Cover Page the Handle

Cover Page The handle https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3195081 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation. Author: Takemura, S. Title: Style and function of female images in prints by Keisai Eisen (1790–1848): Ideals of beauty and gender in the Late Edo Period consumer society Issue Date: 2021-07-15 Chapter One Eisen: An Overview of His Career, His Oeuvre, and His ʻMarket’ Several modern ukiyo-e scholars have conducted important analysis and investigations into Eisen and his works. Hayashi Yoshikazu has scrutinized Eisen’s erotic artworks (shunga 春画) in collaboration with Katsushika Hokusai and Hokusai’s daughter Oei 阿栄 (also known as Katsushika Ōi 葛飾応為, act. 1801‒1854) in Oei to Eisen: Enpon kenkyū 阿栄と英泉：艶本研究.11 Ōsawa Makoto undertook a detailed, comprehensive study of Eisen’s artistic life in the post-war era, in his Keisai Eisen 渓斎英泉 of 1976, but little investigation has subsequently been conducted on the artist’s individual works.12 Akai Tatsurō 赤井達郎 has shed light on the close collaboration between the popular writer- publisher Shunsui and Eisen with an eye toward the possible influence that Shunsui might have had on the design of Eisen’s female images. Since Akai does not demonstrate any visual examples of Eisen’s biJin-ga, I would like to explore if and how Eisen’s biJin-ga have actual influence of Shunsui’s ideas and writings about women. The first substantial one-man show on Eisen and his works took place in 1997 at the Ōta kinen bijutsukan 太田記念美術館 (Ōta Memorial Museum of Art).13 The most recent museum exhibition to thoroughly focus on Eisen’s art was organized in 2012 by the Chiba City Museum of Art. The comprehensive exhibition catalogue that accompanied the show demonstrates that Eisen not only excelled at 11 Hayashi, Oei to Eisen: Enpon kenkyū. 12 Ōsawa Makoto ⼤沢まこと, Keisai Eisen 渓斎英泉 (Tokyo: Ikugeisha, 1976). 13 Ōta Ukiyo-e Kinen Bijutsukan. Keisai Eisen ten: Botsugo 150-nen kinen 溪斎英泉展: 没後 150 年記念. (Tōkyō: Ōta Kinen Bijutsukan, 1997). 37 female images but was also a versatile artist in various ukiyo-e genres. More recently, Matsuda Misako 松田美沙子 has also contributed to the study of Eisen, comparing his biJin- ga to that of the contemporaneous ukiyo-e designer, Utagawa Kunisada. These previous studies tend to situate Eisen’s biJin-ga within his own oeuvre production or in comparison to other artists, mostlY in terms of aesthetic and stylistic developments. My research builds on these past studies, but as noted in my Introduction, I will cast a wider net and examine Eisen’s role in developing what I see as a new type of female image appearing in the biJin-ga of the late Edo period within the wider socio- historical context of the time. To do this, I will be investigating other urban cultural/entertainment entities that were flourishing at the time alongside ukiyo-e— popular fiction, kabuki theatre, travel, and most of all, the sex trade. As noted, Eisen’s biJin-ga prints are classified as works of “decadent style” (taihaiha 頽廃派) by early modern scholars looking back at his output of a hundred years earlier. As early as 1925, the Japanese art-historian Ozaki Kyūya 尾崎久弥 (1890-1972) published a monograph on Eisen’s biJin-ga in his 1925 book Ukiyo-e to taihaiha 浮世絵と頽廃派 (Ukiyo-e and the Decadent School). Ozaki took a moralistic approach to Eisen’s output and equates the artist’s “erotic” female images decadence (taihai 頽廃) in contrast to the ideal biJin-ga produced a half century earlier. For Ozaki, Utamaro’s biJin-ga demonstrate the “beauty of maternal figures” (bofu no bi 母婦の美), while Eisen’s biJin-ga express the “beauty of prostitutes” (shōfu no bi 娼婦の美).14 Ozaki observes: 14 Ozaki, Ukiyo-e to taihaiha, 40. 38 . 歌麿は、女性美に、玩弄的な不神聖な意味よりも、寧ろ、神聖化してこれを描いていると思ふに反し、英泉は、女性を全く反宗教的なる性の具有者として、これを汚瀆し易きものとして描いている。その描法も描かれた顔貌も、歌麿は餘りに非人間的であるに対し、英泉は最も人間的である。15 . In his depictions of women Utamaro appreciated female beauty not so much in terms of them being playthings or impure, but rather as sacralized. By contrast, Eisen depicted women as equipped with completely anti-religious sexuality and easily corruptible. While in Utamaro’s drawing style their faces are not human at all, with Eisen they are very human. However, it is noteworthy that many of Utamaro’s works also depict courtesans and sex workers. It can be argued that Ozaki was troubled by Eisen’s depiction of female images in active poses with facial expressions and gestures expressing overtly sensuous feelings that he deemed not to be within the ukiyo-e paradigm, thus contributing to the quality of “decadence” (taihai).16 Eisen’s so-called “decadent prints” do not portray decorous or graceful female figures. Rather, they appear bold, casual, and sensuous, even salacious when their motifs and inscriptions are fully deciphered. Figure 4 and Figure 5 are representative examples of what modern scholars of the early twentieth century would deem as “decadent prints” by Eisen. Two generations of ukiyo-e studies later, they were still classified as such when they were 15 Ibid., 38–39. 