Dramaturging the Vengeful Sword: Mitsugi & the Shimosaka in Kuniyoshi’s series of Famous Blades

Two years ago, I was honored to play a small role in a Hawaii Kabuki production, The Vengeful Sword, and to serve as dramaturg. This involved doing research on a variety of elements that come up in the play – including the historical events that inspired the play, the history of the locations, the meaning of certain terms – and sharing the results of my research with the cast & crew via a private (closed) blog. I’ve posted before, on numerous occasions, about the production, but now, I’m finally getting around to re-posting, publicly, some of that content. I hope you find it interesting.

This post was just a cheeky mini-update to share a print series I happened upon.

William Pearl, a local Honolulu-based art collector and overall really nice guy, has, in “The Kuniyoshi Project“, put together a beautiful and thorough website cataloging and sharing the works of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), an ukiyo-e artist especially known for his print series depicting famous warriors, and for the innovative effects deployed in them. You may know him from a particularly famous work depicting a skeleton spectre.

In any case, in 1847-48, Kuniyoshi apparently produced a series of 10 prints depicting famous swords and the warriors / stories to which they belong. The one above features our “hero”, Fukuoka Mitsugi, with (presumably) Okon (a courtesan in the teahouse, and Mitsugi’s chief love interest character) in the background. Unless that’s Manno (the scheming mama-san of the teahouse)… I find it interesting that in a series of famous swords, it is Mitsugi’s name, and not the words “Aoi Shimosaka” (the name of the sword) which appear in the cartouche (the title box).

I have not taken the time to read through the whole inscription (it’d be better/easier if I had a larger version of the image), but one can assume it tells the story of the play. We see the artist’s signature in the mid-to-lower left, with a seal that I guess belongs to the artist, though it could belong to the publisher, Ise-ya Ichibei (a coincidence, I am sure). Another publisher’s seal, reading “hanmoto [printer/publisher] Ise Ichi”, appears on the stone by Mitsugi’s foot.

I was also interested to notice that another print in the series also features a sword by Shimosaka Yasutsugu, though I have yet to find anything much at all about the play “Oriawase Tsuzure no Nishiki” in which this character, Shundô Jirôemon, appears.

I love the splotchy texture of the red used here, and the realization that Kuniyoshi would have had to carve a separate woodblock of just handprints and such for applying the red ink onto the print. I cannot say for sure in what order the colors were applied, but the idea of having each copy of this print be relatively “clean” and then be “bloodied” in the course of its production is pretty interesting and amusing to me.

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Hand-Held: Gerhard Pulverer’s Japanese Illustrated Books

A number of works from the collection I helped digitize a few years ago is now on display at the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery in Washington DC, in an exhibition entitled “Hand-Held.”

Right: Just a few of the roughly 2,000 books in the Freer’s Pulverer Collection.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, this is a collection of roughly 2,000 Japanese books, almost all of them woodblock-printed, and almost all of them from the Edo period (1600-1868); I’m not sure how many pieces are included in the exhibition, but I am sure that the museum has done a good job of choosing interesting, attractive, or otherwise historically important works to show.

I’m sad that I won’t get a chance to see the exhibition myself, as I don’t expect I’ll be going to the East Coast this summer. But, for anyone who is able to go, the show is up from April 6th through August 11th.

Perhaps not the most colorful works, but very important ones. Two Japanese copies of the Chinese Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting, on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston back in 2010, standing in here on this blog post for the current Sackler exhibition of which I have no photos since I am unable to go there to see it for myself.

Hopefully, it won’t be long before the online catalog database of all the works – all the thousands of photos my compatriots and I took – is up and ready for public access. In the meantime, however, the Freer-Sackler has put together a beautiful page for Hokusai’s Ehon sumidagawa ryôgan ichiran (“Illustrated Book Listing Both Banks of the Sumida River”). Click through, and you can see each opening (i.e. each page) of the illustrations, lined up next to one another, revealing a single continuous panorama image of the Sumida River which ran through the shogunal capital of Edo (today, Tokyo).

Imagine holding this book in your hands and paging through it, seeing the image continue on the next page, and the next page, and the next page. What Hokusai does here is innovative, and, I think, quite charming, fun, and kind of brilliant. The Pulverer Collection catalog, if it ever goes up, will contain literally thousands of other books, each intriguing, charming, compelling or innovative in its own way. Once that goes up, and assuming I can find the time, I’ll finally be able to start sharing with you some of my favorites.

An image from a display at the Metropolitan Museum, featuring one of the books also included in the Pulverer Collection. Once the online database goes up, it might look something like this.

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AAS Report 3 – The Ming Lives On

The elaborate, ornate costume associated with the Ming in kabuki, loaded with ruffles, can be seen in this “Battles of Coxinga” triptych by Kunichika.

Satoko Shimazaki was the third presenter on the panel “Early Modern News: The Fall of the Ming on a Global Stage,” which I wrote about in my previous post. I was particularly excited to meet her, as she is not only a kabuki specialist, but combines this with research on popular publishing, and on perceptions of the foreign – all things at the core of my research interests.

In her presentation, Shimazaki discussed the appearance of Ming China, or Ming individuals, in kabuki, with a particular focus on the 1715 play “The Battles of Coxinga” (Kokusen’ya kassen).

She first introduced the 1818 play Shitennô ubuyu no Tamagawa　(四天王産湯玉川), in which a Ming princess travels all the way to Japan to see the great actor Ichikawa Danjûrô, and showed us some images of that scene, from illustrated woodblock-printed books of the time. I tried to find a similar image, on Google Image Search, to share with you, but was sadly not successful. This seems a wonderful, amusing example of how playful and humorous kabuki can be – and, also, the cult of the actor, i.e. the power of celebrity, which plays such a major role in the character of the kabuki theatre.

She then turned to discussing The Battles of Coxinga, an epic-length jidaimono based on the legend of Coxinga, aka Zheng Chenggong, a half-Japanese Ming loyalist who led forces on Taiwan in raiding the Chinese coast and otherwise fighting off the Qing (Manchu) forces which had taken much of mainland China. In the play, Zheng is referred to as Watônai, typically written 和藤内, but a reference to 和唐内, meaning “between (内, nai) China (唐, tô) and Japan (和, wa).” Shimazaki argued, however, that these three characters can also be interpreted as meaning not only “both Chinese and Japanese,” but also “neither Chinese nor Japanese,” or “heard of in both China and Japan.”

