy (Edo-umare uwaki no kabayaki; figure 36), published by Tsutaya. This title was likely issued in runs of three to five thousand copies and was so successful that it was reprinted three times.23 Kyōden’s fame skyrocketed, making him into a celebrity author in the era. He became infamous (and thus all the more appreciated) after he, along with Tsutaya, was prosecuted for satirizing the shogunate and violating censorship restrictions, found guilty, and punished in 1791.24 In addition to his work as a designer and writer, Kyōden also owned a smoking-accessory shop, and from his spending habits, he seems to have turned a tidy profit by his trade and by his brush. His writings demonstrate that he was an insider to the Yoshiwara, familiar with its dialect, customs, and denizens; he even bought out the contracts of two licensed prostitutes to marry them. He was also one of the later contributors to Studies on Ukiyo-e (Ukiyo-e kōshō), in which both his noms de plume and training with Shigemasa are noted. As I have discussed elsewhere, Kyōden shared remarks he heard from publisher Nishimuraya with another writer about the publisher’s approach to the business. When Nishimuraya worked in the role of director-producer, he selected writers and illustrators and paid them for their labor, and through this support, the contributors’ names became known in the market. However, when writers and artists asked him to publish

94

CHAPTER 3

Figure 36. Santō Kyōden,

Grilled and Basted Edo-Born Playboy (Edo umare uwaki no kabayaki), 1785; published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō. Woodblock-printed book, ink on paper, fukurotoji binding, 18 cm. Waseda University Library.

projects, then the publisher served as coordinator, and he paid no fees to the contributors.25 What this describes are the two modes of production typically employed by publishers. For commercial works, the publisher generated and paid for the project, hiring the labor, retaining the blocks, and remaining responsible for and beneficiary of product and profits. For commissioned work, the publisher was paid to serve as a contractor for those involved, delivering the completed work on their behalf. Like Kyōden, Kubo Shunman (1757–1820) trained in the studio of Kitao Shigemasa. Shunman was an active member of one of the many “mad poetry” (kyōka) groups popular during the period. These groups included men (and a few women) from various walks of life— merchants, artisans, and samurai—and offered them the opportunity to meet, share poems, and swap witticisms. Shunman became one of ukiyo-e’s most accomplished designers of specially commissioned prints



Making Famous Names 95

(surimono) and the head of such a poetry group.26 As may be seen in this work, Beauty and Demon, Shunman was also a skilled painter (figure 37). Most pictures of the professional sex workers of the Yoshiwara emphasize their beauty, glamour, and availability. Some ridiculed what might happen to those who spent too much time, energy, and money pursuing pleasures in that district. Here a demon, wearing the costume of a Buddhist pilgrim, promenades with a licensed prostitute. The joke is that even demons on pilgrimages are not immune to sexual allure. Kyōden provided the painting with its inscription: Like the Chinese elder plant entwined by the blooming wisteria, The demon is tied up in the strings of her inscribed lacquered hat. He’s lost his enlightenment in the colors of her demonically gorgeous cloth. The demon could be sent to the Buddha with the sound of the gong, But in stylishly spending gold he’s become a foolish demon. He’s not a demon, but neither is he a man!27

The demon caught by the strings of the sex worker’s hat is thus as entangled as the noble Chinese elder in the twining vine of the wisteria. Even though he could escape these ties simply by hearing the Buddha’s call, he is so besotted by her beauty and the promise of pleasure that he has become a fool for love. Lost in love, or more like the pleasures of sex, is the subject of Kitagawa Utamaro’s most famous image from Erotic Book: Poem of the Pillow (Ehon Utamakura; figure 38). It describes the scene of lovers on the second floor of a verandah, gazes meeting and bodies joining. Utamaro (1753?–1806) is well known today, as he was in his own time, for his pictures of famous beauties of the 1790s. Utamaro’s career, as I have discussed elsewhere, was launched and his name turned into a “brand” through his collaboration with publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō. The early ukiyo-e canon entry for Utamaro name-drops his teacher as well as Tsutaya, signaling period recognition for these: “First studied Kano style pictures in the atelier of Toriyama Sekien. Later drew pictures of men and women in contemporary scenes ( fūzoku) and resided with illustrated book purveyor Tsutaya Jūzaburō. Now lives in Benkeibashi.

96

CHAPTER 3

Figure 37. Kubo Shunman,

Beauty and Demon, late eighteenth century. Ink and color on silk, hanging scroll, 76.1 × 35.2 cm. Idemitsu Museum of Arts.

Figure 38. Kitagawa Utamaro, Erotic Book: Poem of the Pillow (Ehon utamakura), 1788; published

by Tsutaya Jūzaburō. Full-color woodblock-printed sheet (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, formerly orihon format, 25.4 × 36.9 cm. British Museum.

Many nishiki-e.”28 Utamaro’s many full-color prints focused more on women than on men, and these catalogued the gamut of types visible in Edo culture. Some of these were rendered visible in and through their professions, such as prostitutes, teahouse waitresses, and shopworkers, whereas others were shown in more private settings as servants, merchant wives, mothers, and daughters. These pictures participated in the long conversation about (and appraisal of) women that continued throughout the floating world, visible from its earliest to its latest iterations, cataloguing female occupations, accomplishments, and activities.29 In this set of erotic pictures, a variety of figures are presented having sex, some clearly drawn from the catalogue of standards—while others show the strange possibilities of coupling with Dutchmen or the mythical river creatures known as the kappa—adding a frisson of the exotic and the monstrous to the erotic.

98

CHAPTER 3

This illustration is now the most famous from the set, due not only to its romantic quality but also to its exquisite production values. The skill of the carvers and printers is on display: consider the range of lines describing the fineness of the hair, outlining the contours of the faces, and edging the folds and layers of the garments, as well as the use of color and ground, mimicking fabric against skin and playing with effects of translucency and opaqueness. The high quality of the production makes clear that the publisher spared no expense. Erotica is among the most beautifully produced material in print throughout the period. Although edicts regularly forbade sexually explicit material, there was clearly a market for this subject. Producers skirted that prohibition by violating another one—not giving information about the publisher, writer, or designer, as had long been otherwise required. Thus, in this print there is no signature, but the attribution to Utamaro can be easily made on the basis of style. But this album also included a preface, in which the writer made the attribution even easier, saying, “Even coming close to the name of the painter, I call it Ehon Utamakura.” Few could have failed to notice how easily Utamakura slips to the name Utamaro.30 The similarity of the crest on the man’s robe in this picture to that of Tsutaya Jūzaburō would also have been easily spotted. The one signature in this image is on the fan and is that of Yadoya no Meshimori (1753–1830), the assumed name of a poet active in the publisher’s literary circle and a commissioner, too, of other books illustrated by Utamaro. Using this poetry name was also a means of sliding around the edicts. Meshimori’s poem alludes suggestively to the sexual engagement shown while also citing a well-known classical poem:31 In the clamshell Its beak firmly caught The snipe Cannot fly away– In the autumn dusk.32

Thanks to Tsutaya’s sponsorship, by the 1790s, Utamaro seems to have gained top position in the competitive field of images of beauties



Making Famous Names 99

(bijinga). Many of these prints were designed to seem as though they were sharing secrets known only to those most intimate with the world of the brothel quarter, whereas others seem to rank women from across Edo culture according to their beauty, status, and profession. Given Tsutaya’s long association with the Yoshiwara, promoting Utamaro (and others in his stable) as sharing these secrets through his prints and books was a smart marketing strategy that served his business as well as that of his patrons in that quarter. While Utamaro would have been a guest at events in the quarter, particularly those sponsored by Tsutaya, how much he knew of what went on behind the brocade curtain, so to speak, cannot be determined from extant evidence. Regardless, his prints and illustrated books configured his artistic persona as a sophisticated man-about-town and connoisseur of women. The Utamaro persona is perhaps most clearly realized in a diptych that many have interpreted as a “self-portrait.” Yet it so fully illustrates this imagined Utamaro, and so fully upends a righteous tale, that it must have been intended to send up pretensions through parody and inversion (figure 39). The picture shows a man seated to the left. On his outer robe are two crests that read uta and maro. He is surrounded by elite sex workers of the Yoshiwara, and a lantern above them bears the character reading chū, meaning loyalty. This scenario, to people familiar with kabuki, would have mimicked the staging of the climax of the Chūshingura, the famous tale of the band of loyal, masterless samurai seeking revenge. In the final act, the samurai (played here by the beauties) confront the man who wronged their leader (with Utamaro in the role of villain). But the joke is that the quarry for these beauties is Utamaro. That we, too, have longed to see him is suggested by the inscription on the pillar: “By request Utamaro draws his own ravishing features.” With the entire production so thoroughly flipping expectations—brave warriors are turned into glamorous women, the villain is the sophisticated client to the quarters—the picture plays, diverts, and amuses. The “Utamaro” seen here is the ideal prototype of Edo masculinity, a dandy who could have taught boulevardiers and flaneurs the finer points of being cool.

100

CHAPTER 3

Figure 39. Kitagawa Utamaro, The Story of the Chūshingura Parodied by Famous Beauties: A Set of

Twelve Prints (Kōmei bijin mitate Chushingura jūni-tsuzuki), 1794–1795; published by Omiya Gonkurō. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format diptych, 39.2 × 51.8 cm. Clarence Buckingham Collection (1935.423), Art Institute of Chicago/Art Resource, New York.

Ukiyo-e prints often portray women who were in the public eye due to their professions; some of them became famous names. Utamaro and his contemporaries often illustrated the most famous beauties of Edo, the geisha Tomimoto Toyohina and those working in shops, Takashimaya Ohisa and Naniwaya Okita (figure 40). Ohisa and Okita are shown so often, and in ways that advertise where they worked (in a rice-cracker shop and teahouse, respectively), that these pictures work like advertisements, likely paid in full or in part by their businesses. In a print designed by Eishōsai Chōki (active ca. 1786–1808) and published by Murataya Jirōbei, Ohisa can be recognized by her crest of three leaves. She is shown with a fan in her hand, enjoying a summer



Making Famous Names 101

evening, as she stands beside a cabinet of tea wares (figure 41). This tall, narrow format, called the pillar print or hashira-e, was often used to highlight a figure or to play with other compositional possibilities; many were mounted on paper as a cheaper substitute for a painted hanging scroll. A few were turned horizontally and joined to form printed handscrolls.33 The fan Ohisa twirls so prettily is decorated with a design from one of Tsutaya’s most enigmatic illustrators, Tōshūsai Sharaku (active 1794–1795).34 It is a tongue-in-cheek and trendy visual citation to one of the most incredible gambles in ukiyo-e history. Those in the know would have recognized that fan as showing the same composition (but in reverse) of a print of kabuki actor Matsu­moto Kōshirō IV in a design by Tōshūsai Sharaku.35 Sharaku’s short career as a designer of some 140 prints is one of the great mysteries in ukiyo-e. Works with his signature appeared in time for the kabuki season in the fifth month of Figure 40. (Opposite Page) Kitagawa Utamaro, Three Beau-

ties of the Present Day (Tōji san bijin): Tomimoto Toyohina, Naniwaya Kita, Takashima Hisa, ca. 1793; published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink, color, and mica on paper, ōban format, 37 × 25 cm. William S. and John T. Spaulding Collection, photograph © 2021, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Figure 41. (Left) Eishōsai Chōki, Young Woman with a Fan,

late eighteenth century; published by Murataya Jirōbei. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, pillar print format (hashira-e), 58.7 × 10.5 cm. H. O. Havemeyer Collection, bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929, Metropolitan Museum of Art.



Making Famous Names 103

1794, were issued for the next ten months, and then, suddenly, were no more. Why his output was so short-lived and who he might have been has consumed hundreds, if not thousands, of pages in books, catalogues, and articles; he has also been the subject of a feature film. Even Wikipedia features an extended discussion, breaking his short career down—as it usually is in spite of its brevity—into four distinct periods. The many theories about his identity—as nō actor to an alias for Hokusai, Utamaro, and others—are likewise recounted.36 Turning to Studies on Ukiyo-e (Ukiyo-e kōshō), we learn that Sha­ raku “drew ‘likenesses’ of kabuki actors but these were too close to the truth and since they seemed unconventional, they were not long in this world. After about one year he quit.”37 This entry has been closely studied, and numerous questions might be asked of it—from what does it mean to be too real and too unconventional to who was it that minded—but to answer these results leads to speculation. In one of the later iterations of the ukiyo-e canon, Saitō Gesshin wrote in 1844 that Sharaku’s original name was Saitō Jūrōbei and that he was a nō actor, but with this addition made fifty years later, it is entirely unclear what evidence was brought to bear here. Ukiyo-e scholar Suzuki Jūzō sifted carefully through the scraps and found an actor by this name, but whether or not he was the same individual who used the name Sharaku is impossible to confirm.38 That he was well received, at least initially, is demonstrated by the high number of prints produced over his brief period of activity. Likewise, the citation of his image in the Chōki print as well as in another period book point to the appreciation of his work. Notably, this entry does not link his name to a known atelier. Nor can we track Sharaku, as we can with all other ukiyo-e designers, from an early career as an illustrator of popular books to his emergence as a designer of sheet prints. Instead, Sharaku’s name suddenly appears on a set of twenty-­ eight deluxe full-color prints. This group is unusual in the history of actor prints because it illustrates each and every actor in the production of the play The Beloved Wife’s Parti-colored Reins (Koi nyōbo somewake tazuna), in 1794, from the stars to the walk-ons. Featuring ground mica in the gray background, these pictures are some of the most dramatic and striking in the genre. One of the most famous is of the actor Ōtani

104

CHAPTER 3

Oniji III, shown leaning forward, grimacing, his fingers splayed as he reaches out from under his striped half-robe jacket (haori), in what must have been his spotlight moment (figure 42). The thick paper and deluxe mica background suggest a high level of material investment, and it should thus come as no surprise that they were released under the imprint of impresario publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō. But what makes Sharaku’s career stranger yet is that these are his finest prints. Usually, publishers begin with one to a few full-color prints for an artist, testing the market to see if they sell, and then as the brand develops, the publisher might increase the investment by producing more, with more extravagant effects. Yet this is a whole group of twenty-eight prints, issued in the larger ōban size, with heavy mica enhancement. Looking at the prints made over the months that follow, the overall quality of the materials decreases (although the turn away from mica can be further explained by its prohibition in the eighth month39), and gradually, the prints shrink to the more modest hosoban size (figure 43). All came out under the Tsutaya logo, a fact that demonstrates, too, that other publishers did not seek Sha­raku out for the kabuki market. Was it simply that Sharaku’s designs were not as popular—and thus not as profitable—as the publisher had hoped? Another scenario offers what may be a more satisfactory explanation for Sharaku’s brief career and the decline in luxury and size of his prints over his short period of activity. As art historians Roger Keyes and Asano Shūgō have observed, prints issued in the first half of the Tsutaya-Sharaku partnership use materials in a manner consistent with private commissions. This suggests that these early works were made with the financial support of patrons. In such a scheme, these patrons— who may have been wealthy individuals or members of kabuki fan clubs—would receive the first and finest printings, while additional prints would be made for sale to the broader public. The fact that prints from later in the Tsutaya-Sharaku collaboration lack such extravagant effects may stand as evidence that these patrons reduced, or ceased, their support, and thus, once the publisher could no longer rely upon private sponsorship, he did not find it financially viable to issue more deluxe prints.40 Smaller formats and simpler production values may



Making Famous Names 105

Figure 42. (Opposite Page) Tōshūsai Sharaku, Ōtani

Oniji III as Edobei, 1794; published by Tsutaya Jūza­ burō. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink, color, and mica on paper, ōban format, 36.8 × 23.0 cm. Samuel S. White III and Vera White Collection, 1956 (1956-93-15), Philadelphia Museum of Art. Figure 43. (Left) Tōshūsai Sharaku, Actor Sakakiyama

Sangorō II as Michinaga’s Daughter Princess Otae, 1794–1795; published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, hosoban format, 31.8 × 14.3 cm. Howard Mansfield Collection, Purchase, Rogers Fund, 1936, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

have also been a way to sell cheaper prints to a wider audience. Sharaku’s trajectory, moving from deluxe productions to simpler ones, is thus exactly the opposite of what is typical for ukiyo-e artists. If this theory of private patronage is correct, it opens up the bigger question of to what extent publishers relied upon external support for prints. While Sharaku’s style may—or may not—have been appreciated, it is worth keeping in mind that publishers selling actor prints to the kabuki-going populace put out lots of prints in a saturated as well as cutthroat market. Other designers, such as Katsukawa Shunkō and Katsu­kawa Shun’ei, were likewise making actor prints for this trade (figure 44). But the leading designer of actor prints in this period was surely Utagawa Toyokuni I (1769–1825). Although made slightly later and as a full-figure representation, Toyokuni’s presentation of the same actor, Ōtani Oniji III, striking a similar pose with arms flung out, fingers splayed, is a dramatic, arresting depiction (figure 45). Toyokuni was the student of Utagawa Toyoharu, the designer of the perspective print that opened this chapter, and he became one of the leaders of the Utagawa lineage. Toyokuni’s father was an Edo doll maker renowned for his realistic figures of kabuki actors, and it was likely through his father’s connections that Toyokuni came to apprentice in Toyoharu’s



Making Famous Names 107

Figure 44. Katsukawa Shun’ei, Actor Ōtani Oniji III as Ukiyo Tohei,

1794 (eighth month). Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, hosoban format, 29.4 × 13.7 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston-Worcester Art Museum exchange, made possible through the Special Korean Pottery Fund, Museum purchase with funds donated by contribution, and Smithsonian Institution— Chinese Expedition, 1923–1924, photograph © 2021, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Figure 45. Utagawa Toyokuni, Masatsuya (Actor Ōtani Oniji III as Ono Sadakurō), from the

series Portraits of Actors on Stage (Yakusha butai no sugata-e), 1794 (ninth month); published by Izumiya Ichibei. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 36.1 × 23.7 cm. William Sturgis Bigelow Collection (11.25333), photograph © 2021, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

studio at the age of fourteen or fifteen in 1783 or 1784. He began his career with calendar prints and contributed illustrations to yellow-­ backed novellas (kibyōshi) in about 1787–1788, although which printed image was his earliest is still debated.41 Notes in Studies on Ukiyo-e (Ukiyo-e kōshō) from a few years later state that he was not currently making full-color nishiki-e but was working in a palette of black and purple and that he drew actor likenesses well.42 Over the course of his long career, lasting from the mid-1780s through 1825, Toyokuni trained a large number of talented students, including Utagawa Kunimasa (1773–1810), Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), and Utagawa Kunisada (also known as Toyokuni III, 1786–1864). Toyokuni, his students, and his students’ students dominated the actor print market through the end of the century. Publisher Izumiya Ichibei sponsored Toyokuni’s designs for the series Figures of Actors on Stage (Yakusha butai no sugata-e) from 1794 and continued through 1796. Several of these depict the same actors in the same roles as do Sharaku’s, and in each case Toyokuni’s present a full figure rather than a bust portrait. The forty designs that remain in this set are now among Toyokuni’s most famous works.43 Each features a cartouche with the series title and the actor’s studio affiliation but not his personal name. Oniji’s affiliation was in the Masatsuya studio, and devoted fans would shout this studio name in appreciation during the actor’s performance rather than use his stage name. Oniji can be recognized by his facial features—long, beakish nose and square chin— and by the gesture of arms and fingers spread wide. While Toyokuni’s description may be slightly more flattering, it matches Sharaku’s and Shun’ei’s well enough to demonstrate that all three were capturing the defining characteristics of this actor onstage. Comparisons like these lead one to wonder whether those paying cash for commissions or purchases simply preferred one artist over the other. What factors were in play that led to Toyokuni’s emergence as the next great actor-print illustrator and to Sharaku’s exit from the field thus remain an open question. In these actor prints by Sharaku and Toyokuni, as well as in other examples from this period, the kiwame, or “approved,” seal has

110

CHAPTER 3

been carved into the woodblock; it appears above Tsutaya’s ivy leaf mark, below Shun’ei’s signature, and below Izumiya’s rectangular mark, respectively. This round mark, often called a “censor’s seal,” is evidence of recently reinforced regulatory measures. Quite literally, it means that the sketches for these images were reviewed and, once confirmed to violate no standing restrictions, “approved” for publication. This mark was required on all sheet prints produced after 1790, when edicts were promulgated to rein in commercial printing.44 What makes the process for approval particularly clever is that it required representative publishers from the commercial printing guild to examine materials in draft and sketch and see them through the review at the office of the city magistrate (machi bugyō). Putting the publishers in the role of censors in their own guild meant that they became responsible for violations, in effect, engaging in self-censorship. In addition, the edict requiring the names of authors and artists and publishers’ marks for the printed works was reissued. Problematic subjects previously banned, such as contemporary politics and erotica, were banned again. What is more, circulating manuscripts via the commercial book lenders (kashihon’ya) that might circumvent these restrictions on subject matter, as well as commenting on the present by using historical events as a pretext, were forbidden yet again.45 In the event of violations, artist, author, publisher, and guild representative were held responsible.46 (And one of the most famous cases—that of the disciplinary action taken against Tsutaya Jūzaburō and Santō Kyōden mentioned above—was carried out to show that the authorities would brook no violations.47) The guild members serving as gatekeepers thus became collaborators in the censorship of subjects and modes of expression. Let us close out this discussion by circling back to the challenge of representing place. In the print that opened this chapter, we noted how Toyoharu described the commercial and entertainment district of Nakazu, reveling in the variety of boats, people, and goods displaying the prosperity of Edo. Kiyonaga’s triptych likewise represented the iconic moment in the Yoshiwara calendar when cherry trees were brought into the district as part of its spring calendar of events. In that scene the beauties of the quarter stand in as symbols of the district,



Making Famous Names 111

Figure 46. Utagawa

Toyohiro and Utagawa Toyokuni I, The Lucky New Year’s Visit to Myōhōji in Horinouchi (Myōhōji ehōmairi no zu), ca. 1801. Full-color woodblock pentaptych (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, each 36.8 × 23.8 cm. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alexander M. Bing, 1952 (1952-26-27a-e), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

presented as idealized types rather than as individuals. Both examples are part of a continuum of the celebration of the city of Edo made through its distinctive product, the Azuma nishiki-e, and both stand in for place as well as represent it. In a rather remarkable pentaptych by Toyokuni and his Utagawa lineage colleague Toyohiro (1773–1828), the notion of representing place and its related urban identity collides full force with kabuki fandom (figure 46). Here, three celebrity actors are shown on their visit to the temple of Myōhōji in the Horinouchi district of Edo (to the west of Shinjuku) in about 1800. Their garments bear no crests, nor are they named, but each actor’s features were described so often and so consistently in other prints that the shape of ears, a nose, a chin, or a mouth assumed iconic status for each individual, just as in caricatures across the early modern world, as well as today. For kabuki aficionados, these faces would be enough to identify the actors: on the right is Sawamura Genosuke, in the center, Segawa Kikunosuke, and on the left, Ichikawa Komazō III. These figures are placed in the center sheet

112

CHAPTER 3

of a five-panel print, and the rest of the composition is organized to draw attention to them. The temple behind is depicted with two perspectival points, receding in the second panel from the right and on the left in the fourth panel, making the center panel the top of a compositional triangle. Visitors to the temple have come to pay their respects to its famous buddha or to look at votive pictures (ema) in the hall on the right, with its black Ming-style windows. The figures arrayed along the same plane are a veritable parade of Edo female types: women of the town, black-clad higher-ranking women (note their palanquin behind), and an elegant sex worker wearing green, her obi tied in front; some celebrity spotters, enjoying their proximity to these stars. A larger almost panorama-like effect is achieved by carrying the scene over five joined sheets. With Toyokuni drawing the actors and Toyohiro the female figures, this print melds two of ukiyo-e’s most frequent topics into one unified whole. Showing this place, then, in the suburbs of the city exemplifies how ukiyo-e was expanding its reach to demarcate sites farther out among the city’s famous places.



