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Home , Hiroshige, Yoshitoshi

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Yoshitoshi. Masterpieces from the Ed Freis Collection. Leiden, Hotei Publishing, 2011. €49.00.

This book is an accessible overview of the artistic practices of the Japanese printmaker Tsukioka (1839-1892). It also makes an important con- tribution to the study of the late nineteenth-century publishing industry in , a subject still relatively little explored in academia. The book was issued as a catalogue of woodblock prints from the Freis Collection shown at an exhi- bition organized in 2011 at the Siebold House in Leiden, The Netherlands.1 Besides ample visual material befitting a book issued by Hotei Publishing, it features selected essays presented at the Yoshitoshi Symposium organized the same year by Chris Uhlenbeck and Hotei Japanese Prints. Two longer essays, by Chris Uhlenbeck and Amy Reigle Newland, are followed by a cata- logue with entries by Maureen de Vries, Ed Freis, Chris Uhlenbeck and Amy Reigle Newland. The book is supplemented by two appendices, ‘Yoshitoshi’s illustrated books’ by Sytse Boonstra and ‘Yoshitoshi’s serial graphics’ by Robert Schaap, and also includes a bibliography, glossary and index. Traditionally labeled as ‘the last ukiyo-e master’, Yoshitoshi is also considered one of the most controversial figures of the Meiji era (1868-1912). Ultimately, the source of this controversy, and, to a certain extent, also of Yoshitoshi’s popular- ity, is his alleged mental illness. Psychological disorder has hitherto functioned as the central motif to interpret the designer’s restless life-style and diverse artistic output. However, interpretations grounded solely in Yoshitoshi’s per- sonal history call for re-contextualization in relation to the socio-economic events of the Meiji era. This publication, which offers an alternative reading of Yoshitoshi’s activities as a function of the Meiji publishing industry, breaks new ground in our understanding of his works and artistic practices of the time. The book’s aim is three-fold: 1) to present the Freis Collection; 2) to offer a new interpretation of Yoshitoshi’s oeuvre; 3) to shed light on the Meiji pub- lishing industry and the position of a designer vis-à-vis publishers and public. The book can be divided into two main parts: the two discursive essays and the catalogue with appendices. First, in his essay ‘The phases in the career of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: a print designer in a time of change’, Chris Uhlenbeck presents Yoshitoshi’s artistic biography. The author begins with a short presen- tation of the state of the field. On the one hand, appreciation of Yoshitoshi still lags behind that of ‘the canonical masters of ukiyo-e’ such as , , and , but, on the other hand, he tops the list of Meiji print designers. The reader is therefore eager to find out the reasons for the status

1 Later the show was displayed in the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, California.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/22106286-12341258 book reviews 119 quo. To explain the situation Uhlenbeck brings into focus Western scholarship, namely Roger Keyes and John Stevenson.2 Unfortunately, the recent ‘Yoshitoshi boom’ in Japanese academia noted by Asano Shūgō (Ukiyo geijutsu 161 [2011], p. 77), which includes publications by Iwakiri Yuriko, Sugawara Mayumi and Hinohara Kenji, is not discussed.3 Doubtless, Western collectors, most likely the targeted audience for this book, would welcome the opportunity to famil- iarize themselves with Japanese scholarship, to which in general they have rather limited access. Subsequently, Uhlenbeck offers a periodization of Yoshitoshi’s oeuvre. Importantly, the author states that he is not going to venture into an explora- tion of the artist’s personality, ‘nor to interpret his art based on unsubstanti- ated assumptions’ (p. 8), namely anecdotes about his violent character, mental illness, sexuality, and attitude towards women based on unreliable publica- tions by Yoshitoshi’s pupil Yamanaka Kodō (1869-1945). Instead, Uhlenbeck outlines his methodological approach in relation to the realities of the pub- lishing industry powered by the market, in which a designer is seen as a pro- ducer of commodities. He states: ‘This analysis springs from the premise that the ukiyo-e designer was an indispensable link within a mechanism of pro- duction that was initiated by the publisher, who in turn was driven by market forces’ (p. 9). Since the 1970s analysis of the socio-economic context has been a commonplace in visual culture studies. Nonetheless, the idealistic notion of ‘genius’ has had a surprisingly long life in scholarship on pre-modern Japanese culture. Aptly, Uhlenbeck does not subscribe to this view. He applies a socio- economic perspective to Yoshitoshi’s prints in the same way as he has done in his earlier scholarship exploring -period ukiyo-e. However, this approach raises the question of whether there is a corre- spondence between Edo and Meiji realities. To what extent is it justifiable to interpret Meiji publishing as an invariable continuation of the Edo-period industry? Obviously, the did not happen overnight and old

2 Keyes, Courage and Silence: A Study of the Life and Color Woodblock Prints of Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: 1939-1892 (Cincinnati: Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities, 1982); Stevenson, Yoshitoshi’s Thirty-Six Ghosts (Hong Kong: Tiger, 1983); Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon (Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2005); Eric Van den Ing and Robert Schaap, Beauty and Violence. Japanese Prints by Yoshitoshi 1939-1892 (Bergeyk: Society for Japense Arts, 1992), etc. 3 Iwakiri Yuriko, Yoshitoshi tsuki hyakushi (Tōkyōdō Shuppan, 2010); Sugawara Mayumi, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, Wakan hyakumonogatari (Nazotoki ukiyoe sosho) (Nigensha, 2011); Hinohara Kenji, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: Fūzoku sanjū nisō (Nazotoki ukiyoe sosho) (Nigensha, 2011). Also worth noting is the most recent publication issued after the Hotei book: Iwakiri Yuriko, Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: Bakumatsu Meiji wo ikita kisai ukiyoeshi (Bessatsu Taiyō) (Heibonsha, 2012).

East Asian Publishing and Society 4 (2014) 115-124