Shimazaki tells us the term “Japan” appears numerous times in the script. What form this takes, whether it’s Nihon, or Wa, or some combination of those and other terms, is unclear (though I imagine one could figure out quite easily by just finding a copy of the play… and, at least in one scene, a Ming princess in Japan, asking for help, employs the term “Nihonjin”), but, regardless, this is pretty important. Many scholars argue that there was no sense of “national” identity in the Edo period, but, while I agree that there certainly is no integrated nation-state of Japan in the modern sense, and that modern(ist) discourses of “nationalism” might likewise not apply, it is nevertheless clear that there was a conception of “Japan” during the Edo period. It was not solely a local conception, in which identity was based in village, province, or domain. This conception of “Japanese” identity was, however, different from modern conceptions of ethnicity in important ways. David Howell writes about the Ainu being able to become Wajin (and vice versa) simply by changing their appearance, behavior, and customs. This sort of malleable notion of identity is seen too in the play, as Watônai converts some Tartars into Japanese by shaving their pates (i.e. giving them Japanese hairdos) and giving them samurai swords.

This brings us to the question of the word “Tartars.” “Tartar” is a broad, all-encompassing word employed in pre-modern Europe to refer indiscriminately to any and all steppe peoples, including Mongols, Manchus, and various sorts of Turks. This seems a pretty good translation for the Japanese word Tattan (韃靼), which similarly refers indiscriminately to a variety of steppe peoples. The similarity between these two terms – neither of which refers accurately to a specific people – is surprising and interesting; I wonder if Shimazaki addresses this in a fuller (published or to-be-published) paper. I’ve looked it up briefly in JapanKnowledge (an online resource which searches multiple encyclopedias and dictionaries), but didn’t find anything much on the origins of the term… Though, we are told that the Wakan sansai zue (one of the most prominent encyclopedias published in Edo period Japan) associates the term Tattan with the Mongols, Jurchens, Manchus, and even the Russians – anyone who could fit within the category of “Northern Barbarians” (北狄). Part of the identification of the Tattan as barbarians, Shimazaki explained, derives from their identity/location outside of the classic Three Realms: India as the home of Buddhism, China as the home of Confucianism, and Japan as the Land of the Gods (i.e. the home of Shintô), with Tattan thus being the home of none of the major Teachings (教) or Ways (道).

Through these examples, and others, Shimazaki showed that the Ming represented in Edo period popular culture was not the actual contemporary China, but rather an idea, an imagined space of a past era. In other words, the Ming survives on, as an idea in the Japanese collective imagination.

This can be seen, too, in some of the works which I’ve been looking at in my own research, and which Shimazaki brought forward too; books such as Bankoku jinbutsu zue (“Pictures of the Peoples of the World”) by Nishikawa Joken show the Ming and the Qing separately. Of course, there is some validity to this, as in our modern conception of race and ethnicity, we would think to organize such a book separating the (Han) Chinese from the Manchus, which is essentially what they’re doing. But, in works such as Joken’s “Peoples of 42 Countries” (四十二国人物図) and “Expanded Thoughts on Trade & Commerce with Civilization & Barbarians” (増補華夷通商考, Zôho ka’i tsûshôkô, 1708), he labels the Ming explicitly as equaling Chinese civilization or culture (中華), and the Qing as being the Chinese civilization or culture of “today” (今の中華). In other words, there is a sense that the Qing is not the real China, that the Ming is the real China, controlled, occupied, or suppressed, that the Qing may be temporary, and that the Ming could come back. Of course, as of 1708 or so, not even the Qing Court could have predicted that their rule would last the better part of 300 years, all the way until 1911. Even today, when “The Battles of Coxinga” is performed, the Qing is represented as lasting only 180 years, as Chikamatsu had it (actually, it’s kind of surprising that Chikamatsu, in 1715, would put it at 180 years, and not some shorter period, if indeed people had a sense of the Qing being only a temporary blip, and the Ming rising again). Of course, it’s not as if the play is particularly historically accurate in other respects, anyway. It does end, after all, with the revival of the Ming, something that (sadly, arguably) did not occur in reality – the entirety of the Chinese Imperial system, and so much of its traditional culture, fell with the Qing, in 1911, or with the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.

As the Qing Dynasty went on, Shimazaki argues, the concept of the Ming became detached somewhat from the geography – people recognized that Qing Dynasty China was the China of their time. Ming thus became a marker for historical China, for Chinese culture and civilization in a somewhat free-floating way, existing no longer in the physical space of China, but now in a more free-floating cultural, intellectual, conceptual space.

And, while certain aspects of the understanding or conceptualization of the Ming may have been based in accurate historical/cultural understandings, as Keiko Suzuki and others have also detailed, the conceptualization of what comprised Ming culture or identity quickly came to be confused and conflated with a variety of other elements, forming a broader, more general concept of the “foreign.” Shimazaki cites pennants carried in the production of The Battles of Coxinga which read 「清道」 (lit. “Pure Way” or “Way of the Qing”?), and which closely resemble those carried by Korean – not Chinese – embassies to Japan. Another prominent element which she shows us appears frequently in theatre and in prints is the association of the Ming with lavish, ornate clothing, with lots of ruffles. I am no expert on Chinese theatre, but I can kind of see how elements of this aesthetic could be taken from jingju costume; that said, however, when would kabuki performers or ukiyo-e print designers have gotten a chance to see jingju costumes or performances? Shimazaki also pointed out that the goddess Benten is often depicted in these Ming-style robes, looking very much like a Ming princess from the kabuki theatre; why, however, remains unclear, as Benten is, so far as I know, not generally associated with being Chinese any more so than the other six of the Seven Lucky Gods.

In the course of the Q&A after Shimazaki-sensei’s presentation, a number of other questions and issues came up. One was the question of how depictions of China in bunraku & kabuki, as discussed in her talk, compare to representations of China in the Noh. This is certainly an interesting question, given that the Noh comes from a different period, and a rather different cultural context. I would imagine, just off the top of my head, I feel as though Noh is more connected to classic stories of classic figures, and would represent China more as a classical source of Confucianism, Taoism, wisdom, magic, certain legendary figures or certain gods, rather than as a contemporary foreign country or culture in the way Coxinga does, when it engages with recent historical events.

Shimazaki had also mentioned at one point that it was difficult for theatres to put on productions of Coxinga, explaining that kabuki theatres operated on a schedule organized around certain themes. The majority of kabuki plays retell stories from the Japanese past (or from legend), and most plays fit into a particular sekai (“world”), whether that be stories of Yoshitsune & Benkei, or stories of the Soga Brothers; Coxinga, Shimazaki argued, did not fit well into this schema, and so, thematically, it was difficult to find a thematically appropriate time/space to fit it into the schedule of a theatrical season. Indeed, many 19th century guides to the various sekai of kabuki plays either omit Coxinga entirely, or list it under “miscellany.” I have never read or seen Coxinga myself, or studied much about it, but I was interested to learn that, in fact, it was originally composed as a gamble, as something very new and different, to draw audiences to the theatre and keep the theatre going after it lost its chief chanter (Takemoto Gidayû – more or less the founder/inventor of the chief bunraku chanting style). This brings us back to Sarah Kile’s presentation about Chinese playwright Li Yu, who was constantly preoccupied with remaining cutting-edge, new, and fresh, and which I wrote about in the previous post.