Making Famous Names 113

Chapter 4

Expanding Horizons

In 1802 a cheap, small book related the story of Princess with a Poton-Her-Head. Written and illustrated by novelist Shikitei Sanba (1766–1822), it recounts the incredible tale of a young woman with a ceramic vessel (shaped like a wide-brimmed hat) temporarily adhered to her head. Over the course of three thin fascicles, she eventually comes to be released from this burden. The tale is printed on recycled paper, and while telling her story is ostensibly the topic, the book was designed with another purpose: to present a history of floating-world fiction and illustration. That pursuit is clear from its opening pages, where Sanba lists publishers, writers, and illustrators in terms designed to inform readers who’s who in the world of floating-world illustrated books. This floating-world history continues through double-page openings of scenes from the story rendered to mimic a specific visual form. This is a history of ukiyo styles, beginning with Moronobu and running all the way through to Toyokuni and Toyohiro. Sanba finishes the project with a scene in his own hand, intending no doubt to impress the reader with how “modern” his form is. Titling the book (with tongue firmly in cheek) A Spurious History of Popular Illustrated Fiction (Kusazōshi koji­tsuke nendaiki) and with the subtitle Twice-Baked Princess with a Pot-on-Her-Head (Mata yakinaosu Hachikazuki-hime), Sanba seems, at first glance, to be sending up the entire genre of floating-­ world print culture.1

114

But this is humor with a purpose: this is a list of names of those writers and illustrators that Sanba—and likely others of the time—­ considered the most important for floating-world text and pictures. As I have discussed elsewhere, Sanba takes pains to list the key participants on two pages at the start of the book, presenting (in this order), the publishers, the fiction writers, and the “names of Yamato illustrators” (Yamato-eshi no na), a sequence that reveals a hierarchy of contribution. Publishers and fiction writers are first and second, shown with their distinctive seals, each listed within his own box, marked as active or retired. The third group, the illustrators, by contrast, has been put onto a stylized map, as though representing regions of visual production (figure 47). Here we encounter land masses and islands. The Utagawa, Figure 47. Shikitei Sanba,

A Spurious History of Popular Illustrated Fiction: Twice-Baked Princess with a Pot-on-Her-Head ([Mata yakinaosu Hachikazuki­-hime] Kusazōshi kojitsuke nendaiki), 1802. Woodblock-printed book (kibyōshi), ink on paper (sumizuri-e), 17 cm. Waseda University Library.



Expanding Horizons 115

Torii, Kitao, and Katsukawa lineages occupy the four corners in the manner of continents around a sea. The large island in the middle is broken into provinces; Harunobu’s name is in the landlocked center, while those along the shores include Koryūsai, Okumura Masanobu, Harumachi, Chōki, and others. Smaller islands dotting the sea are named Sharaku, Utamaro, and Hokusai, and other places are likewise tagged for other notable individuals. White text floats along the water, where Sanba writes, “In the past it was Okumura, Suzuki, Miyagawa, and then Koryū, Ishikawa, and Torii. From Kiyonaga to Kitao, Katsukawa, Utagawa, and Uta. To Hokusai in our times.”2 Most of these are names familiar to us: Okumura Masanobu, Suzuki Harunobu, Miyagawa Chōshun, Isoda Koryūsai, Ishikawa Toyonobu, Torii Kiyonaga, Kitao Shigemasa, Katsukawa Shunshō, Utagawa Toyokuni, and Kitagawa Utamaro. The final name is new: Katsushika Hokusai. At the time this image was issued, Hokusai was already in his early forties, well regarded for his book illustrations and specially commissioned prints (surimono) but not yet the master of Mount Fuji and the manga for which he is so well known today. Both those projects were as yet on the horizon. The Utagawa lineage, which becomes arguably the most important for the nineteenth century, is here as yet represented only by Toyokuni. Sanba’s informal map presents a worldview that tallies Nanpo’s list almost exactly; perhaps not so surprising since he also contributed to that list as it was being developed. It is clear that by 1802 this was an agreed-upon catalogue of names—the ukiyo-e canon, if you will. What is perhaps more interesting is that these names are presented here not as a list but in the form of an illustration. But this is not just any picture: it is a map. By doing this, Sanba signals that these figures were part of both a metaphorical world and a real one of practice, with territories and histories. At the same time, he connects them to the concept of place, the subject that becomes one of the most prolific in the following decades. Indeed, although “famous places” had been represented in sheet prints, paintings, and illustrated books almost from the very start, the subject of landscape developed in the next decades into what seemed

116

CHAPTER 4

like an endlessly variable and profitable theme that continued well into the modern era. This was tied to the increase in printed guidebooks and in the custom of pursuing travel as a form of leisure rather than just of necessity. Landscape joined the long-standing bestsellers of actors, beauties, and sumo wrestlers, and all these were produced in far greater numbers in the first half of the nineteenth century. The almost exponential increase in printed matter, from books to prints to broadsheets and more, was related to the increasing economic capacity of the merchant class. These patrons likewise commissioned some of ukiyo-e’s most exquisite poetry prints (surimono) and paintings during this period. Artists and writers took up older themes—from The Tale of Genji to the legends of great warriors and many more—to expand the floating-world’s subjects for an audience that continued to grow by leaps and bounds. Some touched on topics deemed sensitive to shogunal order and were called to testify, demonstrating how often political commentary was hidden just under the brocade surface. Later writers extended Nanpo’s canon, adding new names, charting lineages, and fleshing out biographies, eventually developing that roster we know so well today. One of these subsequent writers was Keisai Eisen (1790–1848). Born a samurai, Eisen initially studied Kanostyle painting, but after the loss of his mother, father, and stepmother, Eisen gradually shifted to ukiyo-e illustration. He wrote about himself in the third person in Essays by a Nameless Old Man (Mumei-ō zuihitsu), the next iteration of the ukiyo-e canon dated to 1833. There he informed his readers that he had studied with the writer Shinoda Kinji (1768–1819), known for his kabuki libretti, and subsequently with the artist Kikugawa Eiji, an affiliation that began about 1810. He no doubt became connected through Eiji to the more prolific member of this school, Eizan (1787–1867). Like others, he worked as a book illustrator before emerging as a designer of sheet prints and by the 1820s was tasked with what became his most prolific subject, pictures of beautiful women.3 In Eisen’s variation on the ukiyo-e canon, we encounter information about his contemporaries as well as embellishments to the biographies of earlier masters. He also uses this venue to sketch out



Expanding Horizons 117

his own artistic persona and establish his aesthetic merits, noting his appreciation of Chinese painting and admiration of Hokusai. But in his expansive autobiography, he also describes himself in terms that might strike readers as somewhat bohemian, clearly promoting himself as unconventional. Here, in a translation by John Bester, we read that on one occasion, he disappeared while he was halfway through the preliminary picture for a print. The publisher, greatly incensed, searched for him and found him dead drunk in a brothel. Sometime later, Eisen painted the scene for him and gave it to him. . . . One day, Eisen left home in clothes borrowed from his landlord and did not return. After a while, the landlord found out where he had gone, and calling there found him insensible, having pawned the clothes and spent the money on drink. . . . He would go out in haori and geta as though he was going for a stroll in the neighborhood, only to arrive by boat the same night at Kisarazu in the province of Kazusa.4

Just as those before him had profited from being associated with their subjects, so, too, would Eisen have benefited from being (self-) described as the kind of person who experienced the world he showed in his pictures. Whether or not Eisen was just such a bohemian, he was shown as one of the “three famous names of ukiyo-e,” along with Toyokuni and Toyokuni’s student, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, in a book commemorating unusual behavior, Extraordinary Persons of Japan (Nihon kijinden). Hanagasa Bunkyō (1784–1861), a floating-world familiar, friend of Nanpo, and writer of kabuki texts, contributed the text, and Kuniyoshi himself designed the pictures (figure 48). This book brings together a variety of people known for their unconventional characters in one of the long-standing tropes of rare genius. These include, among others, the aged Hokusai; Hanabusa Itchō, one of the forefathers of ukiyo-e; the contemporary writer Kyokutei Bakin (1767–1848); and famous poets of the past, such as the woman writer Ono no Komachi and the monk

118

CHAPTER 4

Figure 48. Utagawa

Kuniyoshi, illus., and Hanabusa Bunkyō, text, Extraordinary Persons of Japan (Nihon kijin den), ca. 1849. Woodblock-­ printed book, ink on paper (sumizuri-e), 22.8 × 15.8 cm. Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Saigyō, along with even a few characters drawn from fiction. The title follows the tradition of extolling individuality as a feature of creativity and intellect, long established in Chinese sources and known in Japan; the stature of being an “extraordinary person” (kijin) was further developed through the literati painting practice and all that it encompassed.5 This compendium extended that notion more explicitly to ukiyo-e. In this image, Eisen is seated at the rear, turning to speak with Toyokuni. Wearing a robe decorated with scenes of hell, Kuniyoshi appears with his back to the viewer, with a cat by his knee and a painting unfurled in his hands. When this book was issued is not entirely clear, but the note



Expanding Horizons 119

near Eisen informs readers that he is recently deceased; since Eisen died in the seventh month of 1848, it seems likely that this title was published the following year.6 Eisen was prolific as a book illustrator and designed numerous sheet prints of beauties and landscapes. In this example, Eisen combined the genres of pictures of beauties and of famous places. The set, Twelve Views of Beauties of the Present Day (Imayō bijin jūnikei), was published by Izumiya Ichibei about 1822–1823 (figure 49). Depicting representative beautiful figures from every location, each is further described in terms relating to her personality, in the manner of a physiognomic reading. In doing so, Eisen was mimicking a mode of interpretation in which the face and body of an individual were analyzed according to various diagnostic measures, a long-standing practice in East Asia that had been adapted for ukiyo-e by Utamaro and others.7 Here, Eisen portrayed a woman dressed in a tie-dyed cotton robe, as though turning to converse with someone outside the frame. She holds scissors in her hand as though about to clip her nails, and with her loose garment and towel draped across the back of her neck, the scene is meant to show her just after her bath. She has shaved eyebrows and blackened teeth, features that often signaled a woman was married but that were also standard for other women, including those working in the sex trade. At the upper right, a landscape is set into a partially opened handscroll, and in the area where the title is often set is inscribed her type as “the aspect of amiability” (aisō ga yosasō). Text floating in the landscape denotes this place as Kinryūzan Sensōji temple, located in the Asakusa district of Edo. While nothing is explicitly stated, the combination of figure type with a place notable for its proximity to the licensed brothel district, as well as having its own trade in unlicensed prostitution, may have been read by those familiar with the site as depicting a woman so employed.8 Stylistically, this print adapts the bust-length figural style often employed by Utamaro and Sharaku (and by those who followed in their wake)—so much so that it seems patterned on similar studies by the earlier masters. However, Eisen has accentuated the angularity of the posture, pulling the arms tighter to the body and hunching the

120

CHAPTER 4

Figure 49. Keisai Eisen, Amiable Looking: the Kinryūzan Sensōji (Aisō ga yosasō: Kinryūzan Sensōji),

from the series Twelve Views of Modern Beauties (Imayō bijin jūnikei), ca. 1822–1823; published by Izumiya Ichibei. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 38.1 × 25.7 cm. Gift of Mrs. Anne Archbold, 1946 (1946-66-158 (115)), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

shoulders; the face, likewise, has been elongated, the nose and chin made more pronounced. This figure—all angles and hunch—became the new prototype for feminine beauty as rendered by Eisen and his contemporaries. This print displays the skill of the carvers and printers, from the pattern of the robe, with its two blue tones and white flecks imitating the indigo dyers’ skills, to the faint pale shade of pink above the eyes, to the deep blacks of the hair. The round seal on the right side of the print signals that it was “approved” for production while the rectangular one demarcates this as the product of publisher Izumiya Ichibei of the Kansendō firm. The Kansendō was one of Edo’s most prolific publishers. The publisher’s shop was included at its location alongside the Masuya, near the great road leading from Edo to Kyoto, the Tōkaidō, and shown in the Illustrated Guide to the Famous Places of Tokaidō (Tokaidō meisho zue) in 1797.9 Selling this set of twelve sights in Edo, with twelve representative beauties, at a location along the Tōkaidō would have made these available to travelers along the road. Being cheap and easy to carry, prints made nice souvenirs. Perhaps customers might also have been able to purchase erotica illustrated by Eisen at a shop like this one, appreciating, as here, the range of colors and exquisite printing techniques used therein (figure 50). By the early 1820s, many prints featured an array of blue shades using colorants made from the vegetal materials of indigo and dayflower blue. As Henry Smith has discussed in detail, due to improvements in printing indigo—sometimes in works composed entirely of blue tones and more important, with the use of a new source for blue—this era heralded the beginnings of the “blue revolution.” This new blue colorant came to Japan first via the Dutch and later the Chinese traders in Nagasaki. By 1825 Osaka producers led the trend for its use in printed matter. Known in Europe as “Prussian blue,” this first modern synthetic blue came to be called “Berlin blue” (bero-ai) in Japan. Its material structure made it well suited to printing, as it could be blended more fully to become smoother than the coarse grains of indigo. Its resistance to fading made this new blue better than dayflower for sustaining its impact. At first this colorant was used sparingly, but with trade its

122

CHAPTER 4

Figure 50. Keisai Eisen, Fumi shikishi, ca. 1814. Full-color woodblock-printed book (nishiki-e),

ink and color on paper, fukurotoji binding, 21.5 × 15.3 cm. Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

prices decreased, and it saw more and more use. By 1829 it was so readily available that an Eisen fan print of a Chinese landscape was printed entirely in shades of Berlin blue (figure 51).10 Yet it is with Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji group that this vibrant, long-lasting color came to be more fully exploited. We have encountered two prints from this series already in the forms of “The Great Wave” and “Red Fuji” discussed previously (see figures 1 and 2 in the introduction). Publisher Nishimuraya Yohachi included an advertisement for the set in a work of fiction written by Ryūtei Tanehiko, Stories in Promptbook Form (Shōhonjitate), from about 1830. As translated here by art historian Roger Keyes, the advertisement describes



Expanding Horizons 123

Figure 51. Keisai Eisen, View of Shogetsu Pond, 1829. Color woodblock print on paper (aizuri-e), ink and color on paper, uchiwa-e on ōban format sheet, 24.1 × 30.2 cm. Gift of Frederic B. Pratt (42.91), Brooklyn Museum.

the intended scope of the project: “Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji by Iitsu, formerly Hokusai, single-sheet blue prints (aizuri), a serial publication with one view on each sheet. These pictures will show how the form of Mt. Fuji varies from place to place, for example as seen from Shichirigahama or Tsukuda Island, all different and particularly helpful to those studying landscape. In this way, one block following another, the set will not be limited to thirty-six prints, but might even reach one hundred.”11 The concept of “printing in blue” described in the advertisement extended to ten prints, probably the first in the set. Since the subject of this print is mentioned by name in the advertisement, it was intended to be part of this initial offering (figure 52).12 The project eventually

124

CHAPTER 4

numbered forty-six, as noted previously, using Berlin and indigo blues, but in subsequent compositions other colors were added while retaining blue tonalities and key block lines. The advertisement further demonstrates how the publisher was promoting Hokusai’s engagement with the mountain as a selling point. Hokusai was one of the longest-lived artists of the period. By the time “The Great Wave” debuted, he was seventy. He was also one of ukiyo-e’s most innovative and experimental painters and print designers.13 Over his long career, Hokusai produced a vast body of work: what remains adds up to about one thousand paintings, three thousand individual designs for sheet prints, two hundred illustrated book titles (some with many volumes), and hundreds of drawings signed by or attributed to his hand, making it impossible to summarize his career

Figure 52. Katsushika Hokusai, Shichirigahama Beach, Sagami Province (Sōshū Shichirigahama),

Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), early 1831; published by Nishimuraya Yohachi. Color woodblock print (aizuri-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 25 × 37 cm. William S. and John T. Spaulding Collection (21.6760), photograph © 2021, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.