16 Akai Tatsurō 赤井達郎, Ukiyo-e ni okeru Kasei – Keisai Eisen – 浮世絵における化政渓斎英泉, in Kasei bunka no kenkyū—Kyoto daigaku jinbunkagaku kenkyū hōkoku 化政文化の研究京都大学人物学研究報告, ed. Tatsusaburō Hayashiya (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1976), 8. 39 included in the 1965 Kōki ukiyo-e 後期浮世絵 (Ukiyo-e of the late Edo), one of the first major, and most influential, postwar publications to reproduce late Edo-period nishiki-e prints. It was compiled by Oka Isaburō and Suzuki Jūzō and published in English translation in 1969 under the title The Decadents.17 The suggestive title has influenced Western perceptions of late Edo-period biJin-ga ukiyo-e up to the present daY. 17 Isaburō Oka and Suzuki Jūzō. The Decadents (Tokyo, New York, and San Francisco: Kodansha International/USA, Ltd, 1969). 40 Figure 4. Keisai Eisen. Suzaki Benten 洲崎弁天（Suzaki Benten Shrine）, from the series Ada kurabe ukiyo fūzoku 仇競浮世風俗 (Competition of Beauties); early 19th century. Reproduction taken from Kōki ukiyo-e (1965) by Oka Isaburō and Suzuki Jūzō. 41 Figure 5. Keisai Eisen. Satsuki 五月(Fifth Month),” from the series Ukiyo biJin Jūnikagetsu 浮世美人十二箇月(Tewlve Beauties for Twelve Month); early 19th century. Reproduction taken from Kōki ukiyo-e (1965) by Oka Isaburō and Suzuki Jūzō. To learn how today’s critical consensus that Eisen, along with Kunisada and Kuniyoshi, be classified into this so-called “decadent” school of ukiyo-e, we have to go back to the post-Victorian era of the early twentieth century, a time when Japan’s modernizing reformers were desperate to achieve parity with the West as a “civilized” society. They took their cue from the West on what it means for a country to be “civilized” (no prostitution), forgetting that Japan already has a long history of civilization and culture. Indeed, Japan’s cultural traditions date back hundreds of years, longer than most nation-states of Europe, and 42 certainly of America. In the Japanese context, these early reformers were continuing the work of the Meiji Restoration of 1868, to liberate Japan from the old feudal order of the Edo. It should be pointed out that Ozaki’s perception of late Edo-period biJin-ga is partlY based on an attitude towards sex that was largely influenced by newly introduced Western mores. The Enlightenment campaign in eighteenth-century France led to new ideas on family that challenged long-established attitudes and customs. Traditionally, the “family” meant the “line,” the chain of descendants who each in turn held title to estate, properties and privileges in the family name. Marriage was a legal contract negotiated between heads of families, whether kings or wealthy peasants, not between the bridal couple.18 Carol Duncan argues that these modern bourgeois values were based on Enlightenment ideals of conjugal love and family harmony,19 in which “sexual gratification, marriage and parenthood come in a single package suitable for elevated tastes.”20 In other words, the importance of women’s chastity focusing on conjugal love and family harmony became newly important in the West starting in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centurY. Although chastity and patriarchal family model was also Confucian, the idea of love marriage was new to Japan. Such attitudes had entered Japan by the early nineteenth century, the time of Eisen. Tadano Makuzu 只野真葛 (1763–1825),21 for example, wrote Hitori kangae 独考 (Solitary Thoughts, 1818), and one of the topics is love marriage. As a daughter 18 Carol Duncan, Happy Mothers and Other New Ideas in Eighteenth Century French Art in Feminism and art History Questioning the Litany, ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (Boulder, CO and United Kingdom: Westview Press, 1982) 201‒219, esp. 204. 19 Ibid., 210. 20 Ibid., 212. 21 Tadano Makuzu was the daughter of Kudō Heisuke 工藤平助 (1734–1801), a doctor in the Sendai domain and a critic of economy and societY, wrote a well-known treatise on Russia, Akaezo fūsetsukō 赤蝦夷風説考 (Report on the Land of the Red Ainu [Russia], 1783). 43 of a doctor and a scholar of Western learning, known as rangaku 蘭学 (Dutch studies), Tadano introduces a description of marriage in Russia, which she probably learned about from the rangaku scholars Sugita Genpaku 杉田玄白 (1733–1817) and Maeno Ryōtaku 前野良沢 (1723–1803), who were both associated with her father. She explains that marriage in Russia occurs after both man and woman agree and pledge to marry; a marriage is acknowledged when agreed upon by both sides and any sexual contact outside marriage is a serious sin. In Tadano’s eyes, marriage in Russia is much more reasonable and humane for both parties.

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