Magic in Japan – The Body of the People

Kuniyoshi, Ghosts of the Taira Clan, 1840′s

In this case not necessarily the physical body – I’m thinking here of the cultural body and how that relates to the people. When we look at the extraordinary corpus of Japanese woodblock prints from the nineteenth century we are struck firstly by its hermeticism. This is a sealed culture (literally, until the 1850’s), and one where there existed a complete set of cultural values, mythologies and beliefs further into the modern age than with any other comparable modern culture. This floating world, balanced for so many decades on the cusp of magic and technology reveals the visible disintegration of the body (as culture) and the mind (the feelings) of the people.

Yoshitsuya, Hideyoshi and the Angry Sotetsu, 1864

The unique isolation of Japan in the early modern world allows us an insight into the disjuncture between life and spirit in western cultures. Japan’s intrinsic culture and belief – like Roman and pre-christian beliefs in the west was pantheistic. The Japanese believed that all things – objects, the natural world, buildings, villages – were invested with kami. Kami is a complex idea, the word is both noun and adjective and as a noun means a powerful being like a god or deity. As an adjective, kami might translate as holy or mystical – mysterious or otherworldly. For some people the term might just mean magic or magical. This mysterious phenomenon underpins every aspect of Japanese culture and explains many of the ritualistic practices of the Japanese way of life, but also the untrammelled superstition that runs through every myth, folktale and unofficial history of people and events in Japanese history. Without an understanding of kami, the meaning of ukiyo prints, of kabuki plays and of the iconography of Japanese art is lost or hidden. There is not the space here to begin to classify the orders of kami let alone their countless manifestations. Because the beliefs of Japanese religion – both Shinto and to a lesser extent Buddhist – are evolved rather than revealed (that is, revealed by a prophet, as in Christianity or Islam), the classification of hierarchies can be confusing and conflicting. Deities may for example have less kami, (and therefore influence) than mortals who have achieved mythological status over time or through the influence of sects, shrines, folktales or Imperial influence.

Kuniyoshi, Empress Jingo Kogo

A good example of this is the Empress Jingo. Jingo (Jingu) is certainly a real historical figure but is imbued with the attributes of a goddess and famed for her conquest of parts of Korea in the 3rd century. Having fallen pregnant, she is said to have tied a girdle of stones to her waist and delayed the birth of her son by three years. In the case of Jingo we can see how fact and mythology become contained within the same myth. These fantastical stories, common to nearly every well known historical figure have become woven into the fabric of myth and magic, creating inseparable distinctions between fact and fiction. Less outlandish might be the very real and well documented, 12th century samurai warrior Minamoto no Yoshitsune.  Yoshitsune has parallels with the English Folk hero Robin Hood; and his is a tragic and very famous story in Japan. His father was persecuted by the rival Taira Clan and Yoshitsune was brought up in a monastery. Legend has it that he was then taught the secrets of fighting by Tengu (mythical forest creatures) before taking up rebellion against his father’s old enemies. Yoshitsune is usually pictured fighting the warrior monk Benkei at Gojo Bridge. Benkei, known as a phenomenally strong man and warrior, has secured the bridge with the intention of relieving 1000 samurai of their swords. Yoshitsune is his 1000th victim. Yoshitsune, though slight, defeats the giant man using Tengu fighting skills. Benkei becomes his loyal protector and between them they lead an armed rebellion against the Taira, establishing Yoshitsune’s brother as the first national Shogun.

Kuniyoshi, Ushiwaka Maru (young Yoshitsune)

In Yoshitsune’s legend there is historical fact, well attested by contemporary accounts; tremendous exaggeration – his famous eight boat leap, his fight with Benkei; and outright mythology – his education with the mythical forest creatures the tengu. Yoshitsune’s story is typical of the fabric of Japanese folk history and one that would have been very familiar with ordinary, superstitious Japanese. Ukiyo prints further embellished and reinforced the more colourful episodes of these histories with often lurid and miraculous scenes of fights with gigantic spiders, winged tengu, disembodied and gigantic heads of demons and terrifying monsters of the sea and forest. The religious belief in ghosts, demons and goblins has its roots in Chinese Daoism. The Japanese co-opted many of the characteristics of Daoist superstition into their own creation myths and to fill otherwise dull episodes in the lives of important

Yoshitaki, Bando Jutaro and an Oni Demon, 1873

figures. Hence there are numerous accounts of warrior heroes fighting with tengu (forest goblins), oni (wild demons) and kappa (water devils) – these Chinese characters easily combining with the indigenous Shinto beliefs. As memories of the ancient past diminished, the popular superstition of more recent possessions and hauntings came to dominate popular culture and entered into the mainstream of woodblock prints and kabuki theatre.