Expanding Horizons 125

in just a few pages.14 Hokusai not only collaborated with many of the period’s most famous authors, from poets to essayists, but also wrote prose, poetry, and texts on artistic practice. Hokusai began his career as an apprentice in Shunshō’s studio, where he was granted the name Shunrō, linking him to the Katsukawa lineage. This was one of thirty artist names that Hokusai used throughout his career; each was specially selected to indicate a transition in his worldview, representing his artistic or personal aspirations. He left the Katsukawa studio—reportedly after a falling out with another student—to establish his own atelier under the name Tawaraya Sōri in 1794. He shifted to the name by which he is best known—Katsushika Hokusai—in 1798. It combines the district in Edo where he was born (Katsushika) with “North Studio” (Hokusai), a sobriquet that referenced the importance of the North Star as his guiding direction.15 This name is the one most often used in book titles and the like, signaling that he became known under this name in his lifetime, but he also informed print buyers of his many subsequent noms de plume.16 He also trained a great number of students, making the Katsushika line one of the genre’s most generative in the era. Many of these, such as Teisai Hokuba (1771–1844), Hishikawa Sōri (active ca. 1789–1818), Totoya Hokkei (1780–1850), and others, became well known in their own right. Hokusai received so many commissions during his lifetime that it seems some of his students—and even his daughters Tatsujo and Ōi (discussed later in this chapter)—assisted the master in meeting demand.17 By the early nineteenth century, publishers were capitalizing upon his renown to produce design compilations, effectively branding the Hokusai style. Among the best known of these is the Hokusai Sketches (Hokusai manga), produced by Nagoya publisher Eirakuya Toshirō as a fifteen-volume series of assorted designs from 1814 to 1875 (figure 53). Here, “manga” can be (and has been) translated in a multitude of ways, but the term means, in effect, “random sketches,” signaling variety, whimsy, and play. It does not yet bear the meaning it achieves later—and retains now—for comics and graphic novels.18 The Hokusai manga feature a staggering variety of themes, functioning as a veritable catalogue of landscapes, animals, people, textile patterns,

126

CHAPTER 4

Figure 53. Katsushika Hokusai, Hokusai Sketches (Hokusai manga), vol. 11, 1835; published by

Eirakuya Tōshirō. Woodblock-printed book, ink on paper, fukurotoji binding, 22.9 × 15.9 × 1 cm. Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

and more, all in the master’s style. According to the colophon pages in these volumes, his students contributed to the project, likely copying from his sketchbooks or other designs, and in doing so, promoted and preserved his style. These proved so popular that many copies, like the one illustrated here, show signs of having been printed from worn woodblocks. Trained in his youth as a woodblock carver, Hokusai took seriously the contributions made by these artisans to printed matter. One of his letters, recorded in a biography written by Iijima Kyoshin (1841–1901) and published in 1893, forty-four years after his death, demonstrates how much so. Kyoshin set about the task of writing Hokusai’s biography,



Expanding Horizons 127

sourcing copies of Hokusai’s letters from his former publishers and copying them. These rare documents offer us insights into Hokusai’s approach. And while perhaps more is known about Hokusai than any artist who came before him, essential facts about his patronage and the prices his works commanded still exceed our grasp. In one of the most cited of his letters, Hokusai requests that his publisher employ a specific carver, Egawa Tomekichi, for an illustrated book about warriors. He writes that Egawa had excelled in the carving for another illustrated book, One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku hyakkei) (figure 54). Arguing that this would not only benefit himself, he adds that excellent renderings would also produce more profit: “In the case of One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, from the first to the third volume, I found not a single corner of the carving that left me dissatisfied. For this reason, if Egawa were to take care of the carving I should also be more motivated and could concentrate more on my own work. It is not illogical to suppose that if the book is well made, and thus sells more copies, you the publishers will also stand to gain more.”19 Hokusai goes on to note that his purpose is not to get a portion of the woodblock carver’s fee through this recommendation.20 Rather, this letter demonstrates his commitment to having his hand retained in his printed work. With this in mind, we might look back through the history of floating-world printing to consider how, when, and where carvers’ names are retained and how this acknowledgment signaled appreciation for their craft. It should also make us think harder about how differences in a single illustrator’s designs might be attributable not to artistic “decline,” inattention, or other factors but to decisions publishers made about which carvers to employ, as well as the economics of publishing, even for as big a star as Hokusai. Throughout the history of ukiyo-e, as we have seen, illustrators developed specializations in response to publishing trends and commissions. Some, such as Utamaro, Eisen, and others, also developed artistic personae that further served to market their work. When Hokusai was included in the volume of Extraordinary Persons of Japan as one of the period’s notables, he joined a host of historic luminaries (figure 55). There, he is shown with brush in hand. His companions include his

128

CHAPTER 4

Figure 54. Katsushika Hokusai, One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku hyakkei), vol. 1, 1834;

published by Nishimura Yūzō, blocks carved by Egawa Tomekichi. Woodblock printed, ink on paper, fukurotoji binding, 22.9 × 15.8 × 0.8 cm. Freer Gallery of Art, The Gerhard Pulverer Collection—Charles Lang Freer Endowment, Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the Harold P. Stern Memorial fund in appreciation of Jeffrey P. Cunard and his exemplary service to the Galleries as chair of the Board of Trustees (2003–2007).

frequent collaborator, the writer Bakin, as well as figures from the classical past, the blind poet Semimaru, the swordsmith Munechika, and Empress Kōmyō (701–760). Hokusai also included pictures of painters at work in many of his illustrated books, leading us to consider whether they might have been allegorical self-portraits. Many from his later career bolstered his persona as a “man mad about painting” (gakyōjin), one of his sobriquets. Dashing off sketches at parties was another way to display his prowess, a performance in painting that many others also practiced.21 There was great potential for profit in becoming a famous name, and

Expanding Horizons 129

Figure 55. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Extraordinary Persons of Japan (Nihon kijin den), ca. 1849; preface

by Hanagasa Bunkyō, published by Yamazaki Seishichi. Woodblock-printed book, ink on paper, fukurotoji binding, 22.8 × 15.8 cm. Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Hokusai was not alone in staging genius. As art historian John Rosenfield astutely remarked: Hokusai lived at a time when artists were increasingly dependent upon sales to the general public. In Kyoto, for example, annual public showings of paintings and calligraphies were held in temples in the Higashiyama district and in restaurants. Professional Kyoto artists such as [Soga] Shōhaku and [Nagasawa] Rosetsu sought to capture the public’s attention with extravagant compositions and novel effects. Shiba Kōkan in Edo staged public sales of his work and issued publicity broadsides.

130

CHAPTER 4

Hokusai, to draw attention to himself and to enhance sales of his pictures, engaged in public demonstrations. The best documented took place in 1804, when he painted a giant picture of Daruma 170 tsubo (350 square meters) at Gokokuji in Edo; the ink was in a sake cask, and he used a giant reed broom for a brush. In 1817, to stir up interest in his Manga sketchbooks which were being published in Nagoya, he journeyed to that town and, in a temple on its outskirts, painted another enormous Daruma before a large audience. To counterbalance such colossi, Hokusai is said to have painted two sparrows on a grain of rice.22

Showmanship of this kind no doubt paid off dividends for artists seeking to gain fame in the competitive art market. By this time, publishers were well aware that sets and extended series could be a profitable formula. As travel and tourism increased over the period, readers scooped up guidebooks and gazetteers; some were preparing for journeys, traveling by palanquin, by foot, or on horseback, while others were making theirs by imagination. Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji was one of numerous projects that was made to profit from this lust for travel. The proliferation of illustrated guidebooks of cities, regions, roads, and so forth, in Japan and beyond, offered readers new information about the larger world in a time when travel was costly, could be dangerous, and often required documents of permission. Having such a book at hand made it possible for travelers to prepare for journeys and learn about what to see and where to go, just as guidebooks do today. Many of these remained in print through the rest of the Edo period, demonstrating their long-lasting appeal. These were also used as sources by ukiyo-e artists as well as craft artisans.23 Throughout the history of ukiyo-e, issuing prints in series was designed to encourage the purchase of the whole group. Publishers often offered the images as they became available, in packets of set numbers, until the entire project was in print. Collectors might purchase the smaller groupings and return to purchase new offerings, or perhaps they might simply order an entire set. For Hokusai’s Thirty-Six



Expanding Horizons 131

Views, Nishimuraya followed just such a program of sales. The publisher likely expected to sell thousands of impressions too. Although no record remains to confirm just how many, a rare report from just a little more than a decade later, in 1848, suggests that the number could have been substantial. This later publisher reported selling eight thousand copies of a triptych set showing Mount Fuji, but he hit the jackpot when he sold eight thousand copies each for a set of fifty-one scenes, yielding a total of 408,000 sheets.24 Buyers might keep sets and series like these in special boxes, paste them in albums, or use them in other ways (as interior decoration, for example). Many albums of prints carefully assembled at the time have since been taken apart—usually, to sell the prints one by one at a greater profit—but in doing so, much has been lost for the history of collecting. Fortunately, some albums have survived. Close study of these extant Figure 56. Utagawa Hiroshige,

wrapper for The Tale of the Dogs (Inu no sōshi), part 14, 1851, published by Tsutaya Kichizō. Full-color wood­block print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, 17.7 × 12.4 cm. Arthur Tress Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

132

CHAPTER 4

Figure 57. Utagawa Hiroshige, Famous Places in Various Provinces: Catching Fireflies at the Uji River (Shokoku meisho: Ujigawa hotarugari no zu), 1835–1836. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, uchiwa-e on ōban format sheet, 22.2 × 29.5 cm. Gift of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1946 (1946-51-66), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

albums makes it possible for us to develop an understanding of how and why these collectors selected and grouped their prints and other materials. Some prints were designed for other pleasures. Some were meant for play, such as sugoroku board games, as playthings, or for display, such as those that could be cut and folded to make buildings. Some were produced as sundry things of everyday life. Prints meant for use are rather rare today, for many were so well loved that they fell to bits and were discarded. Others were simply thrown away, having served their purpose as things like tooth powder packets or wrappers for books (figure 56).25 In Utagawa Hiroshige’s (1797–1858) print for a flat fan (uchiwa), we can imagine the pleasure of hunting fireflies on a summer evening or enjoying the cool breeze by the river (figure 57). Hiroshige’s



Expanding Horizons 133

design offered carvers and printers the chance to demonstrate their skill, layering crisply defined figures against silhouetted forms and landscape. The water, rendered in Berlin blue, has been printed (at least) twice to achieve deep saturation; the gray tones of dusk that seem to fall from the sky show the exquisite gradation (bokashi) technique so often featured in prints signed by Hiroshige. It is easy to imagine cutting out and pasting this composition on a stiffer sheet of paper and attaching a handle; what a delightful accessory it would have made in the heat of summer. Hiroshige became one of the great masters of landscape, successfully shifting from topics associated with his teacher, Toyohiro, and the Utagawa school to achieve nearly uncountable successes in pictures with place as their theme. Born to a bannerman samurai who held the hereditary position of fireman in Edo, Hiroshige was a member of the Ando family, and he has often been referred to as Ando Hiroshige. However, he assumed an artistic name upon being accepted into the Utagawa lineage, and thus, as is the practice in Japanese artistic lineages, he is more correctly known as Utagawa Hiroshige. Hiroshige’s most famous set of prints, the Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsugi) from 1833–1834, was a joint production by the publishers Hōeidō and Senkakudō and represented the fifty-three post stations along the Tōkaidō Road that ran from Edo to Kyoto (figure 58). Some believe that Hiroshige may have traveled the road himself, but close comparisons between specific places (as known today, in Edo period maps, and in other materials) demonstrate that Hiroshige did not make literal illustrations of these or other sites. Rather, he consistently privileged the dramatic potential of a landscape over exact geographic features (figure 59). Hiroshige’s designs emphasize effects, as seen in the silhouetting in the fan shown here, or depict the weather’s action on the landscape, such as grasses blown by strong wind, rain pelting down on travelers, or snow heaped high on hills. Hiroshige produced many sets on various themes, all in collaboration with publishers who recognized the profit in producing collectible groups. His designs number over four thousand, with at least one thousand having the city of Edo as their subject; many, it has been suggested, sold

134

CHAPTER 4

Figure 58. Utagawa Hiroshige, Shōno, from Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō Road (Tōkaidō

gojūsan tsugi no uchi), 1833–1834; published by Takenouchi Magohachi. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 24.6 × 35 cm. Gift of Dr. Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Figure 59. Utagawa Hiroshige, Twilight Snow on Mount Hira (Hira bosetsu), from Eight Views of Ōmi (Omi hakkei), ca. 1834. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 22.9 × 35.2 cm. Gift of Dr. Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Figure 60. Utagawa Kunisada, Takigawa of the Kukimanjiya Reading Inaka Genji, 1838; published by

Iseya Ichiemon. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink on paper, ōban format, 21 × 27.3 cm. Lantz Collection, Pasadena.

as many as ten thousand to fifteen thousand impressions.26 At a time when most sheet prints were produced in initial batches of about one thousand impressions, with more made if the project sold well, the fact that Hiroshige compositions may have sold as many as ten to fifteen thousand impressions demonstrates the extraordinary popularity and profitability of his prints.27 In another rare example of the fan print format, Utagawa Kunisada (1786–1865) presents a close-up of a prostitute reading one of the most popular novels of the day shown against a landscape view of Shinagawa bay at dusk (figure 60). Kunisada trained with Toyokuni, in the Utagawa school, along with Kuniyoshi, mentioned above. Although Hokusai and Hiroshige are the more familiar names from this period, Kunisada was more prolific, a sure sign that he was more successful

136

CHAPTER 4

too. His earliest prints appeared in 1807, and by the following year, his name was appearing in illustrated books. Estimates of sheet print designs bearing his signature range from twenty thousand to twenty-­ five thousand (with many, no doubt, produced with assistance from his students). Most of this output was for kabuki—about 60 percent, according to one estimate—but he also designed pictures of beauties and sumo wrestlers and collaborated with Hiroshige on landscape series. After Toyokuni’s death, the master’s name transferred to his sonin-law, who became Toyokuni II. Kunisada, having expected to take over that position and become the second Toyokuni, rebounded by signing his prints Toyokuni III (or sometimes just Toyokuni).28 Kunisada was the illustrator for one of the most remarkable endeavors of the time, the juggernaut bestseller A Rustic Genji by a False Murasaki (Nise Murasaki inaka Genji). A parody of The Tale of Genji, this title sold more than any other of its period—perhaps as many as fifteen thousand copies in a time when seven thousand copies was considered a bestseller (figure 61). Published by Tsuruya Kiemon from 1829 to 1842, it was issued in thirty-eight chapters, and it made the author, Ryūtei Tanehiko (1783–1842), and the illustrator, Kunisada, into household names. While the story retained parallels with the eleventh-century original, Tanehiko shifted it forward in time, to the fifteenth century, and gave Genji a new name: Ashikaga Jirō Mitsuuji.29 In the opening illustration to the first volume depicted here, Kunisada showed the eleventh-century author, Murasaki Shikibu, composing the text at Ishiyamadera temple. On the right side of this opening, the text above the author’s name notes that this is a recarved version produced in the second month of 1830, from new blocks carved to replace earlier ones lost in a fire. Writer Kyokutei Bakin reported in a letter that Rustic Genji not only was a bestseller but had also been produced in an eroticized version. Moreover, in order to release it, the publisher Tsuruya had paid off the censor, so the price of the book was rather high. This erotic version was probably Amorous Murasaki Finds Pleasure in Fifty and More Chapters (Enshi gojūyo jō), which featured illustrations from the first fourteen parts of Rustic Genji.30 But that was not the only erotic variation



Expanding Horizons 137

Figure 61. Utagawa Kunisada, A Rustic Genji by a False Murasaki (Nise Murasaki inaka Genji),

1830; text by Ryūtei Tanehiko, published by Tsuruya Kiemon. Woodblock-printed book, ink on paper, fukurotoji binding, 17.4 × 12 cm. Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Kunisada designed from the bestseller; one of the most famous scenes from The Tale of Genji and its parody was included in one of his many books of erotica, An Eastern Genji, Evocation of Flowers and Birds ([Kachō yojō] Azuma Genji), dated to 1837. Produced in a larger size, it is clear that his publisher Kikuya Ichibei spared no expense—metallics shine and mica sparkles on the page while embossing techniques, burnishing, and deep color enhance the effects of luxury (figure 62). Here, the scene parodies the story told in the “Spring Shoots, Part I” (Wakana jō) chapter of Genji, where thanks to the antics of her cat, the Third Princess (San-no-miya) embarks upon an affair with the courtier Kashiwagi.

138

CHAPTER 4

Figure 62. Utagawa Kunisada, An Eastern Genji, Evocation of Flowers and Birds ([Kachō yojō]

Azuma Genji), ca. 1837; published by Kikuya Ichibei. Full-color woodblock-printed book (nishiki-e), ink, color, and metallics on paper, fukurotoji binding, 26.1 × 19 cm. Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Here, Kunisada shows two cats mating outside on the verandah while Kashiwagi stretches his arm behind the screen to reach under the lady’s robes.31 The Tokugawa shogunate, anxious about its ability to retain power, enacted a series of strict reforms intended to reinforce order between 1841 and 1843 (known as the Tenpō Reforms, after the era name). Edicts directed at limiting the subjects, media, and modes of expression in popular print culture were once more issued, reinforcing long-standing prohibitions on the representation of period politics and the historical past (particularly as it touched upon the



Expanding Horizons 139

Tokugawa lineage). From the 1790s onward, manuscripts and sketches were reviewed in the publishers’ guilds, with the final review completed in the city magistrate’s office. Now the function at the guild level was eliminated and the task reassigned solely to those samurai-rank officials. The job of censor rotated, with two men serving per month, and their seals, either singly or as a pair, appear in prints from 1843 to 1851.32 These reforms had a chilling effect on floating-world texts and images. Authorities hauled in Tanehiko, the author of False Murasaki, ostensibly because frivolous writing was regarded as inappropriate for someone of samurai rank; after being castigated by his clan head, forbidden from writing, and questioned a second time, Tanehiko died, presumably from his own hand, in 1842. But the real problem may have been that some readers found the parallels between the hero and his many conquests to too closely resemble the activities of shogun Tokugawa Ienari (1773–1841) with his many wives and concubines. This may have been compounded, as Sarah Thompson has suggested, by the tale being turned into erotica and thus violating related prohibitions.33 Further restrictions designed to hem in consumption included banning pictures of actors, geisha, and prostitutes; forbidding color for book covers; restricting polyptych compositions to only three sheets; and limiting color blocks to seven or eight. The price for a single-sheet print was reset to sixteen mon, about the same price as a serving of soba noodles or a trip to the public bath. As they had always done, designers and publishers found ways to slip around these limits—for example, by making pictures of unnamed actors so famous they could be identified by their facial features.34 Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1769–1825), Toyokuni’s other great student, likewise came under review during this period. He, along with Kunisada, Eisen, Hiroshige, Utagawa Sadahide (1807–ca.1879), and Utagawa Yoshitora (active ca. 1836–1880), was required in early 1843 to verify that in the future he would no longer produce books of erotica or theatrical material or illustrations of actors, prostitutes, geisha, or even wise women, virtuous wives, and other loyal women. The final category—of women long held up as paragons of neo-Confucianism—seems rather strange since it should support rather than contest

140

CHAPTER 4

Tokugawa ethics, but perhaps it was because, as Timothy Clark has suggested, they were being drawn in contemporary fashions in ukiyo-e.35 If so, this was not the first time that otherwise laudable subject matter was seen as tarred by (what seemed to moralists as) the dissipation of the floating world. Whether or not Kuniyoshi intended his triptych The Earth Spider Conjures up Monsters at the Mansion of Minamoto no Raikō (Minamoto Raikō-kō yakata tsuchigumo saku yōkai no zu) as a satire of the recently installed shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi (1793–1853) and his councilor, Mizuno Tadakuni (1794–1851), cannot be ascertained (figure 63). But according to contemporary sources, plenty of viewers interpreted it as just that. The sleeping Minamoto no Raikō was seen as a stand-in for the incompetent Ieyoshi while Raikō’s vassal Urabe no Suetake seemed to be the scheming councilor leading the reforms. The horde of monsters, demons, and specters summoned by Tsuchigumo, the terrifying Earth Spider, to haunt Raikō’s dreams, were interpreted as signifying those punished or put out of professions by the harsh regime. The print seems to have generated other readings, too, resisting a single one, but it apparently caused so much discussion that the publisher, Ibaya Sen­ zaburō, preemptively removed it from sale to avoid prosecution. Those who made knockoffs to profit from the rumors were not so lucky. Utagawa Sadahide and his publisher were arrested, fined, and put into manacles; likewise, Utagawa Yoshitora, his publisher, and several print distributors were levied heavy fines (and some put into handcuffs) for twelve calendar prints.36 Although these disciplinary actions signal, on the one hand, harsh repercussions for these practitioners, on the other hand, they benefit historians with the records they generate. Just a decade later, Kuniyoshi designed another print, Miracle of Masterpieces by Floating-World Matabei (Ukiyo Matabei meiga no kidoku), that shows a figure who by then had become legend, Ukiyo Matabei, associated with painter Iwasa Matabei (included as one of the early practitioners by Nanpo). Here the painter’s designs in the folk style known as Ōtsu-e are literally coming to life, testaments to his creative genius. One of these figures, the handsome falconer, was interpreted as the young, recently installed shogun



Expanding Horizons 141

Figure 63. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, The Earth

Spider Conjures up Monsters at the Mansion of Minamoto no Raikō (Minamoto Raikō-kō yakata tsuchigumo saku yōkai no zu), 1843. Full-color woodblock triptych (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format triptych, 35.8 × 73.1 cm. Gift of William Sturgis Bigelow (11.39.572a-c), photograph © 2021, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Iesada (1824–1858) (figure 64). On the center-right panel, a falcon rests on the attractive youth’s upraised left arm; the word kan is written on his descending sleeve. Many read this as referring to the shogun’s hot temper (kanshaku); the surrounding figures were paralleled with his administration’s bureaucrats. Issued in the sixth month of 1853, the print was so sought after that some sixteen hundred impressions were produced per day to meet demand. After coming to the attention of the city magistrate’s office for spreading “false rumors,” it was quickly shut down: approval withdrawn, blocks and stock destroyed. The officials serving as censors were dismissed and Kuniyoshi and his publisher, fined. Subsequent investigation of Kuniyoshi’s motives cleared the artist

142

CHAPTER 4

but yielded much information about his family, living conditions, relations with his patron, studio, artistic practices, eccentric behaviors, and more.37 These cases demonstrate to what extent the shogunate, as well as readers and buyers of prints, regarded these ukiyo-e artists’ works as relevant to contemporary political and social dialogue. Thus, these incidents run counter to the assumptions that have been made all too often—that these materials were merely entertainment, were inconsequential, and were unappreciated. For those f locking to the shops or pressing writers for more, sheet prints and illustrated books offered more than escape; they could also provide another viewpoint on



Expanding Horizons 143

Figure 64. Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Miracle of Masterpieces by Floating-World Matabei (Ukiyo Matabei

meiga no kidoku), 1853; published by Koshimuraya Heisuke, block carved by Yokokawa Takejirō. Full-color woodblock diptych (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 37.7 × 48.7 cm. William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, photograph © 2021, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

matters of the present. The commentary was coded—after all, it had to be to pass through the censorship system—but it could be extracted and understood, functioning to create a larger imagined community. Floating-world printed matter of the kind we have seen so far was part of a larger communication system. Rumor and gossip reportedly spread like Edo’s famous fires. Manuscripts reporting on current events were considered so incendiary that they were often banned from circulating through the commercial book lenders.38 Cheaply produced broadsides shared both the real and the fantastic—some of

144

CHAPTER 4

Figure 65. Utagawa

Kuniyoshi, Scribblings on the Storehouse Wall (Nitakaragura kabe no mudagaki), ca. 1848; published by Ibaya Senzaburō. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 36 × 25.2 cm. Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library.

these featuring stories that compete with the most sensational newsstand articles of today—while graffiti inscribed on walls made much into mockery (figure 65). Letters and diaries, too, reported on these events. What is ironic is how efforts on the part of the shogunate to restrict critique and interpolation, to make them less visible, served to make them more apparent to us in the present, through actions taken and recorded. And people at that time would have been aware of that information being expressed through wordplay, puns, comparisons, and juxtapositions.