I think that Prof. Shimazaki’s research on conceptualizations of the foreign in the Edo period will be of great use for me as I move forward with my research on Ryukyuan-Japanese interactions in that period, and I love that she does kabuki as well. I suppose I won’t be working with her directly any time soon, since we are not at the same institution, but I do eagerly look forward to reading more of her scholarship, and perhaps getting a chance to speak with her more in future.

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RISD Museum

Finally catching up with all the crazy stuff I did in my last few weeks on the East Coast.

The RISD Museum – that is, the museum at the Rhode Island School of Design – was kind of a surprise. A friend had worked there for a while, but, really, I had no idea what the museum was like. I guess I assumed it was like many other university galleries, that it would be pretty small, and dominated chiefly by works by the RISD students. Either that, or just by obscure American contemporary artists who someone else is telling you is a really big deal.

Turns out it’s not like that at all. The RISD Museum, less fully officially associated with RISD than I’d have expected, and surprisingly adjacent to the Brown University campus, is a real, proper museum, filled with six four floors of historical art from all around the world.

I love this blue. This European painting gallery – the gallery itself – is gorgeous.

Now, granted, each floor is quite small; really kind of tiny, compared to a place like the Metropolitan or something. But, then, who needs to compare? That’s totally besides the point. They’ve got serious galleries of American art, European, Ancient Egyptian, Contemporary, Asian art, and a whole separate annex historical house featuring 18th- and 19th-century furnishings and stuff. I’ve been watching random YouTube videos a lot today, and I think it’s influenced my writing. I actually kind of like the aesthetic, the mood, the culture for lack of a better word, of these videos by people in their early twenties who are “YouTube famous.” There’s something strangely addicting about their videos – like, I don’t know who you are, or why I should care, and the content of your videos is really nothing special, you’re basically just talking about random more-or-less-everyday stuff, and yet I find myself transfixed. Well, good on you. Congratulations, good for you, that you’ve managed to be so successful at such a thing. I’m not even being sarcastic at all, but truly genuine. Good for you. I’m envious, really. Thousands of followers? Getting invited to go behind the scenes at Doctor Who? Envious.

Anyway. Sorry. Back to the subject at hand. Lol. One day, months or maybe a year or two from now, I’m going to come back and re-read my old blog post about my trip to the RISD Museum, and I’m going to think “what the hell was I doing, going on about random YouTube videos?”

Right. So. A surprisingly large Jesus head from Spain. And, A Van Gogh that only very recently was determined/decided to almost definitely most likely be genuinely by Van Gogh – and, determined/decided to be quite likely painted very shortly before his death.

All in all, the museum is surprisingly extensive. My father actually said, numerous times, something to the effect of “wow, I can’t believe this place just keeps going! I can’t believe there are still more rooms!” We actually had to take breaks a couple times. But, it’s not just the number of galleries, and the beautiful way they’re arranged, but in addition, unlike the Walters, which I visited a few weeks later (sorry, Walters!!), the RISD collection, that is, the actual artworks, is pretty damned impressive too. They have an Egyptian mummy casket on display that’s surely in the best condition of any I’ve ever seen, with bright vibrant colors and just generally not looking decayed or fallen apart or anything at all (has it been restored at some point? Seems not unlikely), along with numerous other smaller Egyptian artifacts in amazingly good condition, including several encaustic (wax) paintings from Roman-controlled Egypt (kind of like this one from the Met).

A display showing how traditional woodblock carvers in Edo period Japan would lay a design (ink on paper) over a block of wood, and carefully, expertly, chip away around the lines to create a woodblock to print from.

And, another thing that I really loved seeing at the RISD Museum was exhibits explaining, describing, the process of making art. Specifically, in this case, Japanese woodblock prints. The Honolulu Museum, a few years ago, when they had their Hokusai show, did discuss the process, and even had a hands-on-interactive bit where visitors, as they moved through the exhibition, collected ink stamps onto their card that when combined formed a more complete, full-color, reproduction of one of Hokusai’s Fuji images, thus giving the visitor something of an idea of how many multiple separate woodblocks were needed, one for each color, to come together to make a multi-color ukiyo-e woodblock print. But I don’t believe I have ever seen any major museum do what RISD does, in having a whole set of displays displaying the paper, the tools, pigments, actual historical woodblocks, the prints made from those woodblocks, and walking the visitor through the process in just about as much complex, intense detail as one might find in any museum catalog or academic publication on Japanese woodblock prints.

Though I didn’t mention it in my earlier post about the Walters, the Walters Museum in Baltimore has a similar, and equally wonderful, set of displays describing a whole bunch of related processes of the medieval European techniques of making parchment, “illuminating” a manuscript (that means adding decorative elements, in color and gold), and bookbinding, again with actual examples of pigments, parchment, etc. on display. The Walters also, despite its sadly limited Asian art displays (read: no paintings or prints), had surprisingly good gallery labels describing the culture of Early Modern Japan, and various aspects of it, such as how women wore their hair, inkstones and writing boxes, and how a Japanese sword is “mounted” (fit together). So, yeah. Props to the Walters, for taking that important step beyond “this is art, and it’s artistic. Gaze upon it and be inspired,” or whatever, to “this comes from a particular time and place, let me explain a bit about the culture of that time & place.”

But, what was for me easily the most impressive and enjoyable element of my visit to the RISD Museum was the discovery of their 12th century Japanese wooden Buddha statue, which, seated, stands nine feet eight inches tall, and is described as one of the largest Buddha statues in the United States. I had no idea, no idea at all, that the RISD Museum possessed such an object. As I walked into the Textiles/Costume Gallery, as you can see in the above shot, I saw it through the doorway at the other end of the room. Not something one expects to see. A most impressive thing to see.

The arrangement, of course, reminds me of the Buddha/Temple Room at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which I strangely cannot find any good links for, where a smaller Dainichi sits. The MFA’s Temple Room is widely praised as an excellent space for meditation, and I do think it entirely laudable, attractive, and impressive that they’ve done up the whole room to be like the interior of a Japanese Temple, rather than displaying these works in a more sterile, out-of-context, “museum” sort of atmosphere. Yet, RISD’s Buddha room, which if I saw it correctly, is basically just an unadorned concrete cube, somehow works so much better to focus the visitor’s attention on the sculpture, on its calming expression, and to create a surprisingly, impressively, meditative space. There are few times that I have found a space to be truly meditative, to have some kind of spiritual energy, some kind of spiritual feel, to the space that really strikes you, that really makes you sit up and notice it. And this was one of those times. There was unfortunately a gaggle of kids coming through with their summer camp group (or something), so I could not stay and enjoy the space in peace, alone, to quite the extent or in the manner I might have liked, but, for sure, if I were ever again to be based in New England, I would choose this room as my spot for meditation.