It was not only heroes and magicians that preoccupied the Japanese populace: perhaps more immediate and more pressing were the kami associated with animals, place and objects, a powerful superstition that penetrates right to the modern age. Nearly every

Hiroshige, New Year’s Eve foxfires at the changing tree, Oji, 1857

indigenous animal (and some that are not native) is associated with magical powers, either directly or indirectly. The most powerful are also associated with the Chinese zodiac. Special superstitions surround the fox, the hare and the badger. The most confusing of these is the fox, often seen in Japanese woodblock prints and on its own associated with magic, good, evil, deceit and shape shifting. The fox appears in some of the great art of Japan, as in Hiroshige’s haunting and masterful New Year’s Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Oji – here associated with marsh gas fires thought to presage magical events. The fox in Japanese mythology can be immensely wise, acquiring nine tails by the end of its long life but also assuming the shape of travellers on the road and of beautiful and seductive women.

Hirosada, Kasa-obake

 

If all this were not enough to worry about, objects could also take on malevolent and mysterious lives to harass the innocent or the unwary. In Japanese prints vengeful spirits can occupy hanging lanterns or appear as great skulls in the snowy landscape. Even umbrellas were invested with their own soul at a certain age. These Tsukumogami, (Kami of tool) included any object of use that was more than 100 years old. This 10th century folk myth was given greater credence after it was co-opted by the proselytising sect of Shingon Buddhism and persists to this day in popular culture and quaint ceremonies carried out to console lost or damaged household objects.

Yoshitoshi, Hakamadare Yasasuke and Kidomaru Fighting with Magic

Belief in Kami, in magic, in the supernatural has animated Japanese art for centuries. In the work of Kuniyoshi for example, his outstanding imaginative use of these myths contributed to his phenomenal success and the richness and vibrancy of his most arresting images (see top of page). So too in the work of his most gifted pupil Yoshitoshi. The print illustrated left of
Hakamadare Yasasuke and Kidomaru Fighting with Magic from 1887 is one of the finest of Yoshitoshi’s magical subjects. Conforming to the tradition of mortals with exceptional Kami, it illustrates a follower of the 10th century warlord Minamoto no Yorimitsu, fighting with what might be another aspect of himself by use of supernatural means: the upper figure transforming into a gigantic snake, the lower meanwhile invoking a cloud of tengu through incantation. The print has everything required of a folk history – magical creatures, sorcerers, historic characters, demons, terror and kami. This print was made twenty years after the great Japanese leap into the modern world, yet it would have been clearly understood by the large audience that it was designed for. Japanese culture was embedded in the natural world, in natural magic. This animism was also embedded in its official and Imperial history and in the official religions of Buddhism and Shinto. The distinctions that we habitually make between the real and the imagined simply did not exist in nineteenth century Japan. Thought, action and phenomena were intimately connected with the individual, and with their conscience and their contract with culture and society. Commerce, capitalism and communications severed this bond between town and country, between art (in its broadest sense) and life. What replaced this evolved belief system appears to be panic, alienation and industrialisation. Happily, these myths linger on in attenuated form. Casual research of Japanese mythology will these days lead to any number of manga and anime sites where the hybrid descendants of Yoshitsune, Benkei, Hideyoshi and Kidomaru are still wreaking magic and evil in the settings of junior high school and downtown Tokyo.

Manga Kidomaru

Kuniyoshi to Yoshitoshi – Reviving the Warrior Tradition

Shuntei, Samurai with Giant Axe

The new show just open at Toshidama Gallery is on the subject of musha-e, or warrior prints.  With images from the earliest part of the nineteenth century, such as the Shuntei pictured left, to the masterful Yoshitoshi woodblock prints from the end of the century, the change in the way in which warriors are depicted and the motivation behind this is remarkable.