Expanding Horizons 145

This painting of the Chinese general Guan Yu (160–220) has resisted associations with period politics or other period sensibilities, but it surely must have conveyed more to those in the know through its coded references to loyalty (figure 66). At the center of the composition, Guan Yu concentrates on the go board before him while his physician Hua Tuo (d. 208) cuts open his arm. Servants below cringe and turn away in horror while Guan Yu’s son, Guan Ping, dispassionately observes the treatment. Behind them a banquet awaits on lacquer trays in the manner of a still life. At the lower right is the painter’s signature: Ōi Eijo hitsu, meaning “brush of Ōi, the woman Ei.” Followed by the Katsushika seal used by her father, Hokusai, this is one of the rare paintings signed by the hand of his third daughter, Katsushika Ōi (ca. 1800–ca. 1866).39 Her artistic name, Ōi, sounds like the word “Hey!,” and she apparently selected it in response to her father calling for her often in that manner. She wrote it using two characters meaning “loyal to Iitsu,” referring to the name Hokusai used after he turned sixty that meant “one again” (referring to the idea that he had lived through the sexagenary cycle and after sixty was starting over at the age of one). Her birth name of Ei is also sometimes rendered with an honorific before it, as Oei, in writings about her; throughout her career she often used Eijo, adding the character for woman after her name to signify her sex. Painted on silk, with ink, mineral, and other pigments, this work is of a size (140.2 × 68.2 cm) and quality that can only be the result of a special contract made with a well-to-do patron. This request for such a work demonstrates that Ōi was well respected as a painter in her own right and considered more than just the daughter of the famous Hokusai. Like her brother and her three sisters, Miyo, Tatsu, and Nao, she grew up working in her father’s workshop. Their brother became an apprentice in the mirror trade, fulfilling a family obligation, and became an artisan. Ōi and her sisters continued to assist their father—at least until they married and shifted their labor to their new families’ needs—in his atelier, alongside his students. In 1824 Ōi married one of her father’s students, Tsutsumi Tōmei (active 1804–1830). Three years later she was back in the workshop, divorced, it is reported,

146

CHAPTER 4

Figure 66. Katsushika Ōi,

Hua Tuo Operating on Guan Yu’s Arm, 1840s. Hanging scroll, ink, color, and gold leaf on silk, hanging scroll, overall 140.2 × 68.2 cm. Kelvin Smith Fund (1998.178), Cleveland Museum of Art.

after commenting too critically on her husband’s lack of painting skill. In 1827 Hokusai, then in his late sixties, suffered a stroke. After her mother, Kotome, died in 1828, Ōi became his caretaker as well as his collaborator, working by his side until his death. According to later reports, neither father nor daughter cared much for housework; both preferred to paint. Ōi’s extant body of work is rather meager for one who worked for so long: about ten paintings, three illustrated books, and a few illustrations here and there. Few women became known as named brushes during the period, no doubt due to the kinds of social and cultural constraints common to women worldwide then.40 She contributed to a poetry anthology featuring illustrations by the master himself, along with a number of his students, when she was about ten years old (figure 67). We know, too, that Ōi was regarded as extremely skilled by her father as well as her peers. In the same letter discussed earlier, Hokusai said, for example, that he had previously intended to have her make the preparatory drawings for One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, Explained by the Nurse (Hyakunin isshu uba ga etoki) but had decided to do them himself instead. He continued, “She is to do the next work, Pictures of Warriors (Musha-e zukushi). As for the fee, we have decided upon a fixed sum per human figure.”41 Hokusai also reportedly commented on another occasion that “when it comes to paintings of beautiful women, I can’t compete with her—she’s quite talented and expert in the technical aspects of painting.”42 Eisen described her as “skilled at drawing, and following after her father has become a professional artist (eshi) while acquiring a reputation as a talented painter.”43 Her knowledge of painting was so complete that she wrote a letter to a distant pupil explaining how to prepare the color red, illustrating the letter with fingers showing how to break the raw material down before beginning the process.44 She may have also contributed to Hokusai’s book on painting techniques. How many times she may have served as Hokusai’s ghost brush over the final decades of his career remains an open question. Turning back to the painting of Guan Yu, we can appreciate the dynamic arrangement of figures, the application of strong colors, and

148

CHAPTER 4

Figure 67. Katsushika Ōi, Kyōka Selected from Our Country (Kyōka kuni tsukushi), 1810. Wood-

block-printed book, ink on paper, fukurotoji binding, 22 × 15 cm. Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

the compositional juxtaposition of violence against order. After the Ming dynasty novel The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (San’guo yanyi) was published in Japanese as Tsūzoku Sangokushi from 1689 to 1692 and subsequently dramatized, the story of Guan Yu and his loyalty to General Liu Bei became a topic for painters and ukiyo-e illustrators alike.45 The choice, however, to show the gruesome moment here—a surgical intervention to remove poison lodged in the bone, the result of an arrow blow—was rather exceptional. Ōi’s painting has been dated to the 1840s, and given period politics, it seems quite likely that Ōi’s composition offered veiled critique to those in the know. Surely a patron intending to put such a composition by the famous daughter of



Expanding Horizons 149

Hokusai on prominent display was seeking to make a statement about loyalty and leadership. Although we cannot know the identity of Ōi’s patron, a transaction between Hiroshige and Oda Nobumichi (1819–1891) is evidence of a commission between a high-status patron and an ukiyo-e master. The details of this case also provide further evidence of the fees yielded for paintings and of their value in the commodities market. Oda, daimyo of the Tendō domain, commissioned some two hundred paintings (mostly diptychs) from Hiroshige and gave these as gifts in lieu of cash to pay his creditors, many of whom were merchants. He also used these paintings to broker additional loans. Through the scheme, Oda managed to raise some six thousand ryō (an enormous sum in a world where this large gold coin might buy a year’s worth of rice for a single person). However, as Timon Screech points out, this does not mean a pair of Hiroshige paintings was worth as much as sixty gold ryō. Rather, it is more likely these paintings would have been valued at one to two ryō each (and perhaps this was the fee received by Hiroshige). Yet, by being gifted by the daimyo to men of lower ranks, the works would have carried prestige status that far exceeded their monetary value.46 Floating-world images thus served other political and cultural ends. Much has been said of Hiroshige’s skill in composing striking images, as well as his ability to capture the atmospheric effects of times of day and seasons. One of his most important final series is surely One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), a project so popular that it came to number more than one hundred and had some compositions provided by Hiroshige II. It is now highly appreciated for its compositional innovations and printing techniques, as may be seen in this eerie vision of foxy tricksters meeting by night (figure 68). Some of these scenes of the city offer alternate interpretations (figure 69). This remarkable print presents an eagle boldly flying in from beyond the upper border and swooping over the expansive plain. From the visible wood grain to the patterned cartouche to the shading at top and bottom, this print pays homage to the master craftsmanship of its carvers and printers. Along the left, the two circular seals signify that the design went through the review process before going to print,

150

CHAPTER 4

Figure 68. Utagawa Hiroshige, New Year’s Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji (Ōji Shōzoku

enoki Ōmisoka no kitsunebi), from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), 1857; published by Uoya Eikichi. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 37 × 24.8 cm. Gift of Dr. Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

dating this design to the fifth month of 1857.47 Below these two seals is the mark for publisher Uoya Eikichi. Perhaps it is enough to marvel at this picture as though from the eagle’s-eye view. Yet another reading is present here too. Associating the bird of prey with the art of falconry and the military class, the eagle flying over the city becomes the symbol of the shogunate. Like all those who lived under its wings, floating-world artists and authors were both protected by and subject to that regime, producing work at its pleasure. Figure 69. Utagawa

Hiroshige, The Ten Thousand Tsubo Plain at Susaki in Fukagawa (Fukagawa Susaki jūmantsubo), from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places of Edo (Meisho Edo hyakkei), 1857; published by Uoya Eikichi. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 36.5 × 24.4 cm. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Lessing J. Rosenwald, 1959 (1959-93-5), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

152

CHAPTER 4

Epilogue Evoking the Floating World To present mountains and waters dynamically with storms, lightning, and torrents was what Hokusai enjoyed. To add greater calm to a lonely night scene with rain, snow, moonlight, and bright stars was what Hiroshige did best. —Nagai Kafū, 1914

The story of all things ukiyo-e is frequently brought to a close in the second half of the nineteenth century, often at the point when Commodore Perry arrives in 1853 or with the Meiji Restoration of 1868. These events mark, in such narratives, political and material transitions that signal the beginning of the end of these pictures of the floating world. Yet like all histories, this one is more complicated. Floatingworld-style woodblock prints were harnessed to represent those very changes. Whether showing the arrival of the American Black Ships belching smoke as a historical event or the foreigners allowed to reside in Yokohama as a contemporary one, floating-world images like these, of a changing world, were clearly profitable for publishers no longer

153

shackled by prohibitions on representing contemporary events (figures 70 and 71). These pictures showed the events of the day, bringing a new subject to the medium of woodblock printing. Many more would follow over the next several decades, demonstrating how nimbly their producers adapted to changing conditions. Indeed, using that moment of historical transition as an end point elides to what extent the floating world and its visual expressions continued and obscures how much weight they bore for future generations. Yet things did change under the terms of the new political regime. The establishment of the Meiji nation-state brought the era of Tokugawa polity to an end. Over time, nearly all sectors of social order were reconstructed from their foundations. Newer forms of media, including newspapers, photography, lithography, and more, came into

Figure 70. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Chronicle of the Imperial Restoration (Kōkoku isshin kenbunshi), 1876.

Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 36.8 × 23.8 cm. Bequest of William S. Lieberman, 2005 (2007.49.312), Metropolitan Museum of Art.

154

Epilogue

Figure 71. Utagawa Sadahide, An American Woman Playing an Accordion (Amerika nyokan akodeon

wo hiku no zu), from People of Foreign Lands Drawn from Life (Ikiutsushi ikoku jinbutsu), ca. 1860; published by Yamaguchiya Tōbei. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 36.8 × 25.1 cm. Purchased with the Lola Downin Peck Fund and with funds contributed by Lessing J. Rosenwald, Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Hauslohner, Dr. Emanuel Wolff, the Derald and Janet Ruttenberg Foundation, Mrs. Edward G. Budd, Jr., and David P. Willis, 1968, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

use over the following decades and changed the ways images could be reproduced and circulated, some truly on a massive scale. Yet for those enmeshed in all things ukiyo, on the other hand, the transition to the Meiji nation-state was gradual and not at all total. Woodblock prints and illustrated books remained viable means of illustrating those long-appreciated subjects of actors, beauties, warriors, famous places, and others. Some of those ukiyo-e mainstays remained visible, some becoming even more prominent, while others moved into the shadows. Their makers adapted these topics and picked up new ones to extend and transform the reach of the print medium, developing mokuhanga—woodblock printing—as an art form on its own terms. As others have more carefully and thoroughly discussed, Meiji government initiatives harnessed many artistic and literary practices to serve its larger aspirations for international regard. Over time, systems of artistic appreciation—and indeed, even the idea of “Art”—changed significantly, deployed as an essential part of the larger cultural project of building institutions, professions, and practices to match those of the great European nations and the United States. Ukiyo-e was left out of the definition of “fine art” (bijutsu) in these venues, as well as out of the emerging dialectic wherein “Western-style painting” Yōga and “Japanese-­style painting” (Nihonga) were set into opposition (with “Western” replacing the centuries-old position occupied by “China”). Notably, the emphasis in that new dialectic was upon painting. But ukiyo-e was not the only visual form disregarded in this redefinition of artistic practice. Much of the longue durée of Chinese-style painting as well as styles too eccentric to factor into this neat pairing (of Japan and the “West”) were likewise shuttled to the side (but nonetheless carried on in alternate venues). Some forms of artistic practice with long histories of appreciation were likewise reconfigured as “craft” or “folk art.” Pictures of the floating world were not celebrated or promoted in official venues; places in the grand exhibition halls were reserved for works that benefited the Meiji nation’s push to be seen as modern. Among these, Nihonga (as Japanese-style painting came to be redefined), bronze sculpture, large-scale ceramics, and similar works demonstrating both a “Japanese” aesthetic as well as technical prowess were selected as

156

Epilogue

the artistic face of the nation. Few ukiyo works were shown at world’s fairs or in the new national museums in Japan.1 Perhaps with so much of its imagery based upon popular culture (as well as the sex trade), quite a lot of ukiyo-e would be seen as not refined enough for official presentation. Meiji Japan was, after all, a country with global aspirations that aimed to match Victorian England and other nation-states. Yet at home, much of the floating world remained present and visible in the same ways it always had and for many of the same consumers. Kabuki, sumo, warriors, and famous places retained their appeal on a local level, flourishing in the major cities and beyond, just as they had always done. As the Meiji era went on, and as the need for “tradition” was further articulated, some of these were neatly fit into a scheme of things defined as essential for Japan. Over time, kabuki became one of the national theater forms, sumo turned into a national sport, and famous places integrated into tourist trade, all redefined within larger efforts to promote the nation and legacies in a frame of “tradition.” The topic of beautiful women, so long a mainstay of ukiyo-e, could likewise be decoupled from the sex trade and reappropriated in ways familiar around the modern world. Images of attractive women were employed to sell soap, wine, kimono, and other commodities— sexy sells, after all. And while the sex trade itself was not defined as tradition in the same way as kabuki and sumo, the continued operation of the licensed Yoshiwara district until 1958 and the establishment of “comfort stations” throughout the Pacific War, to take up just two examples, demonstrate how much the regulation of sex remained profitable for some. Sex for hire remains present to this day, often taking alternate forms, such as massage parlor, phone, and Internet sex, along with others. Titillating encounters (technically without selling sexual acts) are also available through hostess bars, risqué coffee shops, and elsewhere. The continued fetishization of the figures of the “geisha” and the “courtesan” through the present (with all that is implied by putting those terms into quotation marks)—both in Japan and beyond its borders—is likewise part of a certain mystique accorded to the past, both domestically and internationally. All these demonstrate how parts of the so-called floating world have thus been put into a modern harness



Epilogue 157

(and, some might say, sanitized in the process), while other aspects have morphed into forms that serve modern desires. But what of the pictures of the floating world? If it seems too harsh to draw a hard line at 1868 when so many practitioners were continuing to work in the style, how do we account for the eventual shift in form and content over the Meiji era? The nitty-gritty of how, when, where, and for whom seems like another story; one that reaches beyond the scope of this present work. Yet it is worth thinking a bit here about how—at the moment when artists and collectors abroad were “discovering” the form—ukiyo-e was being reimagined and reappraised at home. Saitō Gesshin’s (1804–1878) manuscript expanded the ukiyo-e canon we encountered earlier. His Collected Writings on Ukiyo-e, Enlarged and Revised (Zōho Ukiyo-e ruikō), dating to 1844, demonstrates the existence of a continued desire to write that canon. Comparing Saitō’s text with earlier versions leads one to wonder how he constructed his version—there are no footnotes and no bibliography, much to the modern historian’s frustration—although generous-minded individuals will say that Saitō must have garnered information from sources yet extant and from people with long memories.2 And yet, his text also incorporated rumor and myth, as Suzuki Jūzō has discussed elsewhere, in order to expand upon the very little evidence that remained for many of its subjects.3 Iijima Kyoshin (1841–1901) likewise conducted research for his 1893 biography of Hokusai, reportedly on the urging of art historian Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1898). Writing this some forty years after Hokusai’s death, Kyoshin’s exercise was also one of following traces to find scant materials, as well as recording anecdotes, both of which put him (and us) tantalizingly closer to the master.4 Taking these documents up with attention to how they participate in discourses around artistic practice—especially at that moment when those writing the stories of Japanese art were encountering the kinds of rhetoric and myths present in European art history—is of continuing interest for the field as a whole.5 Much can be understood by putting these documents into dialogue, too, with other kinds of period material, from book prefaces to collector’s albums to inventories and more.

158

Epilogue

In the later nineteenth century, Japanese things of all kinds were gathered up for trade in hard currency. Prints were among the goods packaged for export. European and American dealers were active in this trade, and Japanese dealers Hayashi Tadamasa (1853–1906), Kobayashi Bunshichi (1863–1923), and others likewise saw the opportunity for profit. Some, like Hayashi, astutely groomed their buyers, mixing fact with fiction as part of their trade. Between 1890 and 1901, Hayashi exported a vast number of things from Japan to his shop in Paris: 156,487 prints, 10 handscrolls, 90 preparatory drawings, 9,708 volumes of illustrated books, 846 painted screens and hanging scrolls, and 20 boxes of woodblocks.6 He also shared his knowledge freely with his clients, influencing their interpretations, as may be seen in Edmond de Goncourt’s (1822–1896) monographs on Utamaro and Hokusai.7 Kobayashi Bunshichi operated out of Tokyo and sold to clients worldwide. So many fakes—or heavily retouched works—passed through Kobayashi’s hands that one longtime customer, American collector Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919), eventually refused to purchase any more.8 Praising these buyers for their exquisite taste, while at the same time spinning the idea of a lack of the same in Japan, must have served this business well. Indeed, the reception of Japanese art in Paris, London, New York, and elsewhere and its adaptation by and for these distant salons and studios had a profound effect on aesthetics, culture, and national identity in these venues. Yet many at home remained committed to ukiyo-e, collecting, critiquing, and perpetuating the form. Kobayashi Bunshichi’s collection of one hundred thousand prints and many additional paintings is a prime example of the kind of acquisition many pursued. Sadly, Kobayashi’s stockpile—and that of many others—was lost in the devastating fires that destroyed Tokyo after the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923.9 Many of these Japanese aficionados had ties to the previous generation, while others had vested economic interests at stake. While this is also too large a topic to take up thoroughly here, let us consider a few examples (and encourage those more curious to continue their study). One of the most influential painters, Kawanabe Kyōsai (1831– 1889), studied with Kuniyoshi as a child (from about the age of seven to nine) and later with Kano painter Maemura Tōwa (d. 1853).



Epilogue 159

Figure 72. Kawanabe Kyōsai, Kyōsai’s Treatise on Painting (Kyōsai gadan), 1887; published by Uryū

Masayasu. Woodblock-printed book, ink on paper, fukurotoji binding, 25.5 × 17.6 cm. Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

He became one of the most prolific and exceptional painters of the era, rendering his own interpretations of long-standing themes. In Kyōsai’s Treatise on Painting (Kyōsai gadan), published by Uryū Masayasu (1821– 1893) in 1887, Kyōsai recounts his training and his development as a master of that long tradition (figure 72). This book presents his deep understanding of the history of Japanese painting and includes lineage charts and copies of images in what is surely one of the most extensive

160

Epilogue

Figure 73. Kawanabe Kyōsai, Kyōsai’s Treatise on Painting (Kyōsai gadan), 1887; published by Uryū

Masayasu. Woodblock-printed book, ink on paper, fukurotoji binding, 25.5 × 17.6 cm. Arthur Tress Collection of Japanese Illustrated Books, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

early treatments of the subject. The treatise also includes page studies of details of individual styles in ukiyo-e, including examples for the artists Matabei, Moronobu, Masanobu, Utamaro, Hokusai, and Kuni­ yoshi, among others, as may be seen in this page of sketches in the style of Toyoharu and Toyokuni (figure 73).10 Kyōsai became one of the great painters of his era, developing an eccentric and yet historically grounded individual style.



Epilogue 161

His contemporary Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (1839–1892) also trained with Kuniyoshi and became one of the great designers of woodblock prints. During the early part of his career, he contributed gory illustrations of contemporary crimes, produced as woodblock-print inserts, to period newspapers, exemplifying how modernization opened up new opportunities for the trade. Yoshitoshi’s turbulent personal life and spectacular imagery made him one of the most celebrated artists of his day, with his One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (1885–1892) regarded today as among the greatest achievements in woodblock printing in this era (figure 74). His contemporaries Toyohara Kunichika (1835–1900) and Yōshū Chikanobu (1838–1912) likewise adapted Utagawa precedents for a market transforming before them (figures 75 and 76).11 These are just a few of the artists who adapted ukiyo-e style for their present and, like their predecessors, continued to work in collaboration with publishers, carvers, and printers. This Meiji era practice is so vibrant and so complex that subsequent rumors of the demise of the woodblock print in this period are greatly exaggerated. Yet the competing technologies of image production—and the potential to produce images more cheaply and in greater numbers—definitely had an impact on the market for woodblock prints. By the early twentieth century, publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885–1962) began pursuing how to reinvent the medium for a new audience, employing artists, carvers, and printers to produce Shin hanga, or, literally, “new woodblock pictures.” He also put his teams to making recuts of selected ukiyo-e, turning these into iconic standards for the present (figure 77). Watanabe selected contemporary artists to design subjects for Shin hanga, but their designs did not show the present as it was; the rapid modernization that was part of modern life is only occasionally glimpsed in these prints. Instead, these typically repackaged sites and subjects in ways that cast them as “traditional,” combining painting practices, photography, and nostalgia to present an idealized, romanticized Japan.12 Some, such as this image of the Kamakura Buddha by Kawase Hasui (1883–1957), depicted places that became even more famous in the Meiji period due to the rise of foreign tourism (figure 78).13 Several artists who initially worked with Watanabe

162

Epilogue

Figure 74. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Ishiyama Moon (Ishiyama no tsuki), from the series One Hundred

Aspects of the Moon (Tsuki hyakushi), 1889; published by Akiyama Buemon. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 39.4 × 26.7 cm. Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1989, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Figure 75. Toyohara Kunichika, Actor Ichimura Uzaemon XIII as Carpenter, from

the series Thirty-Six Views of the Eastern Capital (Tōto sanjūrokkei), 1865. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format, 35.7 × 24.1 cm. Tom Musco Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Figure 76. Yōshū Chikanobu, Picture of Boys’ Festival (Tango no zu), from Edo sunako nenjū gyōji,

1885. Full-color woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper, ōban format triptych, 36 × 72.2 cm. Tom Musco Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

went on to produce their own prints, albeit in a style that perpetuated the nostalgic gaze, and some even made images of landscapes beyond Japan’s borders (figure 79). However, at the same time, some artists chose not to work for a publisher, becoming instead the masters of all tasks—designing, carving, printing, and in some cases even marketing, their prints in what became known as the sōsaku hanga (creative print) movement.14 While Edo-period ukiyo-e was not typically included in government-­ sponsored venues, such as international exhibitions, it was of interest to connoisseurs and historians throughout this period. Meiji critics, historians, and others established journals of art criticism. Ukiyo-e paintings came into discussion in the journal Kokka, first published in 1889 and continuing to the present. Ukiyo-e, published



Epilogue 165

Figure 77. Katsushika Hokusai, Fine Wind, Clear Weather (Gaifū kaisei), from the series Thirty-Six

Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), ca. 1946–1957; published by Watanabe Shōzaburō. Full-color woodblock print, ink and color on paper, ōban format, 25.7 × 38 cm. Tom Musco Collection, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania Libraries.

