+ EXPLAINING UKIYO-E DAVID BELL A Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Otago, Dunedin New Zealand November 2002 2 ABSTRACT The term ukiyo-e refers to a distinctive phenomenon in Japanese art. Ukiyo-e can be defined temporally, geographically and socially; most importantly, it developed its own distinctive stylistic character. Most studies of ukiyo-e have been founded on a descriptive mode: they have sought to identify its principal characteristics, and to describe the different projects of its various schools and artists. Recent research has shifted into a more explanatory mode, locating explanations of ukiyo-e‟s distinctive pictorial character in descriptions of the socio-cultural context to which it pertained. This project seeks to establish richer explanations for the pictorial character of ukiyo-e. It argues that appropriate explanations may be found through a critical appraisal of the conditions which constrained and stimulated the enterprises of ukiyo-e artists. It finds these conditions to be manifest in the conceptual foundations that informed its artists; in the ways artists learned the knowledge and skills of their craft; in the sorts of function ukiyo-e pictures were required to perform; and in two conditions of the artists‟ medium: pictorial devices or conventions and the spatial constraints of their media, and the material conditions with which they worked. No matter how closely works of ukiyo-e artists conformed to the pictorial character common to the school as a whole, each individual also followed an independent pathway. The final chapter acknowledges the ways individual artists were disposed to work differently within the auspices of the broader enterprise. 3 CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... 2 CONTENTS 3 PREFACE ..................................................................................................................... 4 PROLOGUE ................................................................................................................... 5 1. EXPLAINING UKIYO-E: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES .......................... 19 2. EXPLAINING UKIYO-E: AESTHETIC CONCEPTS .................................... 53 3. LEARNING UKIYO-E ..................................................................................... 87 4. PICTORIAL FUNCTION AND PICTORIAL CHARACTER ..................... 112 5. THE PICTORIAL MEANS OF UKIYO-E ..................................................... 146 6. UKIYO-E AND THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS OF MEDIUM ............... 175 7. UKIYO-E AND TEMPERAMENTAL DISPOSITION ................................. 197 PLATES ................................................................................................................. 231 APPENDICES 1. Historical Periods and Eras in Japanese History ........................................... 273 2. Pictorial Formats for Woodblock Prints 278 3. List of Principal Ukiyo-e Artists Refered to in the Text 280 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................... 283 GLOSSARY ............................................................................................................... 302 4 PREFACE The focus and shape of this project have been prompted by two factors: a long personal acquaintance with ukiyo-e which has insistently posed more questions than I have found answers, and a conviction that explanations can be developed for pictures and picture-making. Researchers, like artists, rarely work in a vacuum, and throughout this enterprise I have been especially privileged to enjoy the support and cooperation of a range of people and institutions. In the first instance, I would like to acknowledge the support and patience of my family, and particularly that of my partner Helen. Tolerance has also characterized the support of my immediate colleagues at the Department of Art Education at the Dunedin College of Education. I would like to thank also the Research and Professional Development Committees of the College, both for their ongoing support of my post- graduate study, and for the generous provision of leave for the completion of this research. Thanks also are due to the staff in Reprographics, Word Processing and Computer Services at the College. The staffs of the Bill Robertson Library of the College and Otago Polytechnic, and of the Central Library of the University of Otago have been most helpful. Those of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery have allowed me to access the collections and reproduce a number of works here. Thanks also to the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the Trustees of the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the Hikone Castle Museum, and the Honolulu Academy of Fine Arts, for permission to reproduce works. The Management Committee of the Asian Studies Research Centre of the University of Otago funded the translation of some material with a research grant, and Mary Mercer and Dr Brian Moloughney facilitated this. Two colleagues have given informed support. I would like to acknowledge the conversations, clarification and resource sharing of fellow student Richard Bullen. I would also like to thank my professional colleague Kerry Mackay, who has patiently proof-read the drafts for the whole project, and whose advice was generous, perceptive, thorough and honest. During this project I have been fortunate enough to receive the professional leadership of three supervisors, and the quite different kinds of advice given by each has, each in its own way, contributed a great deal to the shape and flavour of the final presentation. I would like to thank Dr Peter Leech, Dr Brian Moloughney, and Associate Professor Peter Stupples, all of the University of Otago, for their patience, their academic rigour, and their pertinent advice. Douglas Jenkins, Henry Johnson and Sandy Kita all read the manuscript and offered constructive advice. There may be occasions where I have veered from the sound pathways they have provided: all faults are my own. I would like to dedicate this project to my partner Helen without whose support it may never have seen the light of day. 5 6 PROLOGUE I In Japanese art the term ukiyo-e (literally, „floating world pictures‟) refers to an enterprise distinctly different from other earlier or contemporary Japanese fields of painting like the Kanō, Tosa and Yamato-e schools. Where the other institutions had served the interests of small, privileged and elite audiences, for example, ukiyo-e appealed to a much broader spectrum of the public including the newly urbanized samurai-sourced bureaucratic class of Edo, together with members of the large, affluent and increasingly articulate chōnin „townsman‟ sector of the population. Ukiyo-e became a popular art form. Though many of its artists were well-respected painters, the popularity of ukiyo-e was enhanced through its peculiar commitment to the woodblock print. Printed images could be produced in very large quantities, and circulated at low cost. Ordinary townsfolk could collect art works in quantity as only the very wealthy had been able to do in earlier times. More importantly, ukiyo-e artists developed a distinct pictorial character for their art that ensured its sustained popularity with this broad and diverse audience. They developed a stylistic idiom that was at once markedly different from those of other schools of painting, and at the same time consistent in character with the urbanity of its Edo audiences and their expectations of immediacy and novelty. The stylistic idiom of ukiyo-e favoured polychromatic, often ornately patterned compositions, clear and precisely descriptive linear qualities, and a straightforward, easily accessible representational mode.1 The most immediately striking characteristic of ukiyo-e pictures, and that departing most markedly from the misty tonal character of the Kanō school painting or the transparent black ink brushwork of zenga, was the richness, brightness, and finely detailed variety of its colour. This tendency towards the polychromatic was evident in the very earliest works of ukiyo-e. It was present, for example, in the complex genre screen paintings (the Funaki Screens) and the Tōshōgū collection Thirty-six Poets panels of ukiyo- e‟s earliest master, Iwasa Matabei2, and in the variously coloured and finely patterned costumes of the figures in The Hikone Screen (Plate 2). Though many early prints were monochrome, or more precisely, linear compositions on white paper, printmakers also quickly favoured polychrome. Early single block prints were embellished with colour applied by hand in broad, bright layers. By the later 1760s printmakers had perfected a multi-block polychrome printing process that allowed the most complex of combinations of colour to be printed with near perfect registration to produce what became known as nishiki-e or „brocade pictures‟. This commitment to a highly decorative polychromatic mode was sustained throughout the history of ukiyo-e and is equally evident in the richly coloured and ornate prints of its latest designers, artists like Chikanobu, Kunichika and Kuniyoshi. Even during the last decade of the Tokugawa period3 ukiyo-e printers eagerly sought new combinations of increasingly brighter and faster pigments, most obviously in their adoption of the European sourced aniline synthetics. 7 Though by the late eighteenth century ukiyo-e artists were able to select colours from a rich and varied