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Departmental Papers (History of Art) Department of the History of Art

12-2004

Review of Amy Reigle Newland, The Commercial and Cultural Climate of Japanese Printmaking

Julie Nelson Davis University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Davis, J. (2004). Review of Amy Reigle Newland, The Commercial and Cultural Climate of Japanese Printmaking. Print Quarterly, 21 (4), 475-476. Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/histart_papers/ 8

This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/histart_papers/8 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Review of Amy Reigle Newland, The Commercial and Cultural Climate of Japanese Printmaking

Disciplines Arts and Humanities | Asian Art and Architecture | History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology

This review is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/histart_papers/8 Japanese Printmaking in Context

JulieNelson Davis

TheCommercial andCultural Climate ofJapanese Printmaking} thesixteen book titles and two print series produced by the editedby Amy Reigle Newland,Amsterdam, Hotei publisherUrokogataya Sanzaemon between 1670 and 1683, Publishing,2004, 272 pp., 18 col. and 53 b. & w.ills., €68.50. eight(possibly nine) titles were reissued in wholly or partial- lyreçut versions from 1683 onwards; they were presumably This bookbrings to a wideraudience the full-lengthlost through fire and thepublisher subsequently elected to papersoriginally presented at 'The HoteiPublishing First reissuethem. Yet some of the six publishers were apparent- InternationalConference on JapanesePrints', held at lymore fortunate - none of their inventory needed remanu- LeidenUniversity in January2000. It demonstratesthe facturing.Asano does not speculate as to whya publisher strengthand range of research in the field of Japanese print wouldhave found it beneficialto makesuch a significant studies,with contributions from Ghris Uhlenbeck, Asano outlayto reconstructlost materials. Market demand might Shügö,David Waterhouse, John Carpenter, Roger Keyes, be takenas thesimple answer, but we mightalso consider TimothyClark, Ellis Tinios, Matthi Forrer and Oikawa whyand howMoronobu's books retained their enduring Shigeru(listed in orderof presentation). In the foreword, appeal and guaranteedprofit, even years after their first Uhlenbeckaccurately characterizes the active state of the publication,and perhaps reconsider as well the status of the fieldin Europe and America, and the increased understand- artist and his 'popular' books. ingof the cultural context of Japanese print history. The The nextfour essays discuss aspects of printculture Leidenproject, he explains,was designed to buildon this throughthe interaction ofthe artist, patron, publisher and strengthand to redirect attention toissues of the commercial their market. David Waterhouse's essay on 'The Cultural climate. Milieuof Suzuki Harunobu' adds considerably to English- Thevolume's opening essay, also by Uhlenbeck, reassess- languagewriting on Harunobu(? 1725-70). Themes of the esinformation from standard texts, to stress that premodern artist's collaboration with two private poetry groups, their Japaneseprintmaking was a commercialventure in which furtherassociation with such notablesas Ota Nanpo thepublisher functioned as producer-director. Accordingly, and Hiraga Gennai, the parodie treatment ofclassical liter- publishersboth manipulated and responded to theiraudi- atureand images of known beauties in Harunobu prints, are ences,producing a range of print types for different markets. among the topics examined here. Unfortunately, thearticle Someprints were sold directly to thepublic, with the pub- seemssomewhat dated, and consultation with more recent lisher'sprofit margin foremost inmind; some were probably publicationson literarygroups, on theproblems of mitate madeas advertisementsforshops and entertainments, with andon the artist's œuvre and association with known publish- a portionof the costs underwritten bythe advertiser; and ers,would have further enhanced this essay's worthy contri- some(particularly andpoetry albums) were made as bution. privatelycommissioned luxury items where the investment Essaysby John Carpenter and RogerKeyes discuss the wasborne by the patrons. Print style, format, quality and surimonoprint type as a nexusof artistic and literary collabo- subjectrelated to thesedistinct markets, and likeall com- ration.Carpenter's essay presents the importantprint modities,prints were subject to the vagaries of taste, fashion designer,Kubo Shunman(1757-1820), as a participantin andprofit. As Uhlenbeckpoints out, Ukiyo-e print produc- variousliterary circles; he deftlyhandles the text-image tionwas a 'money-makingventure' in which market forces problemsposed by surimono prints and excels at thetransla- 'musthave influenced certain decisions made by publishers . . .' tionof witty poems. He locatesthe enterprise within a range (hisitalics; pp. 20-21). Emphasizing the rôle of the publisher of aestheticemphases associated with National Learning indirecting the final outcome does not necessarily diminish (Kokugaku). Some aspectsof the connectionsto National thecontribution ofthe artists, but it does make it clear that Learning,the problem of agency for various artistic deci- particulardecisions need to be recognizedas partof that sionsand therôle of thepublisher (particularly Tsutaya commercialenterprise. The point of agency is thusdirected Juzaburõ), could have been taken further. The essay displays awayfrom the standard'artist as creator'model, and a thoroughcommand of the material and scholarship, mak- towardsa newconfiguration ofcreative collaboration and ingit themost significant study of Shunman to appearin marketnegotiation. Englishso far. Aspectsof production and distribution arefurther consid- Keyesalso writeson the topicof the surimonoprint, eredin AsanoShügö's essay on HishikawaMoronobu (d. focussingon twoalbums assembled by a nineteenth-century 1694).Through close analysis of printed materials produced Osakaenthusiast that included examples both of Edo and bysix publishers, Asano proposes that some of Moronobu's .Keyes's lucid discussion of the manufacture, usage illustratedbooks were remanufactured with reçut wood- and collectionof thesespecial commission prints further blocks,following the devastating fire of 1682. For example, of developsthemes raised in theprevious essay. Through his