Figure 78. (Opposite page) Kawase Hasui (1883–1957), The Great Buddha at Kamakura (Kamakura

Daibutsu), 1930; published by Watanabe Shōzaburō. Full-color woodblock print, ink and color on paper, 39.4 × 26.4 cm. Bequest of Mrs. Staunton B. Peck, 1965 (1965-50-16), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Figure 79. Yoshida Hiroshi (1876–1950), El Capitan, Yosemite Valley (Yosemittodani Eru Kyapitan),

1925. Full-color woodblock print, ink and color on paper, 41.9 × 27.3 cm. Bequest of Althea de B. Budd, 1973 (1973-202-39), Philadelphia Museum of Art.

from 1915 to 1920, took an even more expansive study of individual works, as well as practitioners; artist Hashiguchi Goyō (1880–1921) contributed to this journal, writing from the view of someone actively participating in its modern adaptations. No doubt recognizing that the places where artists and others lived and worked was literally under redevelopment, some of these critics and enthusiasts preserved, constructed, and even rebuilt significant markers of the past. The decision to move the site of Utamaro’s interment—and to give his site a bigger marker at the new location—signified just this kind of interest.15 Exhibitions both domestic and abroad were spurred on, no doubt, by the growing market in both locations. Part of the story thereafter can be charted through all these trajectories of appreciation, in exhibitions and auctions, conferences and international societies, books and journals, and more. Later artists’ use of ukiyo-e images as source material and the employment of these images to signal “Japan” more broadly demonstrate, too, how much they continue to represent a floating world both real and imagined. The study of ukiyo-e as an academic pursuit is harder to track. How the field became a field, and its historiographic development, is yet another topic beyond the scope of this project but one certainly worthy of deeper analysis. If we might measure its development in classrooms and assignments, it seems evident that it was being taught seriously in Japan earlier than it was beyond its borders—and yet it may be argued that it did not become an ongoing concern at major universities until the later decades of the twentieth century. Shifting ukiyo-e from popular culture to “art”—and thus making it more appropriate for the academy—was a long and contested process. At the turn of our present century, one of the founding scholars in the field, Narazaki Muneshige (1904–2001), relayed to me in conversation how much of a struggle it had been to establish ukiyo-e as a proper, academically valued subject of study. Yet as the field of popular culture has emerged over the past few decades as a worthy topic—encouraged, too, in Japan and beyond by the economic juggernaut of all things manga and anime— the study of floating-world writing, pictures, performance, and more has come to occupy a place where it meets the standards of both art and



Epilogue 169

Figure 80. Bank of Japan 1,000 yen note.

pop in a variety of disciplinary fields, including literature, art, theater, culture, and others. There is more work to be done. Major artists remain unstudied, their catalogues raissonnés yet unwritten, and many themes wait to be explored. And we need to push harder at what it is we mean when we put something “in context.” On one level that means relocating the work from our contemporary moment and placing it in its past, with attention to all that historical engagement requires. And yet at the same time, we must keep in sight that what we have remaining in the present is a product of selection, affected by all that has occurred over and through time. The life history of the work, and of all its encounters, constitutes another context that requires closer attention. Indeed, throughout its life the image continues to perform its illusions for our consumption. These pictures of the floating world may have been as ephemeral as the cresting wave or the sunrise glow on the mountain, yet in seizing that fleeting moment, they captured and celebrated the experience of the perception of time and space. At the start of this text, I recounted that in Japan “Red Fuji” had been preferred over “The Great Wave” and suggested why this might have been the case. Yet “The Great Wave” has recently achieved greater currency in

170

Epilogue

Japan, both literally and figuratively. In early April 2019, in advance of the upcoming ceremonies surrounding the ascension of the new emperor, the Bank of Japan announced it would be issuing new paper money.16 Among these was the new 1,000 yen note, with Hokusai’s wave gracing its reverse (as may be seen in this photograph published at the time; figure 80). With this new imprint, the image was multiplied on a scale the artist and his publisher never imagined. Perhaps this move, more than any other, demonstrates the place that ukiyo-e has achieved in our contemporary world. Appreciating and preserving these pictures of the f loating world, then as now, attests to the ways these were meant, from the start, to be more than simply diversions. They were designed to express a worldview that valued taking pleasure in the moment as well as profiting from its representation.



Epilogue 171

NOTES

Introduction 1. Japanese art dealer Joan Mirviss wrote in an e-mail to the Japan Art History Forum list that in the thirty-five years she had been a dealer she had never seen prints that showed signs of use as packing material; she also pointed out that prints would be of insufficient size to wrap around ceramics (March 31, 2013). 2. Max Put, “Japanese Prints in Europe, 1860–1930,” in The Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints, ed. Amy Reigle Newland (Amsterdam: Hotei Books, 2005), 387. 3. Léonce Bénédite, “Félix Bracquemond: L’Animalier,” Art et Décoration 17 (1905): 39. 4. Toshio Watanabe, High Victorian Japonisme (Bern: Peter Lang, 1991), 83–85, revising the previously cited date of 1856 for Bracquemond’s visit to 1859. 5. Ibid. 6. “Utamaro Woodblock Print Fetches World-Record €745,000 in Paris,” Japan Times, June 23, 2016, accessed July 26, 2017, http://www.japantimes.co.jp /news/2016/06/23/national/18th-century-utamaro-woodblock-print-fetchesworld-record-e745000-paris/. 7. Christine M. E. Guth, Hokusai’s Great Wave: Biography of a Global Icon (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015). 8. See, for example, Kano Hiroyuki’s discussion of this image in E wa kataru 14— Katsushika Hokusai hitsu “Gaifū kaisei” (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1994). 9. See Yuka Noji, “Eye Tracking Based Analysis of Effects of Motif Composition on Impressions of Paintings: In the case of Katsushika Hokusai’s ‘Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji’” (working paper, International Conference on Kansai Engineering and Emotion Research, June 11–13, 2014). 10. Asai Ryōi, Ukiyo monogatari (A tale of the floating world), ca. 1665, in Kanazōshishū, Taniwaki Masachika, Oka Masahiko, Inoue Kazuhito, Shinpen Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, vol. 64 (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1999), 88.

173

11. For more on these issues for painting studies, see Timothy Clark, Ukiyo-e Paintings in the British Museum (London: British Museum Press, 1992). 12. Naitō Akira, Edo, the City That Became Tokyo: An Illustrated History (New York: Kodansha, 2003), 99. 13. See Howard Saul Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Julie Nelson Davis, Partners in Print: Artistic Collaboration and the Ukiyo-e Market (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015). 14. My translation, in Newland, Hotei Encyclopedia, 137. 15. This term is adapted from Andrew Lawrence Markus, The Willow in Autumn: Ryūtei Tanehiko, 1783–1842 (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1992). 16. See Ōnishi Hiroshi, ed., “Nihon Chugoku no geijutsuka densetsu,” in Geijutsuka densetsu (Tokyo: Perikansha, 1989). 17. Naitō Masato, “The Origins of Ukiyo-e,” in Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World, 1690–1850, ed. Anne Nishimura Morse (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2007), 38. 18. Naitō, “Origins of Ukiyo-e”; Timon Screech, “Owning Edo-Period Paintings,” in Acquisition: Art and Ownership in Edo-Period Japan, ed. Elizabeth Lillehoj (Warren, CT: Floating World Editions, 2007), 23–51. 19. Comparisons may be made to similar documents, such as Kano Sansetsu and Kano Einō’s A History of Painting in Japan (Honchō gashi, published 1691) and Georgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori, published 1550), for example. 20. Ōta Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, in vol. 18 of Ōta Nampo zenshū, ed. Hamada Giichirō (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1988); Yura Tetsuji, Soko Nihon ukiyo-e ruikō (Tokyo: Gabundō, 1979). 21. See Michael Ann Holly, Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the Image (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 1–28.

Chapter 1: Inventing the Pictures of the Floating World 1. David Waterhouse, “Hishikawa Moronobu: Tracking Down an Elusive Master,” in Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680–1860, ed. Julia Meech and Jane Oliver (New York: Asia Society and Japanese Art Society of America; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008), 33.

174

Notes to Pages 10–22

2. See Susan Bush and Hsio-yen Shih, Early Chinese Texts on Painting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University Press, 1985). 3. On ekphrasis, see David Carrier, Principles of Art History Writing (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 101–119. 4. On issues pertaining to this document, see Julie Nelson Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty (repr., Reaktion Books, 2020; London: Reaktion Books; Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007), 27–32. 5. Ōta Nanpo’s manuscript, Ukiyo-e kōshō, dated to 1802, is transcribed and included in Ōta Nanpo zenshū, ed. Hamada Giichirō, vol. 18 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1988), 437. Here, as elsewhere, my translation unless otherwise noted. 6. According to the Nihon Kokugo daijiten, the first appearance of hanga may be dated to 1901 and the first use of mokuhanga is also in 1901; Japan Knowledge database, accessed February 15, 2018. 7. See, among others, Mary Elizabeth Berry, Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Peter F. Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1998); Nakane Chie and Ōishi Shinzaburō, eds., Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan, trans. Conrad D. Totman (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1990). 8. Moriya Katsuhisa, “Urban Networks and Information Networks,” trans. Ronald P. Toby, in Nakane and Ōishi, Tokugawa Japan, 115–116. Moriya here summarizes Inoue Takaaki’s important research in Kinsei shorin hanmoto sōran (Musashimurayama: Seishōdō shoten, 1981). 9. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 438–440. 10. On printed books and the use of copy books in painting ateliers, see Karen M. Gerhart, “Talent, Training, and Power: The Kano Painting Workshop in the Seventeenth Century,” in Copying the Master and Stealing His Secrets: Talent and Training in Japanese Painting, ed. Brenda G. Jordan and Victoria Weston (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003), 9–30. 11. See, for example, Yadoya no Meshimori’s preface to the Ehon kotoba no hana, illustrated by Kitagawa Utamaro, where he states that “Ukiyo-e has Hishikawa as its progenitor, Ebisu-uta [kyōka] has Kyōgetsu as its master,” referring to Moronobu for images and to poet Reizei Tamemori for poetry. Julie Nelson Davis, entry for Ehon kotoba no hana, Pulverer Collection of Japanese illustrated books, accessed September 19, 2019, http://pulverer.si.edu/node/393/title/1.



Notes to Pages 23–31

175

12. The terms used to describe Moronobu as a “master of Japanese painting” are Yamato-eshi and Nihon-eshi, in Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 338–339. See also Waterhouse, “Hishikawa Moronobu: Tracking Down an Elusive Master.” 13. Dale Carolyn Gluckman and Sharon Sadako Takeda, When Art Became Fashion: Kosode in Edo-Period Japan (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: Weatherhill, 1992) also presents these books in comparison with period garments. 14. For more on Moronobu, see Helen Mitsu Nagata, “Reading a Pictorial Narrative: A Study of the Illustrations Attributed to Hishikawa Moronobu in Yoshiwara Koi No Michibiki (A Guide to Love in the Yoshiwara, 1678)” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 2000); Waterhouse, “Hishikawa Moronobu: Tracking Down an Elusive Master”; Chiba City Museum of Art, Hishikawa Moronobu ten: Chiba-shi Bijutsukan kaikan goshūnen kinen (Chiba, Japan: Chiba-shi bijutsukan, 2000); Asano Shūgō, “Hishikawa Moronobu: Thoughts on the Publication and the Distribution of His Work,” in The Commercial and Cultural Climate of Japanese Printmaking, Hotei Academic European Studies on Japan, ed. Amy Reigle Newland (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2004), 23–43, among others. 15. Nagata, Reading a Pictorial Narrative, 8. 16. For a fully digitized copy, see the Pulverer Collection, FSC-GR-780.90, 1–3, accessed March 5, 2018, http://pulverer.si.edu/node/501/title/1. 17. On wakashu and Moronobu, see Joshua Mostow, “The Gender of Wakashu and the Grammar of Desire,” in Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, ed. Joshua Mostow, Norman Bryson, and Maribeth Graybill (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003), 49–70. See also Joshua S. Mostow, Asato Ikeda, and Ryoko Matsuba, A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Edo-Period Prints and Paintings (1600–1868) (Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 2016). 18. See Kobayashi Tadashi, “The Kanbun Bijin: Setting the Stage for Ukiyo-e Bijinga,” trans. and adapt. Julie Nelson Davis, in Newland, Hotei Encyclopedia, 83–87. 19. In English, see, among others: Terry Satsuki Milhaupt, Kimono: A Modern History (London: Reaktion Books, 2014); Rachael Saunders, “Kimono Pattern Books in the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,” Andon: Bulletin of the Society for Japanese Arts and Crafts 83 (2008): 49–57; and Takeda, When Art Became Fashion. 20. Ihara Saikaku, Irozato mitokoro setai (Three noteworthy sexual situations, 1688), in Envisioning the Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production, trans. and ed. Haruo Shirane (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 181.

176

Notes to Pages 32–34

21. Idemitsu Bijutsukan, Nikuhitsu ukiyoe: Idemitsu Korekushon no subete (Tokyo: Idemitsu bijutsukan, 2007), 211. 22. I have discussed this painting previously in “Peindre les couleurs du Monde flottant: Réflexions sur le peintre de l’ukiyo-e et son art” (Painting the colors of the floating world: Reflections on the ukiyo-e painter and his art), in Splendeurs des courtisanes—Japon, peintures Ukiyo-e du musée Idemitsu, trans. Elisabeth Luc, ed. Michel Maucuer (Paris: Cernuschi Museum), 41–42. 23. See, for example, the excellent study by Amy Stanley, Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 24. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 442. 25. See Mostow, Ikeda, and Matsuba, Third Gender. 26. Translation and research for this print by Naoko Adachi; see, accessed June 5, 2018, http://web.sas.upenn.edu/japaneseprints/okumura-masanobu/. 27. Ando occasionally illustrated military subjects. See, for example, The Battle of Kawanakajima, Idemitsu Bijutsukan, Idemitsu Collection, Nikuhitsu ukiyoe, catalogue number 38. See also Moronobu, vol. 2, Nikuhitsu ukiyo-e (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1982) and Anne Nishimura Morse and Asano Shūgō, Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World, 1690–1850 (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2007), 71. 28. Naitō, Drama and Desire, 37. 29. Translation by Screech, “Owning Edo-Period Paintings,” 38; see also Hida Akizō, “Santō Kyōden shokan-shū,” in Kinsei no gakugei: Shiden no kōshō, ed. Sankōkai (Tokyo: Yagi shoten, 1976), 400. 30. See Clark, Ukiyo-e Paintings in the British Museum. 31. For more on known prices for paintings in the Edo period, see Screech, “Owning Edo-Period Paintings,” 23–51. 32. Linda Nochlin’s “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” Art News, January 1971, 20–39, 67–91, remains useful in this discussion; on women artists in the period, see Patricia Fister and Fumiko Y. Yamamoto, Japanese Women Artists, 1600–1900 (Lawrence, KS: Spencer Museum of Art; Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1988). 33. Idemitsu Bijutsukan, Nikuhitsu ukiyoe, 217. For discussion of later votive paintings of actors, see Hilary K. Snow, “Votive Paintings of the Kabuki Actors Ichikawa Danjūrō at Naritasan Shinshōji Temple,” Archives of Asian Art 62 (2012): 69–79.



Notes to Pages 36–46

177

34. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 441. 35. Asano Shūgō, ed., Nishikie tanjō 250-nen, Firaderufia Bijutsukan ukiyoe meihinten, Harunobu ichiban! Sharaku niban! (Osaka: Yomiuri shinbun and Abeno Harukas bijutsukan, 2015), cat. entry 3, 36. 36. For an overview of this play, see Kabuki 21, accessed June 4, 2018, https:// www.kabuki21.com/narukami.php. It became one of the Ichikawa standards, and in 1840 it was selected as one of the eighteen aragoto-style featuring bombastic warrior roles played by Ichikawa Danjūrō I and performed by those that inherited the Danjūrō name. 37. Asano Shūgō, Firaderufia Bijutsukan ukiyoe meihinten, cat. entry 3, 36. 38. Ibid., cat. entry 4, 37. 39. Ibid., cat. entry 7, 40. 40. Richard H. Mitchell, Censorship in Imperial Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 4; Suwa Haruo, Shuppan kotohajime: Edo no hon (Tokyo: Mainichi shinbunsha, 1978), 163–164; and Sarah E. Thompson, “The Politics of Japanese Prints,” in Undercurrents in the Floating World: Censorship and Japanese Prints, ed. Sarah E. Thompson and H. D. Harootunian (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1991), 29–100. 41. Matthi Forrer, The Printed Image: The Flowering of Japan’s Woodblock Printing Culture (Köln: Buchhandlung Walther König, 2018), 46. 42. See Donald H. Shively, “Sumptuary Regulation and Status in Early Tokugawa Japan,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 25 (1964–1965): 123–164. 43. See Thompson, “Politics of Japanese Prints.”

Chapter 2: Creating the Brocade Pictures of the East 1. The discussion of linear perspective in this section is indebted to Timon Screech, “The Meaning of Western Perspective in Edo Popular Culture,” Archives of Asian Art 47 (1994): 58–69. 2. Ibid., 58–69; see also Matthi Forrer, “From Optical Prints to Ukie to Ukiyo-e: The Adoption and Adaptation of Western Linear Perspective in Japan,” in Mediating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in Asia, ed. Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Michael North (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), 245–266. 3. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 442. 4. As Donald Jenkins notes, the date of this print has been deduced from the

178

Notes to Pages 46–56

5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

16.



actors’ crests shown on these lanterns since 1745 was the only date when all appeared onstage together; see “The Roots of Ukiyo-e: Its Beginnings to the Mid-eighteenth Century,” in Newland, Hotei Encyclopedia, 68. On Danjūrō and this play, see Lawrence Kominz, “Ya no Ne: The Genesis of a Kabuki Aragoto Classic,” Monumenta Nipponica 38, no. 4 (Winter 1983): 387–407. Asano Shūgō, Firaderufia Bijutsukan ukiyoe meihinten, cat. entry 10, p. 43. Jenkins, “Roots of Ukiyo-e,” 69. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 443. Jean M. Kenmotsu, “The Color Revolution: Printed Books in Eighteenth-­ Century Japan” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2016), 39. See also Kenmotsu’s discussion of a later printing of the same title online, accessed September 20, 2018, http://pulverer.si.edu/node/492/title/2. Quintana Roo Irigon Heathman, “Beyond Landscape: Imagining Place in Later Edo Print Culture” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2018), 221–222; see also Matthi Forrer, Egoyomi and Surimono: Their History and Development (Uithoorn, the Netherlands: J. C. Gieben, 1979), 11. Thompson, “Politics of Japanese Prints,” 56. See this example, Daruma and Young Woman in the Rain, Art Institute of Chicago, accession number 1930.376, accessed June 7, 2018, http://www.artic.edu /exhibition/egoyomi. See Alfred Haft on the nuances of terms used in the period in Aesthetic Strategies of the Floating World: Mitate, Yatsushi, and Fūryū in Early Modern Japanese Popular Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2013). David Waterhouse, The Harunobu Decade: A Catalogue of Woodcuts by Suzuki Harunobu and His Followers in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Leiden: Hotei, 2013), no. 050. See Tanabe Masako, “Harunobu hanga no kami to iro: Miyabi no nazo” (The enigma of elegance: Colorants and paper in the woodblock prints of Suzuki Harunobu), in Seishun no ukiyoeshi Suzuki Harunobu, ed. Kobayashi Tadashi (Chiba, Japan: Chiba-shi bijutsukan, 2002), 275–279 (also trans. Amy Reigle Newland, 307–311). See Kenmotsu, “Color Revolution,” 208–210, on the use of paper and colorants. Tokyo Metropolitan Edo Tokyo Museum, Nishiki-e no tanjō: Edo shomin bunka no kaika (Tokyo: Tokyo-to Edo-Tokyo hakubutsukan, 1996).