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Quick Links: Follow Friday Edition

Once again, the open tabs in my browser have piled up, and it is time to write a bit about each, sharing them with you. Today, I’d like to share with you two blogs I strongly suggest and recommend, and which I’ll add to my Blogroll.

*Steffen Remvik, a recent graduate from a Masters program at the University of Oslo, has begun posting a wonderful blog entitled “Naruhodo,” in which he writes chiefly about Edo period visual culture and popular publications. The subjects he chooses to address – from setsuyôshû to the Kidai Shôran scroll – are so wonderfully niche, truly informative and intriguing for someone like myself with a background in Japanese art and history, but who is only just starting to really delve more deeply into the realms of Edo period publishing. His writing is clear and accessible, but detailed and informative, including the kanji for Japanese terms, beautiful pictures or videos, and thorough historical detail. I envy his professionalism and knowledge, and eagerly look forward to his future posts.

*The next blog I’d like to share with you is called “Grits and Sushi.” It is written by Mitzi Carter, a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley, whose research (and my sincere apologies if I mischaracterize it) focuses, in part at least, on perceptions of Okinawa among members of the US military, and conceptual/discursive interactions otherwise between the US military and the Okinawan people, on a level of personal interactions, perceptions and conceptions of one another, etc.

To take just one example, in her latest post, she explains that “A large part of my academic work on Okinawa is “social/cultural mapping.”” She then goes on to talk about how foreigners in certain parts of the island might be automatically assumed to be associated with the military, while elsewhere on the tiny island of Okinawa, the possibilities are more open. What particularly intrigues me is perceptions, conceptions, and memories of a place, and the way that a single place can take on so many different identities for different people. Many (some? most?) Okinawans will apparently use the phrase honma Okinawa, or something like it, meaning “real” Okinawa, or “authentic” Okinawa, differentiating it from the military bases, which are not honma Okinawa. And I can certainly understand why; yet, for many members of the military, their experiences on base define for them what is Okinawa. And especially (I get the impression) for those who served in the US Occupation of Okinawa from 1945-1972, the whole island was essentially theirs (ours) – one single military-occupied place known as “The Rock.”

I could go on and on, just regurgitating the impressions and ideas I’ve gotten from “Grits and Sushi” and elsewhere.. I find it really kind of fascinating. But at the same time, this is hardly my specialty, and I fear that the more I write, the more I risk mischaracterizing or misrepresenting something. So, I invite you to read the blog, and see for yourself what it is Mitzi is talking about.

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The Shibui Kiyoshi Collection of Ming Erotic Prints

Returning to the July symposium I wrote about some time ago, Dr. Soren Edgren of Princeton University, and of the Chinese Rare Books Project, also spoke about a rather remarkable collection which has recently come to light.

I know next to nothing about Ming Dynasty publishing, and less about Chinese erotica, but apparently a very long-lived Japanese collector by the name of Shibui Kiyoshi (1899-1992) had a collection of early 17th century (very late Ming dynasty) Chinese erotic books that has proven quite valuable for scholars, revealing brand-new insights into technical and stylistic aspects of Chinese publishing at that time.

When Shibui passed away in 1992, whether out of embarrassment at the erotic nature of the collection, or for some other reason, his family apparently simply shut the door to his study and left it closed, locked, sealed away as if it had never existed. They told scholars the collection was lost or destroyed. And so, for roughly 10 or 15 years, so far as the scholarly/museum world knew, the collection was indeed lost forever. Yet, finally, recently, the family began granting access to the collection again for the first time.

Shibui had worked closely with Dutch diplomat Robert van Gulik, a collector himself, and author of the Judge Dee Mysteries. Van Gulik was stationed in Tokyo from 1935-1942, being evacuated after the outbreak of war between Japan and the Netherlands, but he returned after the war, and began writing books such as “Erotic Colour Prints of the Ming Period” in 1951, and “Sexual Life in Ancient China: A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from ca. 1500 B.C. Till 1644 A.D.” in 1961. Oh, and by the way, he also raised gibbons in Malaysia. Because, you know, why not?

In any case, Shibui published some works himself, in the 1940s, on the role of Chinese prints in the origins of ukiyo-e, works which were noticed and cited by the likes of van Gulik and Richard Lane. Shibui graduated from Keiô University in Tokyo, and taught there for a short time …. I’m afraid Dr. Edgren did not into too much more detail about Shibui’s biography.

… When his study was finally opened a few years ago, scholars discovered a small collection of roughly nine Ming books from around 1600 to the 1640s, containing polychrome prints unlike anything seen before in Chinese art. Very few Ming erotic woodcuts survive today, apparently, and *none* outside of Shibui’s collection are in color. Scholars determined that these color prints were made primarily in Anhui and Nanjing, and, in contrast to the multi-block method pioneered by Suzuki Harunobu (d. 1770) and used extensively in Japan from then on, these Ming prints were made by applying color ink to different sections of the same woodblock.

These Chinese books, however, date to roughly 150 years before Harunobu, and seem, from what I’m gathering, to feature some technical aspects that, by Japanese standards, were really rather ahead of their time. Beginning in the 1620s, the Chinese began to produce multi-colored texts, using multiple blocks, with a main text in black, and then, for example, blue for punctuation and red for commentary. These books employed a registration system similar to the kentô system Harunobu would employ in 1765-70, in order to make sure the multiple different blocks lined up correctly on the page. Though something of a breakthrough in the 1760s in Japan, these Chinese books made use of what’s really a rather simple system. The black ink “main” block would print a small corner marking on the edge of the area imprinted; the corner of the red ink block could then be lined up with that marking. Very simple.

Printing in two colors in China actually goes back as far as the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), but the first book to make use of more than two colors was the Chengshi Moyuan, printed in 1604. This volume contained reproductions of European artworks, as well as an essay by Matteo Ricci, the earliest extant example ever of printed, published romanization for Chinese.

A technique used extensively in these books, however, which was not used very much, if at all, in Japanese printing, however, was something called douban (餖版) or “assembled block” printing, in which not a single block, but multiple smaller blocks would be arranged into the printing table, and then printed all at once onto the page. One end of the paper would be secured to the end of the table, so that it could be flipped over on top of the blocks (the printing surface), but would not slide or shift. The blocks were then affixed to the table with some kind of gum, and the paper flipped over on top of them, to be printed using a technique not unlike the Japanese way – using a piece of wood or something else to press or rub the paper into the inked blocks, by hand.