The earlier prints are romantic – pictures of mythical heroes fighting magical beasts.  Such is the context of Kuniyoshi’s astonishing and game-changing series, 108 Heroes of the Popular Suikoden. As the century progressed, however, the subversive potential of ukiyo-e is fully explored.  The frequent depiction of the sixteenth century general, Hideyoshi, can only be

Kuniyoshi, Military Brilliance for the 8 Views: Night Rain at Narumi

seen as anti-establishment art, given that Hideyoshi was deposed by the coalition of power that became the Shogunate.  Kuniyoshi was well known to be a great admirer of Hideyoshi and by definition, subversive.  He found as many indirect as direct ways of portraying him; and as the power of the Shoguns began to wane, such anti-Tokugawa propaganda became increasingly common.

It reaches its peak in the extraordinary warrior prints of Yoshitoshi in the Meiji era, in which the tradition of depicting historic heroes as a means of critiquing the contemporary government is not only revived but refined.

Yoshitoshi, Campaign at Kagoshima

Kuniyoshi to Yoshitoshi: The Warrior Tradition is at Toshidama Gallery from 26th April until 7th May and includes prints by Shuntei, Kuniyoshi, Kunisada, Yoshitoshi, and Sadahide, amongst others.

Roy Lichtenstein at the Tate: the Quest for Authenticity?

Roy Lichtenstein Tate Retrospective

The retrospective exhibition of the paintings of Roy Lichtenstein dominates the London art scene this month, with posters and billboards, plastic bags and T-shirts everywhere. Lichtenstein occupies a peculiar position in recent art history: less respected than his contemporaries Jasper Johns  and Robert Rauschenberg; and less famous than his rival Andy Warhol. This exhibition is a clear attempt to revive the artist as an intellectual heavyweight and to draw attention to the several decades of work normally eclipsed by his iconic pictures of the early 1960’s.

The (arbitrary) limitations that Lichtenstein chose to impose upon himself – block, line, edge and flat colour to the exclusion of all else – are intriguing. Indeed the formal constraints that define the limits of his practice are nearly identical to those of the ukiyo-e artist of Japan – even down to the formal recycling of existing cultural tropes and iconography. The graphic considerations of Japanese prints closely mirror the technical limits of Lichtenstein’s work and as we shall see, he responded to visual art of the far east in paintings made at the very end of his career.

Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape with Philosopher, 1996

Travellers Among Mountains and Streams

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The show itself is vast and comprehensive and whilst much has been made in journals regarding the integrity and relevance of his later work, the paintings of 1962 – 1964 dominate the space through their familiarity, their confidence and their raw energetic strength. The curiosity remains in the final rooms, a series of interrogations of Chinese art:  a long series of ambitious paintings that pay homage to the landscape brush paintings of the Song dynasty (960 – 1279). The paintings of the Song dynasty that interested Lichtenstein are in the shan-shui style (shan meaning mountain and shui meaning river); a style deeply connected not only with aesthetics but with philosophy. Taoism stressed the insignificance of man in the cosmos; the detailed, riven images of mountains and rivers with foreground trees stressed the complexity of the universe and man’s place within it.

Roy Lichtenstein, Laocoon 1988

Lichtenstein’s simplistic interpretations of these necessarily impenetrable paintings are baffling. They appear to show little understanding of the intention or of the underlying aesthetic – seemingly stabbing at an idea of serenity in their mechanical transcription. By using the machined screen of dots that is his signature style, Lichtenstein reduces the complexity of the originals to the language of commodity.  There is nothing wrong with that, except that as the exhibition unfolds, one has the nagging feeling that this is not what he intended at all. The paintings which in fact make up the bulk of the show, reveal an artist whose desire to be authentic seeps out of every line, slab and Ben-Day dot. It is currently fashionable to rehabilitate his painting along contemporary art models; a language of painting that has grown around artists like Gary Hume. Unfashionable though it is to talk about intention, it seems that from Lichtenstein’s earliest attempts at a Larry Rivers derived expression, to the tragic but heroic painting of the Laocoon of 1988 (above right), the artist was attempting to emote – a constipated expressionist acutely uncomfortable within his self-imposed cage of dots and devices. This makes the majority of his output as an artist strangely unsettling. He observes the liquid ease of Matisse and Picasso and seeks to codify it, to undress it – but what is the purpose of these uncomfortable goldfish of Matisse or these sexless bathing beauties? Why are these gigantic 1990′s nudes painted in the anachronistic style of a photo-mechanical  process, if not to mask an ingrained inability to be engaged?