Notes to Pages 56–63

179

17. See Kenmotsu, “Color Revolution”; Haruo Shirane, “Dressing Up, Dressing Down: Poetry, Image and Transposition in the Eight Views,” Impressions 31 (2010): 50–71; among others. 18. See Kenmotsu, “Color Revolution,” 208, for more on this collaboration. 19. On the musical theme, see Kimi Coaldrake, “Nishiki-e and Kumi-uta: Innovations in Edo Popular Prints and Music in Suzuki Harunobu’s Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges (Kotoji no rakugan),” Japanese Studies 32, no. 1 (2012): 113–127. 20. My variation on Kenmotsu’s translation; see her thorough discussion of this wrapper in “Color Revolution,” 210–212. 21. I have previously discussed this print in “‘Doing Everything for Effect’: Performing Beauty in Late Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Ukiyo-e,” in The Golden Journey: Japanese Art from Australian Collections, ed. James Bennett (Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2009), 152–166. 22. Translation in Hayakawa Monta, The Shunga of Suzuki Harunobu: Mitate-e and Sexuality in Edo (Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2001), 89; Japanese transliteration, Asano and Yoshida, eds., 1998, 30. 23. Kenmotsu, “Color Revolution,” 217–221. 24. Ōta Nanpo, Neboke Sensei bunshū, 1767, cited in Kobayashi Tadashi, “The Birth of Nishiki-e Prints: The Flowering of Edo Culture,” in Nishiki-e no tanjō: Edo shomin no bunka no kaika (Tokyo: Tokyo-to Edo-Tokyo hakubutsukan, 1996), 10, 13. See also Kenmotsu, “Color Revolution,” 217–221. 25. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 443. 26. Fujisawa Murasaki, Suzuki Harunobu ehon zenshū (Tokyo: Bensei shuppan, 2003), 226–231. 27. Ibid. 28. Timothy Clark, “Katsukawa Shunshō: Ukiyo-e Paintings for the Samurai Elite,” in Meech and Oliver, Designed for Pleasure, 103. 29. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 444. 30. The slightly later hand that amended this document notes that Bunchō’s student was Kishi Bunshō; see Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 444–445. Notes about Bunchō from later sources are discussed by David Waterhouse, “The Birth of the Full-Colour Print: Suzuki Harunobu and His Age, Early 1760s to Early 1780s,” in Newland, Hotei Encyclopedia, 111–112. 31. The dandelion became a new flower for the lexicon of poetry in the Edo

180

Notes to Pages 63–75

32. 33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46.



period; see Haruo Shirane, Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). Yoshida Eri, in Asano, Firaderufia Bijutsukan ukiyoe meihinten, 81. Ibid., 81. See Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1993), 67. For more on this partnership, see Davis, Partners in Print, chap. 2; Julie Nelson Davis, “Tsutaya Jūzaburō, Master Publisher,” in Meech and Oliver, Designed for Pleasure, 115–141. Suzuki Toshiyuki, Tsutaya Jūzaburō, vol. 9 of Kinsei bungaku kenkyū sosho (Tokyo: Wakakusa shobō, 1998), 33. See also Davis, “Tsutaya Jūzaburō, Master Publisher” and Partners in Print, chap. 2. See Hiraki Ukiyo-e Foundation, Yoshiwara saiken: Edo bijo kurabe (Yokohama: Hiraki Ukiyo-e Foundation, 1995), illus. 10. Miyato held the rank of chūsan. Suzuki Toshiyuki, “Publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō and Ukiyo-e Publishing,” in Newland, Hotei Encyclopedia, 175; Allen Hockley, The Prints of Isoda Koryūsai: Floating World Culture and Its Consumers in Eighteenth-Century Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003), 87–132. Nanpo notes about Koryusai that “after he received the title hōkkyō did not draw ukiyo-e”; Ukiyo-e kōshō, 445; see also Hockley, Prints of Isoda Koryūsai; Clark, Ukiyo-e Paintings in the British Museum, 104. Hockley, Prints of Isoda Koryūsai, 87–132; Suzuki Toshiyuki, “The Publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō and Ukiyo-e Publishing,” in Newland, Hotei Encyclopedia, 175. Davis, Partners in Print, chap. 2. Naitō, Drama and Desire, 37. Timothy Clark, “Katsukawa Shunshō: Paintings for the Samurai Elite,” in Meech and Oliver, Designed for Pleasure, 102. Idemitsu Bijutsukan, Nikuhitsu ukiyoe, 239–240; Naitō Masato also discusses the painting in Kobayashi Tadashi, ed., Nikuhitsu ukiyoe taikan 3: Idemitsu Bijutsukan (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1996), 218. John Carpenter, “The Literary Network: Private Commissions for Hokusai and His Circle,” in Meech and Oliver, Designed for Pleasure, 143. Naitō Masato, Ukiyo-e saihakken: Daimyotachi ga medeta ippin, zeppin (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2005), 139–155. Yanagisawa is known to have been Shunshō’s patron; see Clark, “Katsukawa Shunshō,” 108–109.

Notes to Pages 76–80

181

47. The daimyo Matsura Seizan (1760–1841) had a number of ukiyo-e paintings in his collection, including twelve paintings by Shunshō (which, it is suggested, he may have also commissioned), and was one of a number of samurai-ranked participants in ukiyo-e circles of the period; see Clark, Ukiyo-e Paintings in the British Museum, 23.

Chapter 3: Making Famous Names 1. On period satire, see Alessandro Bianchi, “Their Swords Were Brushes: Instances of Political Satire in Eighteenth-Century Japan” (PhD. diss., University of Cambridge, 2014). 2. Parallels can be drawn with the observations made by Miklós Haraszti in The Velvet Prison: Artists under State Socialism (New York: Basic Books, 1987), along with others. 3. Sasaya Shishichi Kasanori’s notes date to 1800 and Santō Kyōden’s to 1802. 4. See Chino Kaori, “The Emergence and Development of Famous Place Painting as a Genre,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society, December 2003, 39–61. 5. See Quintana Roo Irigaray Heathman, Beyond Landscape: Imagining Place in Later Edo Print Culture (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2018). 6. For comparison to the history of landscape in Europe, see Edward S. Casey, Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002). 7. For an introduction to the history of Chinese painting, see James Cahill, Chinese Painting (Geneva: Skira, 1960). 8. See Chino, “Emergence and Development of Famous Place Painting.” 9. See Heathman, Beyond Landscape. 10. Timothy Clark, “The Rise and Fall of the Island of Nakazu,” Archives of Asian Art 42 (1992): 72–92. 11. See Screech, “Meaning of Western Perspective in Edo Popular Culture,” 58–69. 12. See Berry, Japan in Print. 13. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 445. 14. See Davis, Partners in Print, chap. 3; Chie Hirano discusses the artist’s biography in Kiyonaga: A Study of His Life and Works (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1939), 58–60, as does Yamaguchi Keisaburō, “Torii Kiyonaga to sono shūhen ni tsuite,” in Ukiyo-e Hakka 2: Kiyonaga (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1985), 128–140. 15. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 442.

182

Notes to Pages 80–89

16. On Kiyonaga’s use of the pillar print, see Davis, Partners in Print, chap. 3. 17. Kobayashi Tadashi, “Edo no Vīnasu—Hatoshin no Kiyonaga bijin,” in Torii Kiyonaga: Edo no Vīnasu tanjō (Japan: Chiba City Museum of Art, 2007), 9–10). 18. Shin-Yoshiwara saiken, published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō (Spring 1786); facsimile reproduction included in Hanasaki Kazuo, ed., Tenmei-ki Yoshiwara saiken shū (Tōkyō: Kinsei fūzoku kenkyūkai, 1977). 19. See Julie Nelson Davis, “Tsutaya Jūzaburō, Master Publisher,” in Designed for Pleasure, 124; Suzuki Toshiyuki, Tsutaya Jūzaburō, 144. 20. Shin-Yoshiwara saiken, published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō (Spring 1783), final opening; facsimile reproduction included in Hanasaki Kazuo, Tenmei-ki Yoshiwara saiken shū. 21. Notably, the examples from the hands of women of the Ōgiya show characteristics associated with calligrapher Sawada Tōkō (1732–1796), who was hired by the brothel owner to give them lessons; see Suzuki Toshiyuki, Tsutaya Jūzaburō, 142; see also Suzuki Toshiyuki, “Publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō and Ukiyo-e Publishing,” 177; Clark, “Utamaro and Yoshiwara,” 39. 22. For more on this title and the larger genre, see Adam Kern, Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyōshi of Edo Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2006). 23. Kern, Manga from the Floating World, 54. 24. See Peter F. Kornicki, “Nishiki no Ura: An Instance of Censorship and the Structure of a Sharebon,” Monumenta Nipponica 32, no. 2 (Summer 1977): 153–188. 25. These remarks were written down by Kyokutei Bakin in Kinsei mono no hon— Edo sakusha burui (1834), reprinted in Kinsei mono no hon Edo sakusha burui: Chosha jihitsu hokibon, ed. Kimura Miyogo (Tokyo: Yagi shoten, 1988), n.p. 26. See John T. Carpenter, “Textures of Antiquarian Imagination: Kubo Shunman and the Kokugaku Movement,” in The Commercial and Cultural Climate of Japanese Printmaking, Hotei Academic European Studies on Japan, ed. Amy Reigle Newland (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2004), 77–113. 27. Translation mine; for the text, see Idemitsu Bijutsukan, Nikuhitsu ukiyoe, 237. 28. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 445. 29. See Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty. 30. Translation adapted from Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro, ed. Asano Shūgō and Timothy Clark (Tokyo: Asahi shinbun; London: British Museum, 1995), 279; for more discussion of this passage, see Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty, 58.



Notes to Pages 89–99

183

31. Meshimori refers to the three poems known as the sanseki from the Shinkokinshū, where the same phrase was used by the priest Jakuren (d. 1202), the priest Saigyō (1118–1190), and the courtier Fujiwara Teika (1162–1241); Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty, 58. 32. Adapted from Timothy Clark; see also Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty, 57. 33. Davis, Partners in Print, chap. 3. Koryūsai was one of the great designers for this format. See Allen Hockley, The Prints of Isoda Koryūsai: Floating World Culture and Its Consumers in Eighteenth-Century Japan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003). 34. Recent evidence suggests that his name may have been read as Tōjūsai Sharaku, but as most of the literature in English uses Tōshūsai, I have opted to use the latter for convenience. 35. See the example in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accessed November 1, 2018, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/37182. 36. “Sharaku” on Wikipedia, accessed October 27, 2018, https://en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Sharaku. 37. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 446. 38. Suzuki Jūzō, Masterworks of Ukiyo-e: Sharaku (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1968), 18–22. 39. Robert T. Paine, “Toyokuni’s ‘Pictures of Actors on the Stage,’” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts 60, no. 321 (1962): 105. 40. Roger S. Keyes, “The Art of Sharaku,” Ukiyo-e Society Bulletin, Winter 2000, 1–14; Asano Shūgō and Yoshida Nobuyuki, eds., Sharaku, vol. 3 of Ukiyo-e o yomu (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1998), 43–47. 41. Ōkubō Jun’ichi, Toyokuni to Utagawaha, Nihon no bijutsu, no. 366, 19–20. 42. Nanpo, Ukiyo-e kōshō, 446. 43. Hattori Yukio, Edo no shibai-e o yomu (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1993), 121. 44. Nakano Mitsutoshi, “Bunka-men ni okeru Kansei kaikaku,” in Nihon no kinsei 12: Bungaku to bijutsu no seijuku (Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1993), 70. 45. Uwabo Kuniyoshi, “Bunka gan-nen no shuppan tōsei o megutte—Taikōki no baai,” Nihon daigaku bunri gakubu, Mishima, no. 27 (1978): 76. 46. Nakano, “Bunka-men ni okeru Kansei kaikaku,” 69; see also Uwabo, “Bunka gan-nen no shuppan tōsei o megutte,” 75–83; Kornicki, “Nishiki no ura,” 157. 47. See Kornicki, “Nishiki no ura,” among others.

184

Notes to Pages 99–111

Chapter 4: Expanding Horizons 1. This title is available online through the Waseda University Library, accessed December 12, 2018, http://www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kotenseki/html/he13 /he13_01961_0127/index.html. 2. Davis, Partners in Print, 185–190. 3. Jūzō Suzuki and Isaburō Oka, The Decadents, trans. John Bester (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1975), 89–92. 4. Suzuki and Oka, Decadents, 89. 5. John Rosenfield discussed this title in “Hokusai and Concepts of Eccentricity,” in Hokusai Paintings: Selected Essays, ed. Gian Carlo Calza and John Carpenter (Venice: International Hokusai Research Centre, 1994), 17–21. For more in the kijin, see Tsuji Nobuo, Lineage of Eccentrics: Matabei to Kuniyoshi, trans. Aaron M. Rio (Tokyo: Kaikai Kiki, 2012); Lawrence E. Marceau, Takebe Ayatari: A Bunjin Bohemian in Early Modern Japan (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2004); John M. Rosenfield, Extraordinary Persons: Japanese Artists (1560–1860) in the Kimiko and John Powers Collection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 1988); Patti Kameya, “When Eccentricity Is Virtue: Virtuous Deeds in Kinsei kijinden (Eccentrics of Our Times, 1790),” Early Modern Japan 3, no. 3 (2009): 7–21. 6. On Nihon kijinden, see the commentary by Iwakiri Yuriko, “The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book: The Gerhard Pulverer Collection,” in online catalogue, ed. Julie Nelson Davis (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian, n.d.), accessed December 13, 2018, https://pulverer.si.edu/node/545/title/1. 7. See Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty, chap. 2. 8. Compare this figure, for example, with Kyōden’s odoriko prostitute discussed in Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty, 93–94. 9. Illustrated in vol. 6. The Edo-Tokyo Museum features a life-size model of the shop; see, accessed December 17, 2018, https://www.edo-tokyo-museum.or.jp /en/p-exhibition/5f. 10. The points made here about Berlin/Prussian blue are summarized from the groundbreaking essay by Henry D. Smith II, “Hokusai and the Blue Revolution in Edo Prints,” in Hokusai and His Age: Ukiyo-e Painting, Printmaking and Book Illustration in late Edo Japan, ed. John T. Carpenter (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005), 235–269.



Notes to Pages 114–123

185

11. See Keyes’s discussion “Dating Hokusai’s Prints of the 1830s,” part of the Late Hokusai project organized by the British Museum and the School of Oriental and African Studies, accessed May 10, 2019, https://www.latehokusai.org /dating-hokusais-prints-of-the-1830s. 12. See Smith, “Hokusai and the Blue Revolution,” 252–258, on the debates over the production of the series; see also Timothy Clark, ed., Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave (London: Trustees of the British Museum and Thames and Hudson, 2017), 108. 13. On Hokusai’s paintings and the problems that remain around issues of authenticity, see Calza and Carpenter, Hokusai Paintings; Carpenter, Hokusai and His Age, among others. 14. Roger S. Keyes, “Hokusai: The Final Years,” in Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, 8. 15. Timothy Clark, “Aging Backwards,” in Clark, Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, 12. 16. For example, in the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji he lets his buyers know he has adopted a new name, signing Hokusai aratame Iitsu hitsu (Brush of Hokusai renamed Iitsu). Kubota Kazuhiro documented these names, along with artist’s seals, in the appendix to Calza and Carpenter, Hokusai Paintings. 17. See Kobayashi Tadashi, “The Floating World in Light and Shadow: Ukiyo-e Paintings by Hokusai’s Daughter Ōi,” trans. and adapt. Julie Nelson Davis, in Carpenter, Hokusai and His Age, 92–103, and Carpenter, “Literary Network,” 158, among others. 18. Fourteen volumes have been digitized and are available on the Pulverer website, accessed December 19, 2018, http://pulverer.si.edu/node/663 /title?f%5B0%5D=title_sort%3AHokusai%20manga. See also Jack Hillier, Art of the Japanese Illustrated Book, 813–816. On the use of the term “manga,” see Timon Screech’s remarks in “Review: Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyōshi of Edo Japan,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 68, no. 1 (2008): 226–228. 19. Kobayashi Tadashi, “Hokusai’s Letters,” in Gian Carlo Calza, ed., Hokusai (New York: Phaidon Press, 2003), 78. 20. Kobayashi, “Hokusai’s Letters,” 78. 21. Andrew L. Markus, “Shogakai: Celebrity Banquets of the Late Edo Period,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 53 (1994): 135–167.

186

Notes to Pages 124 –129

22. John M. Rosenfield, “Hokusai and Concepts of Eccentricity,” in Calza and Carpenter, Hokusai Paintings, 25. 23. See Christian Dunkel, “‘Shohan’ ‘kaihan’ ‘saikokuban’ ‘kyūhan’ ‘atozuri’— Miyako meisho zue kankō ikikitsu saikō,” Tōyō Ajia no shisō to bunka 2 (2009): 9–32, on the publishing history of this guidebook. On maps and guidebooks, see Berry, Japan in Print; Robert Goree, “Meisho zue and the Mapping of Prosperity in Late Tokugawa Japan,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 6, no. 2 (November 2017): 404–439. On travel restrictions, see Constantine N. Vaporis, “Caveat Viator: Advice to Travelers in the Edo Period,” Monumenta Nipponica 44, no. 2 (1989): 461–483, among others. 24. Akai Tatsurō, “The Common People and Painting,” in Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan, trans. Timothy Clark, ed. Chie Nakane and Shinzaburō Ōishi (University of Tokyo Press, 1991), 185. 25. In the collection of the Volkenkunde, object number RV-360–4946m, dated 1821–1822. 26. Matthi Forrer, ed., “The Art of Hiroshige,” in Hiroshige: Prints and Drawings (London: Royal Academy of Arts; Munich: Prestel, 1997), 14. 27. Akai, “Common People and Painting,” 167–191. 28. See Sebastian Izzard, Kunisada’s World (New York: Japan Society, in collaboration with the Ukiyo-e Society of America, 1993); Andreas Marks, Kunisada’s Tōkaidō: Riddles in Japanese Woodblock Prints (Leiden: Brill, 2013). 29. Michael Emmerich, “A Rustic Genji World,” in Genji’s World in Japanese Woodblock Prints from the Paulette and Jack Lantz Collection, ed. Andreas Marks (Leiden: Hotei, 2012), 34–37. See also Michael Emmerich, The Tale of Genji: Translation, Canonization, and World Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). 30. In his essay “The Tale of Genji in Shunga,” Satō Satoru notes that Kyokutei Bakin wrote a letter to Ozu Keisō (1804–1858) dated the sixteenth day, ninth month, 1835, stating that the price for an erotic version of Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji was two bu two shu; Timothy T. Clark, C. Andrew Gerstle, Aki Ishigami, and Akiko Yano, eds., Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 2013), 232. 31. Rhiannon Piaget, “Erotic Genji Fantasies,” in Marks, Genji’s World, 58. Kunisada sometimes signed his erotica, and in this volume, he put his nom de plume signature and seal on a standing screen.



Notes to Pages 131–139

187

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

Thompson, Undercurrents in the Floating World, 79. Ibid., 78. Ibid., 78–79. Timothy Clark, Kuniyoshi: From the Arthur R. Miller Collection (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2009), 24. Clark, Kuniyoshi, 24–25, 268. See also Melinda Takeuchi, “Kuniyoshi’s Minamoto Raikō and the Earth Spider: Demons and Protest in Late Tokugawa Japan,” Ars Orientalis 17 (1987): 5–38. Clark, Kuniyoshi, 29–30; Thompson, Undercurrents in the Floating World, 83. Peter F. Kornicki, “Manuscript, Not Print: Scribal Culture in the Edo Period,” Journal of Japanese Studies 32, no. 1 (2006): 23–52. Alfred Haft, catalogue entry 196, in Clark, Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, 298. See also Kobayashi, “Floating World in Light and Shadow”; Kubota Kazuhiro, Hokusai musume, Ōi Eijō shū (Tokyo: Geika shoin, 2015). Julie Nelson Davis, “Hokusai and Ōi: Art Runs in the Family,” British Museum (blog), June 18, 2017, http://blog.britishmuseum.org/hokusai-and-oi-keeping-it-in-the-family/. See Nochlin’s “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” among others. Kobayashi, “Hokusai’s Letters,” 78. Iijima Kyoshin, Katsushika Hokusai den, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Kobayashi Bunshichi, 1893), 62b. Keisai Eisen, Mumei-ō zuihitsu, 1833; see also Kobayashi, “Floating World in Light and Shadow,” 93. See the illustration and entry by Matsuba Ryoko, in Clark, Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, 301. Kai Xie, “Dramatizing Romance of the Three Kingdoms in Japanese Puppet Theatre: Zhuge Liang’s Military Talk on the Three Kingdoms,” Asian Theatre Journal 34, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 26–47. Screech, “Owning Edo-Period Paintings,” 31–32. Thompson, Undercurrents in the Floating World, 78.

Epilogue: Evoking the Floating World Epigraph: Nagai Kafū, “Ukiyo-e Landscape and Edo Scenic Places (1914),” in Review of Japanese Culture and Society, trans. Kyodo Selden and Alisa Freedman, December 2012, 218.