An example of this technique can be seen in book copies of the Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Painting, where the douban technique is employed in an attempt to reproduce the effect of the boneless technique of painting (i.e. areas of color without line). Since all these different blocks are being printed at once, the need for registration marks or registration techniques is essentially eliminated, but since you’re using a number of small blocks, and not a single full-page-size block, the ability to have registration marks is also largely eliminated; If and when you finish a given print run and move the blocks off the table, you’ve lost your registration and cannot easily produce the same image again. Or so I understand.

Dr. Edgren showed images from Shibui’s collection, and I noted based on my own experience the surprising similarities of style to early ukiyo-e. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to find any images to share with you here. One example he shared is a very short book of only a few pages, lacking a title but called Sheng Peng Mai (I think). Each page has poetry on one side and an image on the other, a very standard Chinese format. The images use multiblock registration techniques to add some yellows and blues, limited colors. Thin black lines and generalized (i.e. not individualized) faces resemble early ukiyo-e very closely in the simplicity and soft, curvy gracefulness of the forms, and in the specific appearance of the faces. Much more dense, complex treatment is given to clothing, and to objects in the background, such as furniture.

Another book from Shibui’s collection is one for which I did not catch a name or title. It comes in several volumes, and Shibui owned several copies, one of which was previously owned by Kimura Kenkadô (!!)(1736-1802). Handwritten notes in the margins may be by Kenkadô himself. The images in this book less closely resemble ukiyo-e, but are close enough to make the date, 1606, quite impressive considering the similarity to Japanese materials of nearly 100 years later.

Perhaps one of the most impressive and interesting books in Shibui’s collection is one called the Huei Ying Jing Zhen (sp?), which Craig Clunas – one of the most respected Chinese art historians active today – has described as no longer being extant. He didn’t know about Shibui’s copy; no one did. Shibui owned two copies of the polychrome edition of this book, remounted as handscrolls. They consist of 24 images, followed by poetry. What makes these books so important, or interesting, is their full-color four-color covers, unlike anything seen even in the (later) Qing period, when the Japanese were producing things with five to ten colors using tens of blocks in some cases. The Huei Ying Jing Zhen also makes use of colors in the text.

Incidentally, another interesting and important difference between Chinese erotica and the shunga materials we are more familiar with from Japan is that while shunga generally depicts a “pleasure quarters” context, i.e. a brothel, the Chinese images generally take place in a domestic setting, i.e. at home.

As with Japanese shunga, the significance of these books is not limited to their identity as erotica. I have as little interest in erotica as the next guy, preferring cleaner subjects. But, to push these aside and ignore them would be to lose out on extremely important examples of early Chinese multi-color printing. Dr. Edgren concluded his talk by discussing briefly that books like these were used by ukiyo-e artists as well, and may have had some influence on their style, though I of course would be extremely hesitant to place too much importance upon the Chinese role in defining the ukiyo-e style. I think these artists were definitively Japanese, drawing upon earlier Japanese modes and styles, and also innovating dramatically; I think that figures such as Hishikawa Moronobu, Okumura Masanobu, and Nishikawa Sukenobu were innovators and creative pioneers, not simply copying from Chinese materials, but really developing the start of something new. Still, it is quite interesting and fun to think of the interchange and trade in published materials going on at the time, and to think of these artists having copies of Ming erotica.

It is wonderful to hear about this collection being re-discovered and made accessible. I hope that more good scholarship can come from this, and from other collections that are only first coming to light today.

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Matthi Forrer and Hokusai’s Books

Matthi Forrer, curator at the National Museum of Ethnology (Museum Volkenkunde) in Leiden, and quite likely *the* leading scholar in the West on Hokusai, spoke with us yesterday about Edo period books, and things to notice and pay attention to when examining books. It was really enlightening.

I had known, on some level, of course, that there were different editions or versions of books, and that surely there must be ways to tell what’s a first edition, and what’s a later reprinting… I had known, that “artists” such as Hokusai were, when it came to books, really more like illustrators, holding very little power as to how their images were to be colored, altered, published and republished. But, it’s hard to shake that idea of the book as artwork, and the artist as the chief creative agent, with the publisher being just sort of an afterthought.

Dr. Forrer’s knowledge of Hokusai books is astonishing. He’d pull out a series of books from the shelf, and immediately knew what to look for to see if it was a first edition or a later edition, which volumes had prefaces or colophons or advertisements and which didn’t… I never really gave it too much thought myself, but while he did point out things to notice within the book’s core content (printing quality, etc.), he impressed upon us the understanding that the most important things to look at are the inside front and back covers, and the first and last few pages. This is where title pages, advertisements, and colophons would be found. Comparing these elements across different copies of the same book can reveal surprising insights into the different editions of a book.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND COPY RIGHTS, and READING COLOPHONS

Now, let’s see. Where to start. I guess let’s start with copy rights – who had the right or power to create new editions and how they used that power.

In Edo period Japan, as in most pre-modern or early modern societies, there was nothing resembling the concept “intellectual property” as we understand it today. Characters, stories, even artistic compositions (i.e. the arrangement of elements within a picture) were pretty much up for grabs. Painters copied one another’s works, and especially works of their masters and of the great masters of the past as a matter of course, as an essential part of their training, and often copied compositional or stylistic elements in order to pay homage or make reference to particular masters or works of the past. As for characters and stories, a popular character and story such as Sukeroku, for example, started out as bunraku (puppet) plays in Kyoto or Osaka, inspired perhaps by a real-life merchant and his affair with a courtesan. The story was soon adapted into a variety of different versions on the Kyoto Kabuki stages, and then adapted again by Ichikawa Danjûrô of the Edo kabuki actors, and adapted again roughly 100 years later into another version, from which today’s version most closely derives. Meanwhile, families other than the Ichikawa developed their own versions, and more to the point, print artists, book illustrators, painters, and the like produced countless different versions of pictorial and literary depictions of the character Sukeroku and his story.

No one owned a character, or a story. In fact, kabuki actors gave no permission and gained no profits from their own depictions in ukiyo-e prints – in a way, it could be said that actors didn’t even own their own likeness, or crests.

But publishers did own woodblocks. And they bought and sold them, inherited them, traded them or gave them away. The ability to produce or reproduce copies of a given book, such as Hokusai gafu (a picture album of works by Hokusai), relied upon possession of the blocks. We can determine who owned the blocks at the time of the publishing of a given edition by looking at the colophon (奥付, okutsuke), which, fortunate for us, was required (or merely standard practice?) to be included throughout much of the Edo period.

I certainly could have made out parts of this before yesterday, but Dr. Forrer showed us how to break down just about everything here. One key insight was that while a book might list a number of publishers, the leftmost one is the one who owns the blocks. So, in this example, just left of the dividing line, we see Kadomaruya Jinsuke (角丸屋甚助) of Edo, followed by Eirakuya Tôshirô (永楽屋東四郎) of Nagoya (尾州 standing for 尾張国, Owari province), each with their address given. And then, all the way to the left, we see Minoya Iroku (美濃屋伊六), with the 同 above his name meaning “same as” the Owari province, Nagoya designation of Eirakuya to the right.