All of this contrasts harshly with those early cartoon paintings of the 1960’s. The room that contains the paintings Wham! (1963), Drowning Girl (1963), Hopeless (1963) and Bratatat! (1962) is overwhelming. These pictures burst with intention, energy, engagement and excitement; beautiful and powerful, they are also knowing and supremely confident in a way that is lacking from nearly everything else that follows. One senses in these works not only a passion for painting but a deep understanding of picture making and cultural dialogue. This room is one of the most exciting displays of pictures I have seen and easily exceeds the impact of say Warhol’s work of the same years.

Roy Lichtenstein, Drowning Girl

Kuniyoshi, The Carpenter Rokusaburo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These pictures show how process does not necessarily confine. Returning to the art of the far east, I am reminded in Drowning Girl (1963, above left) – the tactile freshness of the edges, the subtle lisp of feeling – of ukiyo-e pictures which make use (necessarily) of the same repertoire of marks and restraint. The picture of the Carpenter Rokusaburo by Kuniyoshi (1852, above right) uses a similar inventive shorthand for the waves that threaten to engulf the figure in the foreground. It is perhaps not fanciful to suppose that the established Japanese signature for water was in some way the ancestor of these American cartoon versions. It is interesting to compare the other shorthands used in both pictures – the sweep of hair, the simplified features which are nevertheless required to show fleeting and complex emotions, the necessary use of flat colour and black key-line and so on. Embedded in tradition, the artists who made Japanese prints were able to remain inventive and engaged with the medium and the subject matter. Anxiety regarding relevance, modernity, expression and so on occurred only at the end of two centuries of confident production. That anxiety which saw the decline of the medium and of the genre, strangely mirrors the work of Lichtenstein over the period of his career. Japanese prints of the early twentieth century share much of the same hesitancy as these later paintings – a searching for subject matter, a failure of touch and so on. As Lichtenstein fails to render anything other than surface from the Song landscapes, so did the later ukiyo-e artists fail to stay in touch with the vital energy of the woodblock tradition.

Fans of War and Other Decorative Pleasures

Kunichika, uchiwa-e

People not intimate with Japanese culture will nevertheless be familiar with the Japanese fan. Both the folding fan (ogi) or the fixed, rigid fan (uchiwa) with a decorative scene printed on the paper cover are still commonplace gifts all over the world. The obvious use of the fan is to drive air over the body in the summer heat to cool down. Like most decorative items these simple objects became the subject of a great deal of etiquette and minute social status and even laws, restricting the number of slats and the variety of painted imagery. The history of these curious but socially important objects can be traced back to the sixth century in China but they do not become important in Japanese culture until the Heian period of the tenth and eleventh century. By the later Edo period, fan making had become an important industry and provided artists with income when print commissions were not forthcoming.

Hiroshige, uchiwa-e

All of the great ukiyo-e artists produced fan prints known as uchiwa-e. The great beauty and delicacy that went into the designs is well known and unmounted uchiwa-e are hugely collectible and very expensive. Of the Edo artists, Hiroshige  and Kuniyoshi are maybe most well known. Hiroshige’s uchiwa-e are particularly outstanding, and because the items were in daily use very few of the designs have survived intact.

Construction of both types was of a lightweight bamboo frame on which paper designs were pasted. The artist drew the image onto a paper template whose shape mirrored the final dimensions of the fan. Very occasionally, extant fans do survive but for ukiyo-e collectors it is the untrimmed paper sheets produced by the printer and therefore in unused condition which are the most collectible. Toshidama Gallery is currently showing an exhibition of onnagata (female impersonators from the kabuki stage) prints where we have included three extremely rare uchiwa-e by Toyohara Kunichika (see top of page). All three show examples of theatre scenes and these would have been collected by the fanatical kabuki enthusiasts of the time.