188

Notes to Pages 140–153

1. On national museums, see Alice Tseng, The Imperial Museums of Meiji Japan: Architecture and the Art of the Nation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008). 2. Saitō Gesshin’s text is included in Yura Tetsuji, Soko Nihon ukiyo-e ruikō (Tokyo: Gabundō, 1979); the manuscript is held in the University of Cambridge Library and is available online, accessed March 30, 2020, at https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk /view/PR-FJ-00961-00095/1. 3. See the discussion by Suzuki Jūzō regarding Gesshin’s passage on Sharaku, in Masterworks of Ukiyo-e: Sharaku, 1st ed., trans. John Bester (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1968), 19–21. 4. Iijima Kyoshin, Katsushika Hokusai den, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Hōsūkaku, 1893). 5. See, for example, discussions around the concept of the artist in Japan in Melinda Takeuchi, ed., The Artist as Professional in Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). 6. Oikawa Shigeru, “Ukiyo-e collecting in Japan,” in Newland, Hotei Encyclopedia; Ayako Ono, Japonisme in Britain: Whistler, Menpes, Henry, Hornel and Nineteenth-­ Century Japan (New York: Routledge, Curzon, 2003). 7. See Edmond de Goncourt, Outamaro: Le peintre des maisons vertes (Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1891) and Hokousaï (Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1896), also available in digital editions. 8. Thomas Lawton and Linda Merrill, Freer: A Legacy of Art (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1993). 9. Oikawa Shigeru, “Ukiyo-e Collecting in Japan,” in Newland, Hotei Encyclopedia. See also Gennifer S. Weisenfeld, Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). 10. For an overview of Kyōsai’s career and interactions, see Oikawa Shigeru, “Kawanabe Kyōsai and His Artistic Circle,” in Newland, Commercial and Cultural Climate of Japanese Printmaking, 207–224. English architect Josiah Conder (1852– 1920) became Kyōsai’s student, as well as an avid collector of his paintings; see Paintings and Studies by Kawanabe Kyosai. An Illustrated and Descriptive Catalogue of a Collection of Paintings, Studies, and Sketches, by the Above Artist, with Explanatory Notes on the Principles, Materials, and Technique of Japanese Painting (Tokyo: Maruzen kabushiki kaisha, 1911). 11. Amy Reigle Newland, Time Present and Time Past: Images of a Forgotten Master: Toyohara Kunichika, 1835–1900 (Leiden: Hotei, 1999); Bruce Coats, Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints (Amsterdam: Hotei, 2006).



Notes to Pages 157–162

189

12. Okamoto Hiromi and Henry D. Smith II, “Ukiyo-e for Modern Japan: The Legacy of Watanabe Shōzaburō,” in The New Wave: Twentieth-Century Japanese Prints from the Robert O. Muller Collection, ed. Amy Reigle Stephens (London: Bamboo; Leiden: Hotei-Japanese Prints, 1993), 27–40. 13. Lynn Lees, catalogue entry, in A Sense of Place: Modern Japanese Prints, ed. Julie Nelson Davis (Philadelphia: Arthur Ross Gallery; University of Pennsylvania Department of the History of Art, 2015), 23. 14. See Alicia Volk, “A Unified Rhythm: Past and Present in Japanese Modern Art,” in Japan and Paris: Impressionism, Postimpressionism, and the Modern Era, ed. Christine Guth, Emiko Yamanashi, Alicia Volk, and Redmond Entwistle (Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2004), 39–55. 15. Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty, 25–26. 16. Reiji Yoshida, “Japan Announces New ¥10,000, ¥5,000 and ¥1,000 Bank Notes as Reiwa Era Looms,” Japan Times, April 9, 2019, accessed March 29, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/y3aldcjq.

190

Notes to Pages 162–171

WORKS CITED

Akai Tatsurō. “The Common People and Painting.” In Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan. Translated by Timothy Clark. Edited by Chie Nakane and Shinzaburō Ōishi, 185. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1991. Asai, Ryōi. Ukiyo monogatari. Vol. 64, Kanazōshishū, Shinpen nihon koten bungaku zenshū. Edited by Oka Masahiko and Inoue Kazuhito Taniwaki Masachika, 88. Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1999. Asano Shūgō, ed. Nishikie tanjō 250-nen, Firaderufia Bijutsukan ukiyoe meihinten, Harunobu ichiban! Sharaku niban! Osaka: Yomiuri shinbun and Abeno Harukas bijutsukan, 2015. Asano Shūgō, and Yoshida Nobuyuki, eds. Harunobu. Ukiyo-e o yomu. Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1998. ———, eds. Sharaku. Vol. 3, Ukiyo-e o yomu. Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 1998. Becker, Howard Saul. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Bénédite, Léonce. “Félix Bracquemond, l’Animalier.” Art et décoration 17 (1905): 39. Bennett, James, ed. The Golden Journey: Japanese Art from Australian Collections. Sydney: Art Gallery of South Australia, 2009. Berry, Mary Elizabeth. Japan in Print: Information and Nation in the Early Modern Period. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Bianchi, Alessandro. “Their Swords Were Brushes: Instances of Political Satire in Eighteenth-century Japan.” PhD diss., University of Cambridge, 2014. Bush, Susan, and Hsio-yen Shih. Early Chinese Texts on Painting. Cambridge, MA: Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University Press, 1985. Cahill, James. Chinese Painting. Geneva: Skira, 1960. Calza, Gian Carlo, and John Carpenter, eds. Hokusai Paintings: Selected Essays. Venice: International Hokusai Research Centre, 1994.

191

Carpenter, John T., ed. Hokusai and His Age: Ukiyo-e Painting, Printmaking and Book Illustration in late Edo Japan. Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005. Carrier, David. Principles of Art History Writing. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. Casey, Edward S. Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Chiba City Museum of Art. Hishikawa Moronobu ten: Chiba-shi Bijutsukan kaikan goshūnen kinen. Chiba: Chiba-shi bijutsukan, 2000. ———. Torii Kiyonaga: Edo no Vīnasu tanjō. Chiba: Chiba-shi bijutsukan, 2007. Chino, Kaori. “The Emergence and Development of Famous Place Painting as a Genre.” Review of Japanese Culture and Society, December 2003, 39–61. Clark, Timothy T, ed. Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave. London: Thames and Hudson, 2017. ———. Kuniyoshi: From the Arthur R. Miller Collection. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2009. ———. “The Rise and Fall of the Island of Nakazu.” Archives of Asian Art, vol. 42 (1992): 72–92. Clark, Timothy T., C. Andrew Gerstle, Aki Ishigami, and Akiko Yano, eds. Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 2013. ———. Ukiyo-e Paintings in the British Museum. London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum, by British Museum Press, 1992. Coaldrake, Kimi. “Nishiki-e and Kumi-uta: Innovations in Edo Popular Prints and Music in Suzuki Harunobu’s Descending Geese of the Koto Bridges (Kotoji no rakugan).” Japanese Studies 32, no. 1 (2012): 113–127. Coats, Bruce. Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints. Amsterdam: Hotei, 2006. Conder, Josiah. Paintings and Studies by Kawanabe Kyōsai. Tokyo: Maruzen kabushiki kaisha; London: W. C. Probsthain, 1911. Davis, Julie Nelson. Partners in Print: Artistic Collaboration and the Ukiyo-e Market. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015. ———, ed. A Sense of Place: Modern Japanese Prints. Philadelphia: Arthur Ross Gallery; University of Pennsylvania Department of the History of Art, 2015. ———. Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty. London: Reaktion Books; Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2007. Second edition reprinted by Reaktion Books, 2020.

192

Works Cited

———, ed. The World of the Japanese Illustrated Book: The Gerhard Pulverer Collection. Online catalogue. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian. http://pulverer.si.edu. de Goncourt, Edmond. Hokousaï. Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1896. ———. Outamaro: Le peintre des maisons vertes. Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1891. Dunkel, Christian. “‘Shohan’ ‘kaihan’ ‘saikokuban’ ‘kyūhan’ ‘atozuri’—Miyako meisho zue kankō ikikitsu saikō.” Tōyō Ajia no shisō to bunka 2 (2009): 9–32. Eidelberg, Martin. “Bracquemond, Delâtre and the Discovery of Japanese Prints.” Burlington Magazine 123, no. 937 (1981): 220–225, 227. Emmerich, Michael. The Tale of Genji: Translation, Canonization, and World Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Fister, Patricia, and Fumiko Y. Yamamoto. Japanese Women Artists, 1600–1900. Lawrence, KS: Spencer Museum of Art; Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1988. Forrer, Matthi. Egoyomi and Surimono: Their History and Development. Uithoorn, the Netherlands: J. C. Gieben, 1979. ———, ed. Hiroshige: Prints and Drawings. London: Royal Academy of Arts; Munich: Prestel, 1997. ———. The Printed Image: The Flowering of Japan’s Woodblock Printing Culture. Köln: Buchhandlung Walther König, 2018. Gluckman, Dale Carolyn, and Sharon Sadako Takeda. When Art Became Fashion: Kosode in Edo-Period Japan. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: Weatherhill, 1992. Goree, Robert. “Meisho zue and the Mapping of Prosperity in Late Tokugawa Japan.” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 6, no. 2 (November 2017): 404–439. Guth, Christine M. E. Hokusai’s Great Wave: Biography of a Global Icon. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015. Guth, Christine, Emiko Yamanashi, Alicia Volk, and Redmond Entwistle, eds. Japan and Paris: Impressionism, Postimpressionism, and the Modern Era. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2004. Haft, Alfred. Aesthetic Strategies of the Floating World: Mitate, Yatsushi, and Fūryū in Early Modern Japanese Popular Culture. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Hanasaki Kazuo, ed. Tenmei-ki Yoshiwara saiken shū. Tōkyō: Kinsei fūzoku kenkyūkai, 1977.



Works Cited 193

Haraszti, Miklós. The Velvet Prison: Artists under State Socialism. New York: Basic Books, 1987. Hattori Yukio. Edo no shibai-e o yomu. Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1993. Hayakawa Monta. The Shunga of Suzuki Harunobu: Mitate-e and Sexuality in Edo. Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2001. Heathman, Quintana Roo Irigon. “Beyond Landscape: Imagining Place in Later Edo Print Culture.” PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2018. Hida Akizō. “Santō Kyōden shokan-shū.” In Kinsei no gakugei: Shiden no kōshō. Tokyo: Yagi shoten, 1976. Hillier, Jack Ronald. The Art of the Japanese Illustrated Book. London: Sotheby’s, 1987. Hiraki Ukiyo-e Foundation. Yoshiwara saiken: Edo bijo kurabe. Yokohama: Hiraki Ukiyo-e Foundation, 1995. Hirano, Chie. Kiyonaga: A Study of his Life and Works. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1939. Hockley, Allen. The Prints of Isoda Koryūsai: Floating World Culture and Its Consumers in Eighteenth-Century Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. Holly, Michael Ann. Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the Image. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996. Idemitsu Bijutsukan. Nikuhitsu ukiyoe: Idemitsu Korekushon no subete. Tokyo: Idemitsu bijutsukan, 2007. Iijima Kyoshin. Katsushika Hokusai den. Tokyo: Kobayashi Bunshichi, 1893. Izzard, Sebastian. Kunisada’s World. New York: Japan Society, in collaboration with the Ukiyo-e Society of America, 1993. Japan Times. “Utamaro Woodblock Print Fetches World-Record €745,000 in Paris.” June 23, 2016. Jordan, Brenda G., and Victoria Weston, eds. Copying the Master and Stealing His Secrets: Talent and Training in Japanese Painting. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003. Kai Xie. “Dramatizing Romance of the Three Kingdoms in Japanese Puppet Theatre: Zhuge Liang’s Military Talk on the Three Kingdoms.” Asian Theatre Journal 34, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 26–47. Kameya, Patti. “When Eccentricity Is Virtue: Virtuous Deeds in Kinsei kijinden (Eccentrics of Our Times, 1790).” Early Modern Japan 3, no. 3 (2009): 7–21. Kano Hiroyuki. E wa kataru 14—Katsushika Hokusai hitsu “Gaifū kaisei.” Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1994.

194

Works Cited

Kaufmann, Thomas DaCosta, and Michael North, eds. Mediating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014. Kenmotsu, Jean M. “The Color Revolution: Printed Books in Eighteenth-century Japan.” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2016. Kern, Adam. Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyōshi of Edo Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2006. Kimura Miyogo, ed. Kinsei mono no hon Edo sakusha burui: Chosha jihitsu hokibon. Tokyo: Yagi shoten, 1988. Kobayashi Tadashi, ed. Nishiki-e no tanjō: Edo shomin no bunka no kaika. Tokyo: Tokyo-to Edo-Tokyo hakubutsukan, 1996. ———, ed. Seishun no ukiyoeshi Suzuki Harunobu (Chiba, Japan: Chiba-shi bijutsukan, 2002). Kominz, Lawrence. “Ya no Ne: The Genesis of a Kabuki Aragoto Classic.” Monumenta Nipponica 38, no. 4 (Winter 1983): 387–407. Kornicki, Peter F. The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. Leiden: Brill, 1998. ———. “Manuscript, Not Print: Scribal Culture in the Edo Period.” Journal of Japanese Studies 32, no. 1 (2006): 23–52. ———. “Nishiki no Ura: An Instance of Censorship and the Structure of a Share�bon.” Monumenta Nipponica 32, no. 2 (Summer 1977): 153–188. Lawton, Thomas, and Linda Merrill. Freer: A Legacy of Art. Washington, DC: Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, 1993. Lillehoj, Elizabeth, ed. Acquisition: Art and Ownership in Edo-Period Japan. Warren, CT: Floating World Editions. Lippitt, Yukio. Painting of the Realm: The Kano House of Painters in 17th-Century Japan. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012. Marceau, Lawrence E. Takebe Ayatari: A Bunjin Bohemian in Early Modern Japan. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2004. Marks, Andreas, ed. Genji’s World in Japanese Woodblock Prints from the Paulette and Jack Lantz Collection. Leiden: Hotei, 2012. ———. Kunisada’s Tōkaidō: Riddles in Japanese Woodblock Prints. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Markus, Andrew Lawrence. The Willow in Autumn: Ryūtei Tanehiko, 1783–1842. Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1992.



Works Cited 195

Maucuer, Michel, ed. Splendeurs des courtisanes—Japon, peintures Ukiyo-e du musée Idemitsu. Paris: Cernuschi Museum, 2008. Meech, Julia, and Jane Oliver, eds. Designed for Pleasure: The World of Edo Japan in Prints and Paintings, 1680–1860. New York: Asia Society and Japanese Art Society of America; Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. Milhaupt, Terry Satsuki. Kimono: A Modern History. London: Reaktion Books, 2014. Mitchell, Richard H. Censorship in Imperial Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. Morse, Anne Nishimura, ed. Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World, 1690–1850. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Mostow, Joshua S., Norman Bryson, and Maribeth Graybill, eds. Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2003. Mostow, Joshua S., Asato Ikeda, and Ryoko Matsuba. A Third Gender: Beautiful Youths in Japanese Edo-Period Prints and Paintings (1600–1868). Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum, 2016. Murasaki, Fujisawa. Suzuki Harunobu ehon zenshū. Tokyo: Bensei shuppan, 2003. Nagai Kafū. “Ukiyo-e Landscape and Edo Scenic Places (1914).” Translated by Kyodo Selden and Alisa Freedman. Review of Japanese Culture and Society, December 2012. Nagata, Helen Mitsu. “Reading a Pictorial Narrative: A Study of the Illustrations Attributed to Hishikawa Moronobu in Yoshiwara Koi No Michibiki (a Guide to Love in the Yoshiwara, 1678).” PhD thesis, Stanford University, 2000. Naitō Masato. Ukiyo-e saihakken: Daimyotachi ga medeta ippin, zeppin. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 2005. Nakane Chie, and Ōishi Shinzaburō, eds. Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan. Translated by Conrad D. Totman. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1990. Newland, Amy Reigle, ed. The Commercial and Cultural Climate of Japanese Printmaking. Hotei Academic European Studies on Japan. Amsterdam: Hotei, 2004. ———, ed. The Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints. Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005. ———. Time Present and Time Past: Images of a Forgotten Master: Toyohara Kunichika, 1835–1900. Leiden: Hotei, 1999. Nihon no kinsei 12: Bungaku to bijutsu no seijuku. Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1993. Nochlin, Linda. “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Art News, January 1971, 20–39, 67–91.

196

Works Cited

Ōkubō Jun’ichi, ed. Toyokuni to Utagawaha, Nihon no bijutsu, no. 366, 19–20. Ono, Ayako. Japonisme in Britain: Whistler, Menpes, Henry, Hornel and Nineteenth-­ Century Japan. London: Routledge, Curzon, 2003. Ōta Nanpo. Ukiyo-e kōshō. In Vol. 18, Ōta Nanpo zenshū. Edited by Hamada Giichirō. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1988. Paine, Robert T. “Toyokuni’s ‘Pictures of Actors on the Stage.’” Bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts 60, no. 321 (1962): 105. Rosenfield, John M. Extraordinary Persons: Japanese Artists (1560–1860) in the Kimiko and John Powers Collection. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 1988. Saunders, Rachael. “Kimono Pattern Books in the Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.” Andon: Bulletin of the Society for Japanese Arts and Crafts 83 (2008): 49–57. Screech, Timon. “The Meaning of Western Perspective in Edo Popular Culture.” Archives of Asian Art 47 (1994): 58–69. Shirane, Haruo. “Dressing Up, Dressing Down: Poetry, Image and Transposition in the Eight Views.” Impressions 31 (2010): 50–71. ———. Envisioning the Tale of Genji: Media, Gender, and Cultural Production. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. ———. Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons: Nature, Literature, and the Arts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012. Shively, Donald H. “Sumptuary Regulation and Status in Early Tokugawa Japan.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 25 (1964–1965): 123–164. Snow, Hilary K. “Votive Paintings of the Kabuki Actors Ichikawa Danjūrō at Naritasan Shinshōji Temple.” Archives of Asian Art 62 (2012): 69–79. Stanley, Amy. Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Stephens, Amy Reigle, ed. The New Wave: Twentieth-Century Japanese Prints from the Robert O. Muller Collection. London: Bamboo; Leiden: Hotei-Japanese Prints, 1993. Stevenson, John. Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon. San Francisco: San Francisco Graphic Society, 1992. Suwa Haruo. Shuppan kotohajime: Edo no hon. Tokyo: Mainichi shinbunsha, 1978. Suzuki Jūzō. Masterworks of Ukiyo-e: Sharaku. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1968. Suzuki Jūzō, and Isaburō Oka. The Decadents. Translated by John Bester. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1975.



Works Cited 197

Suzuki Toshiyuki. Tsutaya Jūzaburō. Kinsei bungaku kenkyū sosho. Vol. 9. Tokyo: Wakakusa shobō, 1998. Takeuchi, Melinda, ed. The Artist as Professional in Japan. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004. Thompson, Sarah E., and H. D. Harootunian. Undercurrents in the Floating World: Censorship and Japanese Prints. New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1991. Tseng, Alice. The Imperial Museums of Meiji Japan: Architecture and the Art of the Nation. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008. Tsuji Nobuo. Lineage of Eccentrics: Matabei to Kuniyoshi. Translated by Aaron M. Rio. Tokyo: Kaikai Kiki, 2012. Vaporis, Constantine N. “Caveat Viator. Advice to Travelers in the Edo Period.” Monumenta Nipponica 44, no. 4 (1989): 461–483. Watanabe, Toshio. 1991. High Victorian Japonisme. Bern: Peter Lang. Waterhouse, David. The Harunobu Decade: A Catalogue of Woodcuts by Suzuki Harunobu and His Followers in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Leiden: Hotei, 2013. Weisenfeld, Gennifer S. Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of 1923. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Yamaguchi Keisaburō, ed. Ukiyo-e Hakka 2: Kiyonaga. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1985. Yiengpruksawan, Mimi Hall. “Japanese Art History 2001: The State and Stakes of Research.” Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (2001): 105–122. Yoshida, Reiji. “Japan Announces New ¥10,000, ¥5,000 and ¥1,000 Bank Notes as Reiwa Era looms.” Japan Times, April 9, 2019. Yura Tetsuji. Soko Nihon ukiyo-e ruikō. Tokyo: Gabundō, 1979.