Now, I would never have known any of this before yesterday, but Eirakuya Tôshirô was actually the publisher who worked directly with Hokusai on this and a number of other books in Nagoya – in books where his name is given on the far left, those are (I believe, in most cases if not straight across the board) earlier editions. Tôshirô worked with Kadomaruya Jinsuke to publish and distribute the prints in Edo, and so, if I understand correctly (and I very well might not), books with Jinsuke’s name on the far right were produced in Edo, not in Nagoya, and were slightly later editions. Jinsuke or Tôshirô later sold blocks for certain books to the famous Tsutaya Jûzaburô (or his successor, I guess? since the famous Jûzaburô who worked with Sharaku and Utamaro died in 1797 and most of these Hokusai books are around 1815-1830s), and so there are other editions that have his name to the far left, which are again later editions. I’ve never heard of this Minoya Iroku, so I don’t know what the story is there, but I can only assume this is an even later edition. Sadly, it’s not dated.

But, even if there were a date, it’s important to remember that this date would almost never be the date of printing, but the date of the original carving of the blocks. This is very useful, when looking at a book, even if we don’t know if it’s a later or earlier edition, to be able to very easily see what date that book was first published. Every copy of the first volume of Hokusai Manga, for example, should say Bunka 11 (文化十一年) in the back, which corresponds to 1814. Excellent information for knowing that that is when Hokusai Manga was first published. But it does not tell us whether the volume we hold in our hands is an 1814 copy, or a later edition.

To the right of the dividing line, we see Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) listed under 東都 (“Eastern Capital”, meaning Edo) and 画工, meaning “artist.” To the left of that we see the ‘O’ (尾) for Owari province, and Nagoya (名古屋) [I don't know what the 陽 means here.], with Hokusai’s assistants or disciples (校合門人) in Nagoya, who contributed to the volume, listed.

…

PUBLISHERS & VARIANT EDITIONS

Returning to the point about publishers having the power, and artists having little say, Dr. Forrer shared with us a number of anecdotes or examples of Hokusai’s works being changed up, mixed around, and republished under different titles, or even of other artists’ work being published under Hokusai’s name.

I had never expected to see such a thing, but he showed us how, even if two books have the same title, and look identical upon a quick glance, different editions of what claims to be the same book may easily have a few different images between them. One book might have pages ABCDE, and the other ABGHDE, if you follow my meaning. Some might have extra pages, or fewer pages.

He showed us a book, I think it may have been Ryôhitsu gafu (両筆画譜), which was created when the publisher took a series of blocks designed by Osaka artist Rikkôsai (立好斎), featuring poems along the top register, and altered them. He cut out the kabuki scenes, leaving borders of trees and rocks roughly an inch thick on all sides from Rikkôsai’s work, and then had Hokusai redesign the compositions, inserting his own scenes of peasants gathering firewood, or a number of other subjects. Rikkôsai is given credit in the book’s colophon, which says something like 「山水草木　浪花立好斎　・　人物鳥獣　江戸葛飾北斎」, meaning “landscapes and trees and plants by Rikkôsai of Naniwa [Osaka], and people, birds, and beasts by Katsushika Hokusai of Edo.” But, even so, this is a pretty dramatic alteration of the original composition, done presumably without any kind of permission or agreement from Rikkôsai, and simply at the whim of the publisher. Dr. Forrer pointed out to us how clearly you can see, on some pages, where the block-insert for Hokusai’s work didn’t align properly with the “frame” of the original, mutilated, Rikkôsai blocks.

One of Hokusai’s publishers, I think it was either Eirakuya Tôshirô or Kadomaruya Jinsuke, republished many of Hokusai’s books under new titles, combining pages from multiple books, say, three-quarters of “Hokusai Gafu” and one-half of “Hokusai Soga” (I’m making up the numbers, and probably getting the titles wrong – it’s just for an example) as a new volume, “Hokusai Gashiki.” For example. But then he’d go even further, using new pictures by artists such as Hokkei and Hokuun to create new volumes which he’d pass off as the same old ones – perhaps indicating Hokkei or Hokuun as the artist in the colophon in the back, but still labeling the book with the title “Hokusai Gafu” or whatever on the front.

Another of Hokusai’s books was republished in a smaller format, the blocks quite simply chopped off at the edge. Dr. Forrer showed us how a given page from an earlier edition might have a man holding an umbrella, with the umbrella about a half-inch from the edge of the page; in the smaller edition, the full circle of the umbrella’s shape is now cropped off by about half an inch. The same could be seen on every single page, where a figure or an object previously shown in whole was now cropped off. The cropped compositions looked just fine – even better, arguably, compositionally. But there was one which absolutely didn’t. I guess the publisher wasn’t really paying attention to what he was doing, when his cropping cut off the head of a pheasant, leaving the rest of the pheasant still on the page. Dr. Forrer was surprised to see in our edition a non-decapitated pheasant, surmising that this must be a later edition, and that the publisher must have at some point finally realized what he’d done.

I wish I had pictures of any of this to share with you… But, in a couple of years, when the Freer finally puts up its online catalog of all the book images we’re photographing this summer, we’ll all be able to access those pictures, every page, cover to cover.

COLLECTORS’ SEALS and other ephemera

Dr. Forrer spoke with us for about three hours – a serious privilege, an incredible opportunity. He talked about dealers and collectors, about the importance of recognizing marks and stamps and stickers. He pointed out in one book a stamp that read something like 高井蔵書院, meaning “Takai Zôshoin”, and said that from the quality and vividness (or, rather, lack thereof) of the red, he guessed it was an older seal, roughly contemporaneous with when the book was first published in the 1830s or so. Hokusai had direct interactions with a certain Mr. Takai, and so Dr. Forrer wondered if this might belong to him. He also noted that a certain French collector by the name of Gillet (sp?) is known for rebinding his Japanese books with silk-brocade-covered hardcovers and shiny gold title slips. We’ve seen a lot of these – they’re quite recognizable. Many of the books also come with extra slips of paper on which a collector, dealer, or the like has written their own notes, usually including the artist, date, title, and some other comments. Dr. Forrer immediately recognized the handwriting on several of them, including comments by Heinz Kaempfer and Jack Hillier.

…

EDITION SIZES AND DISTRIBUTION

I’ll leave this by touching upon one more topic. For any single edition or print-run of a single title of an Edo period book, how many copies do you think were printed?

I think it’s difficult to imagine or to estimate the size and scale of pre-modern or early modern societies. We know that the world was much less densely populated, and we assume that because of a relative lack of technologies and communications/transportation networks as compared to today, the numbers must have been much smaller.