Tessen (war fans)

Perhaps less well known are the war fans or fighting fans (tessen) of the Japanese Edo period. The commonest were folding fans made of heavy plates of iron which were designed to look like normal, harmless folding fans or solid clubs shaped to look like a closed fan. Samurai could take these to places where swords or other overt weapons were not allowed, and some swordsmanship schools included training in the use of the tessen as a weapon. The tessen was also used for fending off arrows and darts and as a throwing weapon. War fans are often depicted in Japanese prints, although as the picture opposite of some actual iron fans shows, it is more or less impossible to differentiate them from normal, lightweight versions.

Kuniyoshi, Secrets of Strategy – Fight on Gojo Bridge

The most famous use of the tessen in Japanese storytelling is of the fight between Benkei and Yoshitsune-no Minamoto. Yoshitsune’s is a tragic and very famous story in Japan. His father was persecuted by the rival Taira Clan and Yoshitsune was brought up in a monastery. Legend has it that he was then taught the secrets of fighting by Tengu (mythical forest creatures) before taking up rebellion against his father’s old enemies. The scenes depicted in the prints left and below, is the famous meeting between Yoshitsune and the folk hero Oniwakamura (Benkei). Benkei, known as a phenomenally strong man and warrior, has secured Gojo bridge with the intention of relieving 1000 samurai of their swords. Yoshitsune is his 1000th victim. Yoshitsune, though slight, defeats the giant man using Tengu fighting skills and finally, overwhelming him through the use of his tessen which is clearly visible in both pictures. It is interesting to note that the iron tessen in the photograph above has the same painted design as the fan held by Yoshitsune in the Kunisada woodblock print illustrated below.

Kunisada, Fight on Gojo Bridge in the Snow

It is a curious and typically Japanese irony that these very delicate and beautiful objects, so embedded in court culture of the Japanese ruling class, so beloved by refined women, should also be imitated so skillfully in such an unsympathetic material as iron and to such violent and aggressive ends.

Onnagata: A Woman’s Manner is online at the The Toshidama Gallery until the 26th of April 2013.

The Enigmatic Japanese Cuckoo

Hokusai, A Cuckoo and Rainbow

For those familiar with, or interested in Japanese woodblock prints, the image of the falling cuckoo (above) will perhaps be familiar but perplexing. This enigmatic bird, drawn identically each time, appears in woodblock prints from the early 1830’s right into the twentieth century. The bird is sometimes (as in the case of the Hokusai) the star of the show, sometimes a symbol and occasionally a seeming afterthought – filling in an aching gap in the page.

Hokusai, Cuckoo and Azelias 1834

The cuckoo (Cuculus poliocephalus) – or hototogisu has several meanings in Japanese folklore but its use in these prints appears to be transient or elusive – much like the bird itself. Unlike in the west where its song heralds the arrival of spring, in Japan the cuckoo is associated with the coming of the summer months. The cuckoo has long been popular as a subject in Japanese literature and Haiku, possibly to do with the word having five syllables; and in literature and myth it is associated with the longing of the spirits of the dead to return to their loved ones. Mourning, longing, melancholy; these are suggested maybe by its song and perhaps signals its persistent use in woodblock prints.

Kunisada, Soga Brothers

One of the great tragedies of Japanese myth is the revenge drama of the Soga Brothers. In the stunning print by Kunisada (left), the two samurai depicted are Nitta Tadatsune and Soga no Sukenari. Soga no Sukenari’s father was killed by Nitta Tadatsune’s lord, and murdered in turn by Soga and his brother. In the end, Nitta Tadatsune takes his own revenge by killing Soga no Sukenari. The cuckoo here is pictured as a portent of tragedy (as is the rain) and of the echo of the dead and unquiet father.