PRINTQUARTERLY, XXI,2OO4, 4

This content downloaded from 165.123.108.243 on Thu, 29 Oct 2015 19:32:56 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 476 CATALOGUEAND BOOK REVIEWS studyof the albums,Keyes reconstructs the affiliations(x797- i86ï) and UtagawaKunisada (1786-1865). Tinios betweenindividuals and develops a pictureof a fairlyfluid makesa compellingargument for the rôle played by such worldof exchangeand participation.Particularly striking illustrated books in the transmission ofstyle. is the discussionof woodblockcutter Tani Seiko(active Forrerreturns to thequestion of production in hisessay, 1819-31)as morethan a mereartisan. Seiko's participation 'The Relationship Between Publishers and Print Formats in inthe surimono milieu implicitly raises the issue of the poten- theEdo Period'.He reconsidersthe output of several signif- tialimpact made by suchartisans in themanufacture of icantUkiyo-e figures - Harunobu,Kiyonaga (1752-1815), printedmaterials. Keyes reconstructs through a known col- KitagawaUtamaro (? 1753-1806), Keisai Eisen (1790-1848) lection- andby studying the single album that remains in its and .By organizing their work according to the originalform - theconnections between the collector and knowndata for medium, format and publisher, Forrer makes othersin hiscircle, although here, too, there is theocca- a casefor the changes in an artist'sproduction tobe related sionalassumption ofindividual intentions that needs further to the realities of the print as a commercialproduct. In addi- explication. tion,by shifting his emphasis to the publisher as thearbiter Clarkand Tinios considerthe potentialinteraction of format, subject and style, and adding to this the informa- betweenthe printmaking cultures of the city of Edo andthe tionabout the locales of publishers' shops within the city of Kamigataregion. Clark proposes that the Edo Ukiyo-emas- Edo,he showsthat some publishers seem to havetailored ter,Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), was influenced by the theirofferings to the specific clientele they were likely to naturalisticstyle of the -basedMaruyama-Shijö encounter in theirquarter of thecity. Forrer's essay, like painters.As Clarkpoints out, severalMaruyama-Shijõ Asano's, returns to thestatus of factsand whatmay be artistsdesigned illustrated books and others worked in Edo, learnedthrough close analysis of such data; of all the essays makingit possible that Hiroshige could have been familiar in thisvolume, this one mostthoroughly challenges long- withthat style. However, to takeHiroshige's naturalistic held presumptions about the marketing and distribution of effectof gloaming against a snowyhill and seek its origin in single-sheetprints. MaruyamaÕkyo (1733-95), or to find the precedent for the In thefinal essay, Shigeru uses one of Kawanabe Kyösai's mistytreatment ofa distantlandscape by Kikugawa Eizan (1831-89)illustrated diaries of his daily activities (the Kyõsai- (1787-1867)primarily in his studywith Maruyama-Shijõ e nikh) to recreatethe painter's artistic and socialmilieu. painterSuzuki Nanrei (1775-1844), seems to discountthe Throughthe 1884 album, Kyösai's interactions with such factthat a skilledartist like Hiroshige would have had some importantfigures as Kuniyoshi,Toyokuni III (Kunisada), familiaritywith these classic idioms from ink painting. Both ToyoharaKunichika (1835-1900), Utagawa Yoshitora (active effectscan ultimately be traced back through Edo painting c.1830S-80S), Tsukioka (1839-92), Shibata Zeshin toMuromachi appropriations ofSouthern Song styles, and (1807-91)and othersare morefully and complexlyrepre- wereknown to period painters. Yet in pointing out the pos- sentedthan ever before. Oikawa's essay functions as a bridge sibilitiesfor artists to learn new styles in the period - throughfrom the previous Tokugawa-era studies to bring the volume printedillustrated books, study with other masters and intothe Meiji period, in a studythat shows just how much demonstrationoffacility at shoga-kai(calligraphy and paint- thingschanged, while they stayed the same. ingparties) - Clark does well to remind us that such impuls- Overall,this is a volumethat offers significant informa- es mayhave been cued by the experience of encountering tion about Japanese print studies from the seventeenth otherstyles. throughthe nineteenth centuries. Each essaypresents a Clark'simportant contribution of openingup Ukiyo-emodel for a specificmode of interpretation,and each representationto a widerarray of possible sources is well provocativelyopens up itssubject to the possibilities offur- supportedby Tinios's essay on Maruyama-Shijöbook illus- therengagement. The result is a broad-ranging,occasional- trations.Tinios discusses the rôle of the gqfu - theillustrated ly uneven,yet densely informative group of essaysthat booksthat replicated a specificartist's style and could demonstratethe increasing sophistication being brought to thusserve as an instructionmanual - as a significantmeans the issuesof the commercialand culturalcontexts of of transferrai,and showshow such printedbooks by Japaneseprintmaking. The inclusionhere of print culture in KawamuraBunpö (1779-1821), a Maruyama-Shijö-stylethe Kamigata (Kyoto-Osaka) region and the Meiji context painter,were likely sources employed for compositions by furtherbroadens the scope of study. This is a verywelcome the Edo-based Ukiyo-eartists additionto the field.

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