He asked us this question, and we sort of looked around at each other. I, personally, have always been bad at estimating scale. Show me a crowded subway car, and I couldn’t tell you if that’s 50 people, or 100, without counting or otherwise calculating/estimating it out. So, I don’t know what numbers others were thinking… but considering that there were no automated factories of any kind, no large bookstore chains, no trucks or trains to carry copies all over the country, picturing individual printers having to sit down and physically rub out each printed page, one by one, and then give the copies to a small number of peddlers, streetside vendors, and the like, I figured how high could the numbers possibly be? I figured there couldn’t be more than 60-100 at most in a single print run. After all, how many people did Eirakuya Tôshirô have under his employ, to rub out pages? And how many street peddlers were there in Edo who had direct, in-person interactions with Kadomaruya Jinsuke in such-and-such street, such-and-such neighborhood, over in that particular corner of Edo, to pick up as many books as they could carry (and how many would that be?), to carry on their back as they walked around town advertising their wares?

No one else said anything. So, I said, “I think I remember reading somewhere recently that they did not in fact do large print runs, but only produced in accordance with demand, a few tens of volumes in this month, a few more tens of volumes in that month, so as to meet a perceived, or explicitly stated, demand.” Dr. Forrer replied something to the effect of “that’s what they want you to believe. The dealers, with their small print runs and their high prices for the rare objects would want you to believe that.”

He went on to explain that Edo in the 1810s-1830s or so had roughly 1.3 million people, and that a best-seller is defined as (defined by whom?) a book that reaches 1% of the population. So, a book like Hokusai Manga or “100 Views of Mt. Fuji” must have sold over 13,000 copies.

This is made possible, in large part, because of the materials being used. Sumi ink causes very little wear on blocks because the pure carbon is a very small particle. This compared to Prussian blue, or indeed any color, which is made up of larger particles, and causes much more wear. This is part of why the fad for printing in all blue, rather than all black, as seen in variant series of the 36 Views of Mt Fuji, did not last.

Unlike the incredible pressure applied to the plates in Western technologies of copperplate engraving, which results in great wear on the plates and low print runs, Japanese methods create very little wear on the blocks. Western printing using copper plates used some sort of mechanical device to press the plates into the paper, applying a great deal of pressure. By contrast, Japanese printing was done by hand, laying the paper over the inked block and rubbing the back of the paper onto the inked block by hand, in a process not entirely unlike taking a rubbing from a tombstone. The only weight or pressure involved is that of a seated man (read: not using his full body weight), using only the pressure exerted by his hands and arms upon the block. Thus, print runs in the thousands, or even above 10,000, were possible, the fine sumi and relatively light pressure creating relatively little wear on the blocks. (Blocks did get chipped, dinged, and repaired or altered, though, and we were shown some examples of how to notice that too.)

So, this is the scale of publication we’re talking about. I guess. I don’t understand the logistics of it, but, there is a lot out there on the Japanese book that I have yet to read, including Mary Beth Berry’s “Japan in Print” and Roger Keyes’ book on Ehon.

So, there you have it. More to come on Japanese books as my internship continues (and, soon, comes to an end), and as I gradually get around to typing up posts about other things I’ve read and seen and attended and heard. Cheers, all. Have a good weekend!

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Pulverer Collection Highlights: Arashi Rikan

As I mentioned a few days ago, I am working (interning) this summer with a collection of Japanese illustrated books, collected by Dr. Gerhard Pulverer, and now owned by the Freer Gallery at the Smithsonian.

The collection includes roughly 2,000 books, most but not all woodblock-printed, dating from the 17th century to as late as the 1950s, if not later. I think the latest book I’ve come across so far was dated 1955; the earliest, c. early 17th century, such as some hand-painted by Hon’ami Kôetsu (1558-1637).

Today, I thought I’d share some highlights of the collection. These are just things I have come across that grabbed my eye; I don’t know the whole collection inside and out that I can definitively say what are the highlights of the whole collection – this is just out of what I have seen so far. Ideally, I might have liked to Tweet or blog about these as I saw them, one highlight a day, or so, but it’s too late for that. Also, ideally, I really wish that I could share pictures with you all, since text descriptions are wholly inadequate, and if anything serve only as a tantalizing temptation, spurring a desire to see the actual images. Well, it may be a few years before those images are available, but I hope to come back at that time and share more about these books, more in-depth, or at least with images. For now…

*A thin memorial booklet in memory of kabuki actor Arashi Rikan, published on the occasion of his death by his fan club. I am told this is the only known extant copy of the book, which is a really gorgeous work. Though only about ten pages in length, every page features lavish decorative elements such as gold, silver, or mica, embossing, and/or really good, bold colors, all on a much thicker paper than you’d see in most more commercial books.

Right: A memorial print of kabuki actor Nakamura Kanjaku (1834-1861) by Utagawa Yoshitaki. Not an object in the Freer/Sackler Pulverer Collection, but of a type with the Arashi Rikan memorial book this post focuses on.

The book reflects a number of distinguishing features of the Kamigata (Kansai, i.e. Kyoto-Osaka area) popular culture of the time, in contrast to Edo (modern-day Tokyo). Firstly, kabuki fan clubs, especially fan clubs that organized their own publications, put on their own plays, composed poetry together, and often even enjoyed the company of the actors themselves at the club’s meetings, were much more common in Kamigata, and more prominent. By contrast, while I am sure there must have been fan clubs in Edo, the publishing of actor prints, and a wide variety of other activities associated with the theatre, were much more dominated by “professional” artists, publishing houses, and the theatres themselves. In short, it was a more commercial endeavor, in some ways, in Edo. Whereas this memorial booklet was put together by a fan club, in honor of the actor they adored so much, in Edo, I can only imagine memorial booklets, or prints, being put together by a big-name print designer, in concert with a big-name publisher, both of whom have had long and close relationships with the theatre that actor belonged to.

A second feature is the surimono quality of the book, in the high quality of the paper and printing techniques. Surimono (刷物) literally just means “printed thing,” but the term is used to refer specifically to a type of higher quality, limited print run print, often made on commission and/or for a specific patron. They were much more expensive, and were not made for general sale. Though full-color ukiyo-e printing, known as nishiki-e (“brocade pictures”) got its start with a commission from a small exclusive circle, who hired Suzuki Harunobu (d. 1770) to produce calendar prints for them, it was in Kamigata where surimono really took off. They were produced by publishers sometimes purely as gifts, other times on commission, but often in connection with an exclusive poetry circle or kabuki fan club, groups of actors, artists, merchants, samurai (sometimes), and other cultured, urban, high-class types who sought surimono either as gifts for one another, gifts for a guest, or, in this case, as something produced for the members of a fan club (and only for members of that fan club).