Elsewhere, particularly in literature, the cuckoo has borne other symbols – as in the well known story of the three warlords Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. Ieyasu eventually became shogun and first unifying leader of Japan in the sixteenth century. There is a traditional senryu, or short poem, which is used to illustrate the virtues of patience. It says that one day Nobunaga, Hideyoshi and Ieyasu got together and they saw a cuckoo that wouldn’t sing. Nobunaga said, ‘If it doesn’t sing I’ll kill it.’ But Hideyoshi said, ‘No; I’ll convince it to sing;’ and Ieyasu said, ‘I’ll wait until it sings’.

Hiroshige, 100 Views of Edo

More commonly the bird is used to animate landscapes, to deal with the blank spaces on the page; the placement being a decision of great aesthetic importance when used successfully as in the Hiroshige print Komagata Hall and Azuma Bridge, from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (right). Here the falling cuckoo is also used to imagine the oncoming storm and the melancholy of the windy night.

Kuniyoshi, Comparison of Birds and Flowers 1835

It seems that the original drawing for this often used motif is by Hokusai in around 1830 – 1834. The motif is swiftly used by Hiroshige in a quarter block print from the mid 1830’s, in his Parallels for the Tokaido series of 1846 and again in the Views of Edo from the late 1850’s. Kunisada uses the same cuckoo in several theatre prints in the 1840’s and 1850’s and Kuniyoshi borrows the same drawing for a Bijin series comparing flowers and birds in 1835 (left) and for Poems set to the Koto in 1840. The same drawing of the cuckoo surfaces again in the Meiji with Yoshitoshi who uses its melancholy associations in the famous vertical diptych, Genji in the Countryside from 1885.

Yoshitoshi, Rural Genji 1885

What all these examples show is the collaborative nature of Japanese woodblock printing. An artist was able to manufacture an image that could become the standard drawing for that subject for generations of other artists and contemporaries. There was little sense of ownership, copyright or proprietorship – and whilst there was certainly rivalry between artists, the casual borrowing of standard images was considered completely acceptable.

Liberating the Nude

Kunisada, Kesa Gozen Washing

The picture to the left here is a woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada from 1855. At first glance it seems unremarkable, albeit very beautiful; richly coloured and drawn with great originality. It is in fact a complex and fascinating thing, overlaid with meaning both within itself and outside in the world. Below is a drawing by Edgar Degas made in Paris in  the 1880’s and further down the page a famous painting by Matisse from 1907. What connects these three images? Aside from the obvious subject matter I think that a clue lies in class – the social class of the subject and then by extension the social class (or more accurately the expectations) of the class who are the intended viewers.

Japanese woodblock prints are the product of a metropolitan and therefore an urban and popular culture. There’s a history of finely wrought and expensively made art for the samurai class that dates back centuries, but ukiyo-e (literally “pictures of the floating world”) are not from that scene at all. The great prints which are so much admired today and which command increasingly sizable prices at auction were specifically directed at the general milieu of the city of Edo (Tokyo). The consumers of these cheap artefacts were merchants: traders, shopkeepers, wholesalers and makers. The subject matter of the prints was invariably kabuki actors – kabuki being a populist form of entertainment – heroes of popular mythology or else the heroes and heroines of contemporary or historical tragedy. Nineteenth century Japan was turning its back on its feudal, aristocratic heritage and embracing city dwelling and the fortunes of trade. Ukiyo-e and kabuki provided a ready made culture to satisfy an exploding and feverish market. This is perhaps why academics have struggled for so long with great artists like Kunisada or Kuniyoshi – there is a distinct whiff of trade about the whole business.

Degas, Bather 1880′s

Western art on the other hand was exclusively engaged with aristocracy – with breeding, with the church and with the culture and concerns of the wealthy and educated elite. Paintings therefore tended to represent either cultured people (patrons), religious subjects or subjects from Greek mythology. The historical impulse to represent vigorous men and seductive women was consequently straitjacketed into a repertoire of handy set pieces: goddesses bathing or being ravaged, gods fighting or being heroic. All this led to a stagnation of ideas and technique in the mid nineteenth century and a genre of art called Academy Painting, still universally derided for its cliches and technical clunkiness. The new art of the impressionists, the realists, the symbolists and the cubists arose from a desire in younger artists to change the way they made art. Centred in Paris, a good deal of this desire for change seems to have spilled over from the political corpse of the Paris commune and the atmosphere of revolution that lingered in districts such as Montmartre. Japanese prints are widely recognised nowadays as being crucial in giving artists opportunities to experiment with new ‘realist’ and different ways of picturing the world. The stylistic relationships between ukiyo-e and the impressionist artists is obvious but there were other, profound social changes that occurred also as a result of the new craze for all things Japanese.