198

Works Cited

GLOSSARY-INDEX

Page numbers in boldface type refer to illustrations. Abeno Harukas Art Museum, 8 actors, kabuki: as celebrities, 45, 74, 112; identification of, 48; onnagata (specialists in female roles), 51; and print market, 107 actors, kabuki and representation: onstage, 45, 53, 110; in ukiyo-e, 14, 25, 110, 117, 140, 156; in votive paintings, 178n33; yakusha-e (pictures of), 14, 25; yakusha nigao-e (pictures resembling the face), 25, 26, 71, 110 Ainsworth, Mary Andrews (collector, 1867–1950), 19 Akera Kankō (author, 1740–1800), 92 albums, for collecting prints, 3, 132–133, 158; poetry anthologies, 11; printed paintings, 17 Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, 19 Andō Hiroshige. See Utagawa Hiroshige approval seal (kiwame), 110–111, 122, 140, 150, 152. See also censorship art appreciation, 1, 16, 169 art world, 16–17, 81 Asakusa (district in northern Edo), 20 20, 120; Kinryūzan Sensōji temple, 120, 121 Asano Shūgō (art historian), 56, 105 Astronomy, Office of (Tenmonkata), 62 Azuma nishiki-e (lit., “brocade pictures of the East,” full-color woodblock prints), 25, 26, 59, 63, 69, 81, 111

benizuri-e (lit., “red-printed pictures,” using two to three color blocks), 43, 57 57, 58, 64, 69 64 bero-ai (Berlin blue, also Prussian blue), 122–125, 134 bijin (beautiful person), definition, 33–34 bijinga (pictures of beautiful people), 60, 74, 88, 100, 120 bijutsu (as invented term for “fine art”), 156 block carvers (horishi, also block cutters), 7, 11, 27; contributions of, 7, 35, 40, 128, 150; fees, 128; hired by publishers, 28, 162; naming of, 11, 128; skill, 40, 99, 122, 134, 150 book lenders, commercial (kashihon’ya), 111, 144 books, bestsellers, 94, 137–138 books, types: hinagatabon (kimono pattern books), 34, 35 35, 77; hyōbanki (evaluation commentaries), 92; kibyōshi (lit., “yellow-­ cover” storybook), 94, 95 95, 110; saiken (guidebooks to the licensed district), 92; sharebon (lit., “stylish book,” usually about the licensed district), 92 Bracquemond, Félix (artist, 1833–1914), 2, 173n4 British Museum, 8 broadsheets (kawaraban), 9, 117 brothels: contracts, 94; licensed district, 36–37, 100, 120; owners, 69, 77, 82, 84, 183n21. See also prostitution

Bank of Japan, 170, 171 Bénédite, Léonce (art historian, 1859–1925), 1–2 beni-e (lit., “red pictures,” hand-colored prints), 25–27, 48, 49

calendar prints (egoyomi), 61, 61 61, 62, 63, 79, 80, 110, 141 calendars, 61, 62 calligraphy, 23, 92, 93 93, 94, 183n21 canon, artistic, 17, 18, 23, 24, 28, 117, 158

199

censorship, 14, 94, 110–111, 142, 144. See also approval seal (kiwame) Clark, Timothy T. (art historian), 79, 141 Collected Writings on Ukiyo-e, Enlarged and Revised (Zōho ukiyo-e ruikō), 24, 158 collecting, 80, 132, 159; of prints, 14 color, in paintings, 60, 79, 80 color, in prints and books, 26, 58, 71; bero-ai (or Berlin Blue), 122–125, 134, 185n10; dayflower blue, 73; indigo, 122; metallics, 138; mica, 105; prohibitions on, 140; publishing rights, 92; red, 148 color, techniques in prints and books: gradation, 7; registration marks (kentō), 58, 63 commissions: 10, 28, 126, 128; illustrated books, 60–61; paintings, 16, 17, 28, 31, 41, 79, 80, 150, 182n47; prints, 9, 11, 26, 28, 61, 62, 63, 79, 95, 116, 117; and print subventions, 105, 110; publishers, 27, 28, 31, 54, 82, 95 courtesans. See sex workers Dong Qichang (artist and critic, 1555–1636), 24 Dutch studies (Rangaku), 87 edicts, 38, 51, 62, 83, 99, 111, 139 Edo, city of, 11, 29, 59, 111–112, 134; map, 12–13; population, 11, 29; and Tokyo, 12–13 11, 159 Egawa Tomekichi (block carver, active ca. 1834–1849), 128, 129 egoyomi (calendar prints), 61, 61 61, 62, 63, 79, 80, 110, 141 Eight Views (hakkei), 63; adaptations, 63–68, 64–68, 135 64–68 Eirakuya Tōshirō (publisher), 126, 127 Eishōsai Chōki (artist, active ca. 1786–1808), 101–104, 103 103, 116 erotica, 34, 38, 39 39, 66, 68 68, 96–99, 98 98, 122, 123, 137–139, 139 123 139, 141, 187nn30–n31; bans on, 111; shunga (lit., “spring pictures”), 38 exhibitions, 165, 169 fans: flat fan (uchiwa), 124 124, 133, 133 133; folding fan (ōgi), 50 50, 51, 73–74, 73 73, 92; shop, 36 Fenollosa, Ernest Francisco (art historian, 1853–1908), 5, 158

200

Glossary - Index

Freer, Charles Lang (collector, 1854–1919), 159 Fujisawa Murasaki (art historian), 69 Fukagawa (district of Edo), 86 86, 87, 152 geisha (lit., “artistic person,” performer), 157 genre painting (fūzoku-e), 22, 40 Goncourt, Edmond de (collector and critic, 1822–1896), 159 Great Kantō Earthquake, 159 “Great Wave, The,” 3–7, 4; on currency, 170, 171 170 Guan Yu (Chinese general, 160–220), 146, 147, 149 147 guidebooks: licensed district (saiken), 40, 77, 92; meisho zue (illustrated guide to famous places), 122; travel, 82, 88, 117, 131, 187n23 Guth, Christine M. E. (art historian), 3 haikai (“playful verse,” linked poetry form), 61 hakkei (eight views). See Eight Views handscroll, 32, 36, 37 37, 103, 120, 121 121, 159 Hashiguchi Goyō (artist, 1880–1921), 169 hashira-e (pillar print). See prints, formats Hayashi Tadamasa (dealer, 1853–1906), 159 hinagatabon (kimono pattern books). See books, types Hishikawa Moronobu (artist, 1618–1694), 22, 23, 30–37, 33 33, 35 35, 37 37, 38, 40, 41, 85, 114, 161 horishi (woodblock carvers). See block carvers Hōseidō Kisanji (writer, 1735–1813), 92 hyōbanki (evaluation commentaries). See books, types Ibaya Senzaburō (publisher), 141, 145 Ichikawa Danjūrō I (actor, 1660–1704), 46 Ichikawa Danjūrō II (actor, 1689–1758), 47, 47, 49 47 49, 55 55, 56 Ichikawa Danjūrō V (actor, 1741–1806), 73, 74 73 Ichikawa Danzō III (actor, 1719–1772), 71, 72, 73 72 73, 74 ichimai-e (single-sheet prints), 25, 26 Ichimura Uzaemon IX (actor, 1725–1785), 57, 58, 59 57 Ihara Saikaku (author, 1642–1693), 34

Iijima Kyoshin (author, 1841–1901), 127, 158 Ippitsusai Bunchō (artist, act. ca. 1755– 1790), 71, 73 73, 78, 180n30 Isoda Koryūsai (artist, 1735–1790), 74, 75 75, 77, 79, 89, 116, 184n33 Iwasa Matabei (also Matabē) (artist, 1578–1650), 30, 30–31, 141, 144 144, 161 Izumiya Ichibei (also Ichibē) (publisher), 109, 110, 120, 121 109 121, 122 kabuki (theatrical form), 45; fan clubs, 71, 73; modernization, 157; playbills, programs, 82, 89; signboards, 46; theaters, 51, 53, 55–56, 55 55, 58, 88 Kaigetsudō Anchi (artist, act. ca. 1700– 1716), 41, 42 Kaigetsudō Ando (artist, active about 1704–1736), 40–42, 42 42, 177n27 Kano lineage, 31, 32 Kano Tan’yū (artist, 1602–1674), 80 Kansei era (1789–1800), 83, 84; reforms, 83 Kariganeya Ihei (also Ihē, publisher), 71, 73 kashihon’ya. See book lenders, commercial Katsukawa lineage, 84, 116, 126 Katsukawa Shun’ei (artist, 1762–1819), 71, 107, 108 108, 110–111 Katsukawa Shunkō (artist, 1743–1812), 71, 107 Katsukawa Shunrō. See Katsushika Hokusai Katsukawa Shunshō (artist, 1726–1792), 70–73, 72, 73 72 73, 78 78, 81, 81 81, 181–182nn46–47 Katsukawa Shunzan (artist, active ca. 1782–1798), 77 Katsuma Ryūsui (artist, 1711–1796), 60 60, 61 Katsushika Hokusai (artist, 1760–1849), 8, 104, 116, 118, 123–132, 146, 148, 150, 153; biographies, 127, 158, 159; Hokusai manga, 2, 126–127, 127 127; One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku hyakkei), 128, 129 129; Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei), 3–7, 4, 123–125, 125, 131–132, 166 125 166, 170 Katsushika Ōi (artist, ca. 1800–ca. 1866), 146–150, 147 147, 148–149, 149 Kawanabe Kyōsai (artist, 1831–1889), biography, 159–160, 160 160, 161 Kawase Hasui (artist, 1883–1957), 162, 167 Keisai Eisen (artist, 1790–1848), 117–120, 121, 122–123, 123 121 123, 124 124, 128, 148



Kenmotsu, Jeannie (art historian), 66, 179n9, 180n20 Keyes, Roger S. (art historian, 1942–2020), 105, 123, 186n11 kibyōshi (“yellow cover” storybook). See books, types Kikurensha Kyosen (Okubo Jinshirō Tadanobu, author, 1722–1777), 63, 66, 69 Kikuya Ichibei (publisher also Ichibē), 138, 139 Kitagawa Utamaro (artist, 1753?–1806), 3, 8, 82, 96, 98–103, 98 98, 101 101, 103 103, 104, 116, 120, 128, 159, 161, 175n11 Kitao Masanobu (artist, 1761–1816). See Santō Kyōden Kitao Shigemasa (1739–1820), 77–78, 78 78, 95, 116 kiwame (“approval”) seal, 110–111, 122, 140, 150, 152 Kobayashi Bunshichi (dealer, 1863–1923), 159 Kobayashi Tadashi (art historian), 33 Koikawa Harumachi (author, 1744–1789), 92, 116 Kokka (journal), 165 koto (zither), 66, 68 Kubo Shunman (artist, 1757–1820), 95–96, 97 kyōka (“mad verse,” poetry form), 95, 149 149, 175n11 Kyokutei Bakin (author, 1767–1848), 118, 129, 137, 183n25, 187n30 landscape, 116–117, 120, 123–124, 134, 136, 137; meisho (famous place), 84–85 lineages, artistic, 25, 27, 31, 32, 43, 45, 71, 84, 116–117 lithography, 154 maps, 88, 115–116, 134, 187n23 Maruya Shōbei (also Shōbē, publisher), 92 Matsudaira Sadanobu (shogunal councillor, 1759–1829), 83 meisho (famous places). See guidebooks; landscape Miyagawa Chōshun (artist, 1682–1752), 41, 43, 44 44, 71, 116 Miyagawa Shunsui (artist, act. early 1740s– early 1760s), 70

Glossary - Index 201

Mizuno Tadakuni (shogunal councilor, 1794–1851), 141 mokuhanga (woodblock print), 25, 175n6 Morishita Richō (block carver), 62 Myōhōji (temple), 112, 112 Nagai Kafū (author, 1879–1959), 153 Naitō Masato (art historian), 43, 79, 80 Nakamura Takesaburō (actor), 46, 47 Nakazu island, 86–87, 87 Naniwaya Okita (teahouse server, b. 1778), 102, 103 102 Narazaki Muneshige (art historian, 1904–2001), 169 newspapers, 154, 162 Nihonga (Japanese-style painting), 156 Nishikawa Sukenobu (artist, 1671–1750), 69, 71 nishiki-e (“brocade pictures,” printed with five or more color blocks), 15, 25–27, 59–61, 69­–70, 82, 86, 88, 89, 98, 110; as Azuma nishiki-e (“brocade pictures of the East”), 59, 63, 69, 111 Nishimuraya Yohachi (publisher, shop name Eijudō), 4, 5, 57 57, 59, 75 75, 76–77, 82, 85–86, 88–89, 91 91, 94, 123, 125 125, 132 Oberlin College, 19 Oda Nobumichi (patron, 1819–1891), 150 Ogawa Hatchō (printer), 61 61, 62 Okumura Masanobu (artist and publisher, 1686–1764), 38–40, 39 39, 54–56, 55 55, 87, 116, 161 Okumuraya Genroku (publisher), 55 55, 56 Ōta Nanpo (author 1749–1823), 23, 92; poem, 69; preface, 93; Studies on Ukiyo-e (Ukiyo-e kōshō), 23–24, 26–28, 30–32, 38, 46, 48, 54, 59, 71, 77, 84, 116, 117, 141, 181n39 Ōtani Oniji III (actor, also known as Nakamura Nakazō II, 1759–1796), 104–105, 107, 107 107, 108 108, 109 Ōtsu-e (Ōtsu-style pictures), 30, 141 painting: and artistic status, 15–17, 77, 81, 129, 148; collecting, 43; commissions, 16, 17; forgery, 28, 174n11; genre (fūzoku), 22, 31; history, 23, 27–28, 31, 32, 160, 174n19; Kara-e (Chinese-style

202

Glossary - Index

painting), 27; materials, 60, 79, 80, 148; Nihonga (Japanese-style painting), 156; patronage, 80–81; prices, 15, 16, 43, 79, 150; response to full-color prints, 60, 79; sales, 41; themes, 63; training, 175n10; Yamato-e (Japanese-style painting) 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 115; Yōga (Western-style painting), 156 Perry, Matthew C. (US Navy Commodore, 1794–1858), 153, 162 perspective, linear, 53–55, 86–87; as uki-e (“floating picture”), 54, 55 55, 86 photography, 154 pillar print (hashira-e), 54, 89, 103, 103 practice, artistic, 16, 23, 25, 31, 126, 143, 156, 158; as brushes for hire, 15, 17, 27; and lineages, 25, 27, 31, 32, 40, 43, 45, 71, 84, 88, 107, 116, 117, 126, 134, 160; and persona, 100, 118, 128; and status, 27; training, 15, 27 printers, 11, 27, 28, 58, 99, 123, 134, 150, 162 printing: bokashi (gradation), 134, burnishing, 138; embossing (gauffrage), 63, 138; kentō marks, 58; process, 58 prints, buyers, 117; collecting, 132; impressions, number of, 134–135, 142; patrons, 82, 117 prints, formats and sizes: chūban (about 29 × 22 cm), 63, 89; hashira-e (about 70 × 13 cm), 89; hosoban (about 33 × 15 cm), 51, 105; ōban (about 38 × 25 cm), 89 prints, prices, 9, 140 prints, sets and series, 131–132 prints, subject types: bijinga (pictures of beautiful people), 60, 74, 88, 100, 120; egoyomi (calendar pictures), 61, 61 61, 62, 63, 79, 80, 110, 141; meisho-e (pictures of famous places), 20 20, 85 85, 150, 151 151, 152 152; toys and games, 133; yakusha-e (pictures of), 14, 25; yakusha nigao-e (pictures resembling the face), 25, 26, 71, 72 72, 73 73, 110 prints, types: Azuma nishiki-e (“brocade pictures of the East”), 59, 63, 69, 111; beni-e (lit., “red pictures,” hand-colored), 25–27, 48, 49 49; benizuri-e (lit., “redprinted pictures,” featuring two to three block-printed colors), 43, 57 57, 58, 64 64, 69; ichimai-e (single-sheet prints), 25, 26;

nishiki-e (“brocade pictures,” using five or more color blocks), 15, 25–27, 59–60, 69­–70, 82, 86, 88, 89, 98, 110; surimono (lit., “printed thing,” also as surimono-e, specially commissioned print), 25–27, 79, 96, 116, 117; urushi-e (lacquer picture), 25, 26, 48, 49 49, 54 prostitution: licensed, 36, 77, 87, 120, 157; unlicensed, 36, 86, 120. See also brothels; Yoshiwara publishing: books, run sizes, 95; book sales, 94, 137–138; business of, 94–95; censors, 111, 137, 142; restrictions on, 111; review process, 110–111; sets and series, 131–132, 134 publishers, 15, 17, 27, 28–29, 82–83, 114–115, 128, 131; collaboration, 76, 83, 134; colophons, 127; guilds, 111, 140; licenses, 62; numbers of, 28; patrons, 107; payments, 95, 137; profits, 128, 132; restrictions on, 83; shops, 122. See individual publishers by name. See also edicts, printing Rangaku (lit., “Dutch studies,” European learning), 87 Rosenfield, John M. (art historian, 1924–2013), 130 Ryūtei Tanehiko (author, 1783–1842), 123, 137–138, 140 saiken (Yoshiwara guidebooks), 92 Saitō Gesshin (author, 1804–1878), 24, 104, 158 Santō Kyōden (artist and author, also known as Kitao Masanobu, 1761–1816), 24, 43, 82, 93–96, 94 94, 95 95, 97 97, 111 Screech, Timon (art historian), 150 sex workers, 33, 34, 41, 43, 48, 56, 96, 113; use of term, 37; Yoshiwara, 36, 38, 74–77, 78, 89, 92–93, 100 sex workers, ranks: chūsan, 92; furisode shinzō (long-sleeved apprentice), 92; kamuro (child apprentice), 74, 89, 91, 94; tomesode shinzō (short-sleeved apprentice), 92; tsubone (“compartment”), 38 Shikitei Sanba (author, 1776–1822), 14, 24, 114–116, 115 Shin hanga (new prints), 162



shunga (“spring pictures”). See erotica Smith, Henry D. (historian), 122, 185n10 Studies on Ukiyo-e (Ukiyo-e kōshō), 23–24, 26–28, 30–32, 38, 46, 48, 54, 59, 71, 77, 84, 116, 117, 141, 181n39 sumo, 11, 117, 137, 157 sumptuary regulations, 51, 140 surimono (lit., “printed thing,” also as surimono-e, special commissions), 25–27, 79, 96, 116, 117 Suzuki Harunobu (artist, 1725?–1770), 60–70, 61 61, 64 64, 65 65, 67 67, 68 68, 70 70, 71, 116 Suzuki Jūzō (art historian, 1919–2010), 104, 158, 189n3 Takashima Ohisa (rice-cracker shop server, 1777–?), 102 102, 103, 103 Tale of Genji, The (Genji monogatari), 117, 137–138 Tanabe Masako (art historian), 76, 77 Tanuma Okitsugu (shogunal councilor, 1719–1788), 83 Tenpō Reforms (1841–1843), 139 Thompson, Sarah E. (art historian), 140 Tōkaidō road (Eastern sea route, from Edo to Kyoto), 122, 134, 135 Tokugawa Ienari (shogun, 1773–1841), 140 Tokugawa Ieyoshi (shogun, 1793–1853), 141 Tomimoto Toyohina (geisha, active 1789–1802), 101, 102 Torii Kiyomasu II (artist, 1706–1763), 50 50, 51 Torii Kiyomitsu (artist, 1735–1785), 57 57, 59, 89 Torii Kiyonaga (artist, 1752–1815), 82, 88–92, 90–91 90–91, 111, 116 Torii Kiyonobu I (artist, 1664–1729), 46, 47, 48 47 Torii Kiyonobu II (artist, active ca. 1729–1760), 48, 49 Tosa painting lineage, 31, 32 Tōshūsai Sharaku (artist, active 1794–1795), 17, 82, 103–107, 107 107, 116, 120 Toyohara Kunichika (artist, 1835–1900), 162, 164 trade: with China, 53, 122; with Dutch, 53, 122 travel, 131, 157; guidebooks, 131; tourism, 131, 162 Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (artist, 1839–1892), 154, 162, 163 154

Glossary - Index 203

Tsuruya Kiemon (publisher), 137, 138 Tsutaya Jūzaburō (publisher, shop name Kōshodō, 1750–1797), 76–77, 78 78, 82, 92–94, 93 93, 95 95, 96–107, 98 98, 102 102, 103 103, 107, 111 107 55, 86 86. See uki-e (“floating picture”), 54, 55 also perspective, linear Ukiyo-e journal, 167–169 ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”), definition, 8 Ukiyo-e kōshō (Studies on Ukiyo-e), 23–24, 26–28, 30–32, 38, 46, 48, 54, 59, 71, 77, 84, 116, 117, 141, 181n39 Ukiyo-e ruikō (Various Writing on Ukiyo-e), 17 Uoya Eikichi (publisher), 20 20, 151 151, 152, 152 Uryū Masayasu (publisher), 160 160, 161 Utagawa Hiroshige (artist, 1797–1858), 8, 19–21, 20 20, 132 132, 133–137, 133 133, 135 135, 140, 150, 151 151, 152 Utagawa Kunimasa (artist, 1773–1810), 110 Utagawa Kunisada (artist, 1786–1864), 14, 110, 136–140, 136 136, 138 138, 139 Utagawa Kuniyoshi (artist, 1798–1861), 110, 118, 119, 119 119, 130 130, 136, 140–145, 142–143, 144 142–143 144, 159, 161, 162 Utagawa Sadahide (artist, 1807–ca. 1879), 140–141, 155 Utagawa Toyoharu (artist, 1735–1814), 82, 85–88, 86 86, 107, 111, 161 Utagawa Toyohiro (artist, 1773–1828), 88, 112–113, 112–113 112–113, 114 114, 134 Utagawa Toyokuni (artist, 1769–1825), 14, 107–113, 109 109, 112–113 112–113, 114, 116, 118, 119, 136, 137, 140, 161 Utagawa Yoshitora (artist, active ca. 1836–1880), 140, 141

204

Glossary - Index

Vasari, Giorgio (author, 1511–1574), 24, 174n19 veduta prints (intaglio prints often showing vistas), 54 wakashu (“youths,” young men), 33, 38–39 Watanabe Shōzaburō (publisher, 1885–1962), 162, 166 166, 167 Watanabe, Toshio (art historian), 2 world’s fairs, 157 Yadoya no Meshimori (writer, also known as Ishikawa Masamochi, 1753–1830), 99; poem, 98 98, 99, 175n11 Yamaguchiya Tōbei (publisher, also Tōbē), 155 Yamato-e (“Japanese style pictures”), 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 115 Yamazaki Kinbei (publisher, also Kinbē), 77, 78 Yanagisawa Nobutoki (collector, 1724– 1792), 80 Yōga (Western-style painting), 156 yōkai (ghosts or specters), 141, 142 Yokohama, city of, 2, 153 Yoshiwara, 36–37, 74–78, 82, 85, 89, 91–94, 100, 157 Yōshū Chikanobu (artist, 1838–1912), 162, 165 yūjo (“women for play,” sex workers). See sex workers zograscope, 54, 87, 87 Zōho Ukiyo-e ruikō (Collected Writings on Ukiyo-e, Enlarged and Revised), 24, 158

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Nelson Davis is professor of the history of art at the University of Pennsylvania, where she teaches the arts of East Asia from 1600 to the present, with a focus on early modern Japan. Regarded as one of the leading specialists of Japanese print culture, she is the author of Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty and Partners in Print: Artistic Collaboration and the Ukiyo-e Market, as well as numerous articles and essays. Davis was guest curator for Inventing Utamaro: A Japanese Masterpiece Rediscovered at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in 2017, as well as for numerous other exhibitions at regional and national venues. She is currently editor in chief for the journal caa.reviews.