While I think the term surimono is generally used to refer to single-sheet prints, this book is, in essence, ten or so surimono stuck together as a book. Each page is on thick, stiff, expensive paper, with various patterns embossed into it (such as, perhaps, the pattern on the actor’s kimono in a given image), gold and silver foil, and expensive full-color pigments that are laid on thick.

This is the first and only such actor memorial book I’ve seen, and it’s really an incredible thing. Especially considering how, the vagaries of time and chance being what they are, we could easily have ended up instead with a book about a much lesser-name actor, and yet instead we have Arashi Rikan, easily one of the most prominent actors of his day.

Learn more about memorial portraits, or shini-e here.

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Digitizing Edo Period Books

Well, as I don’t think I’ve mentioned at all, I am in DC this summer, interning at the Freer/Sackler Galleries (aka the National Asian Art Museum, and part of the Smithsonian). As of today, I am in my fifth week at the Freer. (Wow, has it been that long already?)

I have been hesitant to post anything since I really don’t know what is and is not cool to share, and wanted to err on the side of caution. Museum work is of course not a matter of national security, but even so, museums’ reputations are fragile, and while the actual art objects themselves may be public domain on account of their age, museums, just like any other institution or organization, like to have control over their own publicity, public image, publications, etc.

But, I have checked with the curator, and there are various aspects that I can freely share.

The museum recently (a few years back) obtained a collection of over 2000 Edo period woodblock-printed books (along with some from Meiji and later). It’s an amazing collection, including some books that seem, as far as “we” know, to be the only extant copies, and ranging from popular literature to books of poetry to books related to kabuki.

We interns are here to take part in something a great many libraries and museums are focusing on these days – digitalization (digitization?) of the collection. So, basically, we’re photographing every page of every book, one by one, in order to make them more available to researchers and the general public, through a publicly-accessible online database which will eventually go up. We’ve got a great system and equipment, devised by Akama Ryô-sensei of Ritsumeikan, who is essentially leading the vanguard in Digital Humanities in Japan, and who gave a talk at our Kabuki Symposium at the University of Hawaii back in November. We received an intense two-day tutorial from Akama-sensei our first two days, and have Dr. Matsuba Ryoko, one of his leading proteges or disciples, as it were, working with us all summer overseeing the process and helping guide us through all our questions and difficulties. Matsuba-san specializes in kabuki and kabuki prints, so you know she’s my kind of person. She also presented at the Kabuki Symposium, and is easily one of my favorite up-and-coming scholars, in the sense that I am very interested in her research, impressed by her work, and eagerly looking forward to her future publications and presentations. I am very excited to be working with her and developing good personal & professional ties, networking, with her this summer.

Right: A complete set of seventy-five volumes of an 1830s-40s illustrated version of the “Romance of the Three Kingdoms.”

The project may sound quite tedious, doing nothing but turning pages and clicking the shutter over and over and over again all day. And, yes, it is kind of exhausting, if only because of the focus it takes, and the way the room is lit (mostly dark, the only lights being really bright ones pointing directly at the books). But, actually, the books themselves are really fun and interesting, and I’m beginning to notice and appreciate all kinds of things I might not have ever noticed or appreciated before. Ukiyo-e, and especially the monochrome illustrations in books, can start to look quite monotonous after you look at too many of them. But, looking at these books, there are so many wonderful little touches that you start to enjoy. Things that seem innovative and interesting, even if they’re not really. Elements of the picture extending beyond the frame (I saw today a picture of a decapitated head flying out of the frame, the body spurting a fountain of blood), lettering in gold ink, slight touches of color on just one element of a picture, the use of black to indicate night or shadow in just one section, a great variety of calligraphic or other writing styles, including characters in white described in black outline, or characters meant to look like they were carved in stone… A range of techniques as inventive as any you’ll see in American comicbooks, or sometimes even more intriguing and exciting – after all, any standard narrative of the history of comicbook art in Marvel/DC comics will tell you that it wasn’t until the 1980s that certain techniques began to be used, such as breaking out from square panels, the use of splash pages, etc. And while few if any Edo period books are really anything resembling panel-based sequential pictorial storytelling (i.e. “comicbooks”), they do display many of these techniques, including especially the beautiful and dramatic use of splash pages.

I’ve also started to learn a bit about how prints and books are made, techniques, what they’re called, and perhaps most importantly, how to recognize them. Close-looking has never really been one of my strong suits, but in deciding how to best photograph a volume (or, rather, a particular page), we have had to keep our eyes out for silver and gold foil, mica, and other shiny or sparkly treatments; karazuri and other embossing techniques; and the like. Telling the difference between an “original” print and a later reproduction, or between a print and painting, is an important skill of the curator, art historian, or connoisseur, and we’re starting to pick up those skills doing this.

Right: Various sizes of chitsu (帙), a cloth-covered stiff box for Japanese books, secured with small “teeth” of bone or ivory, or more commonly today, plastic.

There are a great many things in this collection to be excited about, one of which happens to be a complete set of the Sangokushi (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 三国志) in 75 illustrated volumes, published in the 1830s-40s. While nearly all of the books in the collection are either in traditional Japanese-style boxes known as chitsu, or in more modern/Western wrappers of acid-free board, these 75 volumes are stored in their own wooden box, labeled in Japanese calligraphy 「三国志全部　七拾五冊入」 (“Complete Romance of the Three Kingdoms, 75 volumes”). I don’t know the age or provenance of the box, but whether original (i.e. 150 years old) or not, it certainly seems purely Japanese, and “authentic.” (Meaning, I don’t presume to know anything in real detail about how Japanese traditionally stored books in the Edo period, but certainly nothing about this arrangement screams Western or modern. Nothing stands out as incongruous.)

It will be a year at least, probably 2-3, before these books are available online, but the museum’s current plan is to create an online catalog, publicly available, in which every page of every one of the 2000 or so books is available. I hope in the coming weeks to post more about individual books I come across, and other thoughts related to the project, but I especially look forward to being able to share these images with you.

EDIT: A brief official description of the project from the Freer-Sackler website.

All images in this post, with the exception of the depiction of the chitsu, are my own photos, taken myself. I apologize for the poor quality of the images of the books & wooden box, taken with my iPhone.

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Quick Links: Hokusai Set of Five Cut-Outs for Paper Bathhouse

Because of their ephemeral nature, Edo period woodblock prints intended to be cut out are relatively uncommon today. I’ve seen some of actors and costumes – essentially no different from the paper dolls you might have played with as a child – as well as ones involving faces (kumadori makeup).

LiveJournal user leopold_paula_b has graciously shared with us today on the LiveJournal Asian Art community a series of prints by Hokusai which could be cut out and assembled to form a bathhouse diorama.

Much thanks for sharing this. Click through for the whole post.

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