Article by Senem Ozgoren

Japan and its culture have come to be seen as one of the most indigenous traditions. This high status in its arts, which formerly depended on Chinese forms and ideas, was achieved after Tokugawa Ieyasu, who in demand of administrative control, closed the ports of Japan to ensure internal commerce and peace. After years of civil wars that come to be known as Sengoku Jidai(the “age of the country at war”), the power struggle between the two great houses, the Toyotomi and the Tokugawa, was finally resolved with the fall of the Osaka castle in 1615. The capital was moved to Edo, which was a small fishing village then, and grew considerably within the so-called Edo period to become one of the most populated cities in the world, modern day Tokyo. The fall of the Osaka castle serves as the beginning of a new era within which the history of modern Japan evolves and develops . The role of the Tokugawa shogunate in the development of the popular culture of the Edo period is paradoxical. The Tokugawa line of shoguns had brought an end to over a century of civil wars and created a peaceful, prosperous environment, deliberately isolated from the outside world, that fostered the rise of a new merchant class and the popular arts associated with that class. The Neo-Confucian ideology adopted by the shogunate stressed the importance of education. The increase in literacy among the urban middle class led to the growth of a printing industry, which catered these new readers. From the 17th century on writers of fiction constantly made the floating world of pleasures their subjects. The same subjects — brothels, theaters, and fashion were depicted in paintings, and from the 1660s on, the book publishers began to produce single-sheet prints (ichima-e), the prints and painting altogether, with such subject-matter came to be known as ukiyo-e. On the negative side, the shogunate’s desire to maintain tight control over the townspeople led to repeated attempts to suppress or regulate the popular culture and its art forms. The increasing economic power of the merchants and the townspeople was regarded as a threat to the established order rooted in Neo-Confucian ideology. Therefore the floating world was a constant target whenever the shogunate felt the need to tighten its control.

The widely exemplified Baba Bunko incident of 1758, the beheaded storyteller in Edo, is an important starting point in analyzing the social and cultural changes that marked the so-called peaceful Edo period. Baba Bunko was beheaded due to his references in his stories to current events, peasant protests in Mino domain, which was considered a criminal offense as the Tokugawa policy strongly forbid public discussion of current events. Baba Bunko’s language can be termed with “Art of Dissent” which, during the time, was the most common way the popular culture expressed its social and political concerns. Satire, used in the medium of literature; the brocade papers (kawaraban), fictional books, as well as ukiyo-e prints, was a way of provoking and challenging comfortable ideas and ways of thinking in the early and middle decades of 18th century Japan, a socially and politically unsettled time, and resulted in strengthening and consolidating opposition to the government. Ukiyo-e depended on market demand and its subject matters reflected the trends of the time, thus reflecting the ukiyo-e artists’ accurate and timely response to the constantly changing fashions in theater, pleasure quarters, current affairs, and even rumors. It was a way of circulating information through images, in this way it functioned as media. Due to its reproducibility and transportability, ukiyo-e signified a new arena for public discourse, which was, therefore, constantly attacked by the bakufu (The Tokugawa government) through new edicts and resulting bans. In regards to woodblock prints, the bakufu was most concerned with political rebellion, sexual and social appropriateness and luxurious living that were contrary to the plain and prudent notions of Neo-Confucian morality. The ukiyo-e prints had their subject matters firmly rooted in the urban culture of the floating world i.e. actors, women of the floating world, and the kabuki theatre. Political concerns were addressed indirectly through the guise of distant warriors, scenes that depicted popular satirical fiction, and through the supernatural as an interpretative element within the townspeople. As the artists who responded to social and political concerns were a part of that community that possessed such concerns, a new language of signs and symbols were evolved into a language termed “public discourse” by Hirano. From the 1670s when major edicts started to be issued by the bakufu until the 1740s, increasingly creative responses that made use of shared popular knowledge by ukiyo-e artists continued to supply the demands of the townspeople.