The bathing woman at the top of the page is not a society belle or a goddess. She does not exhibit perfect formal beauty, nor does she adopt a pose that can be identified in a pre-existing Greek or Roman statue. She is an ordinary woman, observed casually by the artist, almost certainly drawn from memory and recognisable to Edo citizens who lived in single room houses and subsisted on modest incomes. For someone in the artistic scene of Paris in the 1860’s or 1870’s this would have been a revelation. For artists who were experimenting with realism (something already widely practiced in the literature of writers such as Emil Zola), these Edo prints, which effortlessly combined great skill and beauty with casual observation, would have provided a new direction with which to create a truly modern kind of art.

It is hard for us to appreciate at this distance the horror with which Manet’s Olympia was received by critics and the public in 1865. The subject alone – a well known prostitute – was bad enough but Manet also chose to paint in a style that revealed the everyday stuff of life, rather than in the distancing veils of glaze preferred by academy painters. The following years saw similar scandals as other artists followed the new trend towards realism (notably the impressionists). Degas is best known for such observations, his principal subject matter could be that of the ukiyo-e artist: prostitutes, dancers, washer-women and women engaged in everyday pursuits. Not something so startling to us now but in the second half of the nineteenth century this was a revolution and it produced some of the most familiar and best loved works of art to us today. We can see here in the work of Degas a change principally of class. Degas’ muses are now undressed of the baggage of ancient history; the people he paints are urban; makers, performers… doers. This is exactly the arena of the Edo artists. The shift in class took art away from the salons and the academies and created a new kind of urban appreciation that even now remains powerfully present.

Modernism (as it came to be called) liberated artists and created a new class of art lover – the middle class, urban dwelling enthusiast. In this way Japan was far in advance of the Europe; its own revolution although more protracted had necessarily had the same result. The nude was also allowed liberation although I’m not sure that feminists would agree that there is anything politically superior about Renoir’s puffed up beauties. However, for many artists, picturing women as they were – at work or in leisure – or else as they appeared, rather than how they were fantasised, was in fact a step towards the liberation of the female from the prison of fantasy. We can see this schism with the idealisation of the female body continue in Europe in the work of Matisse, Picasso and so many other artists. Looking at Matisse’s Luxe II (below) it is hard not to see the schema of the typical Japanese print let alone the etched line drawing that contains the flat, monochrome figures whose shape seems have so many of the stylistic quirks of the Kunisada at the top of the page, (compare the left arm and hand of the Kunisada with the same on the left hand figure of the Matisse).

Matisse, Luxe II 1907

The title of the Matisse painting, Luxe II is derived from a series of work made during 1907 titled Luxe, Calme et Volupté, which itself derives from the (Japonisme enthusiast) Charles Baudelaire’s poem L’Invitation au voyage:

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

There all is order and beauty,
Luxury, peace, and pleasure.

Compare that to the traditional definition of ukiyo by the writer Asai Ryoi in his Ukiyo monogatari:

… Living only for the moment, turning our full attention to the pleasures of the moon, the snow, the cherry blossoms and the maple leaves; singing songs, drinking wine, diverting ourselves in just floating, floating; … refusing to be disheartened, like a gourd floating along with the river current: this is what we call the floating world…

The connections between the realism of the Edo artists and their escape therein and the same concerns of the European symbolists of the nineteenth century seem obvious and yet also understated in the literature. Perhaps a future understanding of the similarities of disparate cultures and their diverse connections will allow us to see art as less a national indicator and more of a human necessity.

Impressions of Women in Japanese Prints is open at the Toshidama Gallery from 1st February – 15th March 2012.

The Andon – There is a Light That Never Goes Out

Kuniyoshi, Skillfully Tempered Sharpened Blades – Sano Jirozaemon

There are lots of things that appear in Japanese prints which we pass over without comment or surprise. Ukiyo prints are very particular in their setting, both in contemporary scenes and in historical prints where (without the internet) artists were very concerned about detailed research and historical accuracy. Of course there are anachronisms, which with better research tools it is easy now to spot, but overall artists did a good job of checking their facts and making realistic settings for a presumably critical  audience.

An object which makes frequent appearances in ukiyo prints is the andon, a wood and paper lantern that became popular in the Edo period and is may be responsible for more fatalities than any other single object including the samurai sword. Andon is merely the Japanese word for lantern but it is associated, (especially in the west) with a particular form of square, rigid, timber and paper construction of great elegance. The typical andon makes its appearance in ukiyo-e of the mid Edo period, as in the illustration at the top of the page of a woodblock print by Kuniyoshi. The print shows Sano Jirozaemon who is disfigured with smallpox.  He is bequeathed a magic sword that will bring him good luck as long as it remains sheathed. As a result he prospers and becomes a successful businessman, falling in love with a prostitute, Yatsuhashi who returns his affections but leaves him for a former lover. Enraged, he pursues her and kills her; he is in turn pursued by the authorities but manages to also kill his rival before surrendering. Kuniyoshi shows Jirozaemon ready to strike the final blow and Yatsuhashi crawling away behind the raised and bloodstained lamp. It’s a good illustration of an andon; we can clearly see the portable carrying handle, the translucent paper screen that diffuses the light  and the sliding shelf that holds a shallow dish filled with oil (usually rape seed oil, although sardine oil was also used). This shelf is positioned high up in the body of the frame to maximise the light; the base holds a concealed drawer to carry spare oil and wicks and occasionally a tray called an aburazara designed to catch drips.

Yoshitoshi, Sano Jirazaemon

The outstanding feature of the andon is its portability. Noted for their elegance and restrained design, they were developed in the early edo where interiors were sparsely furnished and the few objects that there were all conformed to a certain design aesthetic. The paper shades were very probably a development of the shoji: paper lined sliding doors that allowed diffused sunlight to enter rooms during the day. The type illustrated here is a kaku-andon, the commonest, portable version. Maru-andon, popular in Osaka were cylindrical versions and there were smaller versions, like bedside lights that were called ariake-andon or daybreak lanterns. Yoshitoshi borrowed the device of the lantern and much else in his own version of the story of Jirozaemon illustrated above.

Kunichika, 100 Roles of Baiko – Okazaki Neko

Kunichika, 36 Good and Evil Beauties – Otyo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lanterns – light, shadow, silhouette – these had superstitious meaning to the Edo Japanese. Ghosts and demons were commonly thought to be revealed by a cast light, a shadow or a shape seen through a shade or a shoji. The illustration above left of a print by Kunichika of the cat demon of Okazaki illustrates how the hand of the demon is revealed as a paw by the paper shade of a kaku-andon and the print of the geisha Otoyo (above right), possessed by the spirit of a vampire cat shows the same relationship, this time drawn in the shadow of a sliding shoji, thrown by a hanging andon.  The andon is used to great effect in the print of the 24 Paragons of Filial Piety by Chikanobu.  In this case a beautiful example of a high quality lantern is shown being held by a faithless wife in the act of profaning the statue of her mother-in-law. The supernatural subject matter and eerie setting is heightened by the storm outside and the light cast by the portable andon.

Chikanobu, 24 Paragons of Filial Piety 9 – Teiran

Of course there were no real demons exposed by the ghostly light of these shadow makers, but there were countless tragedies caused by the careless use of andon. The structures were tall, top heavy and fragile. The construction of thin, dry wood and lacquered paper, tinder dry, were highly flammable as were the traditional timber houses of old Edo. Devastating fire was commonplace throughout the city, even despite the highly organised guilds of firemen, watch towers and alarm bells. There were 1798 recorded major fires in 267 years, 49 of which levelled all or parts of the city (still known as City of Fires). It is not known how many of these were caused by the spilling of lanterns, but it is a reasonable guess that many people died as a result of these elegant paper lanterns.

Women with andon