In the so-called peace period from the 1600s into the nineteenth century, three major governmental reforms were enacted in response to worsening economic conditions. During these periods of reform, the regulations imposed on printed books and pictures led to severe repression of the visual arts. In the process of making new visual expressions, the ukiyo-e artist had mastered in the rendition of disguises. The 8th Tokugawa shogun, Yoshimune (1684–1751), was the first one to issue laws that would effect and shape the ukiyo-e prints and their subjects. The Kyōhō reforms were enacted to restore stability, and called for a prudent lifestyle. Yoshimune’s curiosity in science led to a relaxation on the ban on the importation of foreign books, which, as a potential influence, compensated for the restraints on ukiyo-e prints. A new set of edicts concerned the publishers, who now had a collective responsibility on the material they printed. The edicts on printing were further expanded; any heterodox theories contrary to what is believed if forbidden, “amorous books” koshokubon (erotica), should not be printed as they are bad for public morals, ancestral lineages should not be printed, printed works are deemed to include the name of the artist or the author and publisher, any mention of the Tokugawa family is forbidden. These bans resulted in new genres whereby the artists “flirted with the limits of the law”. The ban on shunga (pillow pictures), which constituted a major field in response to popular demand, gave rise to a new genre in ukiyo-e prints: abuna-e “dangerous pictures”. In the development of the artists’ “forms of disguise” (Hirano) through interpretative images based on shared knowledge, abuna-e exemplifies an early direct visual satire on the laws concerning shunga. In abuna-e, seminude women were treated as individual subjects, their static poses, circumstances, or occupations were rendered to allude to the erotic. It is the first time in Japanese history when the human body is treated as a subject on its own. In the later so-called “energetic” abuna-e, the source of danger was in the action that the subject was occupied with which was successful in arousing feelings of suspense and titillation, allowing the viewer to speculate.

FIG.1 The Awabi Divers, ca. 1798. Ōban triptych Kitagawa Utamaro.

The most famous representation of the human body in ukiyo-e is considered to be in the triptych by Kitagawa Utamaro entitled “The Awabi Divers”, 1798 (FIG.1). An earlier print from his most famous erotic album the Uta Makura includes a plate showing two awabi divers (FIG.2)

FIG.2 Two Awabi Divers, from the erotic book Uta Makura, 1788. Kitagawa Utamaro

Through examining the two images, the development in the sensual treatment of the body together with the achievement of complex compositions by combining various poses become apparent as well as the close relation between shungaand abuna-e.

Another response to the laws concerned the limitation of publishers of calendars to only eleven publishers. Artists such as Suzuki Harunobu devised a new, creative calendar that came to be known as egoyomi. He concealed the calendrical information within a picture, most commonly within fabric patterns on clothing (FIG.3). These prints are regarded as the inspiration of nishiki-e “brocade pictures”, due to their use of full-color.

FIG.3 Monkey Playing with Wooden Toy, 1800. Katsushika Hokusai. The long and short months for the year 1800 are represented on the wooden stick by long and short marks.

Following a period of generous development in the ukiyo-e genres, severe famines in 1772 and 1786 called for new reforms. During the Kansei era (1789–1801), a return to the Kyōhō reforms was initiated. As initially the Kansei reforms sought to stabilize economic conditions, in 1790 they were extended to the field of publishing. In addition to familiar restrictions on the subject matter, from 1790 on, single-sheet prints were required to have a seal indicating the approval of the censor. The change of historical era and names were no longer acceptable. In addition, the names of women other than courtesans could no longer be recorded on prints, which was an act to maintain social propriety.

The most extreme limitation imposed on ukiyo-e artist during the reforms was the banning of the Okibu-e (“big head”) prints (FIG.4). The interest shown in facial features in this particular genre is contemporaneous with its European counterpart. The bust portraits of actors and the noted beauties had been extremely popular and circulated widely. A print by Utamaro represents the ways sought by which these bans could be infringed as they were socially popular and demand was high. A bust portrait is correlated by clues to represent Takashima Ohisa, the daughter of a maker of rice crackers, who was one of the celebrated beauties of the floating world. As this print encapsulates both the ban on printing names of ladies and the ban on bust portraits, it is remarkable that as it can only be read through the language that formed popular public discourse, it attained an acceptable statue. The woman’s bag is labeled “Famous Rice Crackers” thereby revealing her identity to the public (FIG.5 below).