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Print Culture in Tokugawa Japan: Recent Research at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Organizer: Sarah E. Thompson, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Chair: Rachel Saunders, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, has been known for many years as the premier repository outside of Japan for both Japanese woodblock prints (estimated at around 50,000) and early printed books (estimated at around 5000). However, until recently scholarly access to these materials has been limited, in part because of the sheer volume of the holdings. That situation is now changing drastically thanks to a combination of technological developments—collection management software for museums, and the rise of the World Wide Web—and initiatives by MFA administrators. With grant money from both American and Japanese sources, the MFA has launched two massive projects whose ultimate goal is to publish on the Museum website digital images of all the prints and selected book illustrations, with basic cataloguing information for all objects in the collection. The target date for completion of both the Japanese Print Access and Documentation Project (JPADP) and the Japanese Book Access and Documentation Project (JBADP) is the beginning of the calendar year 2011—by happy coincidence, the centennial of the 1911 gift from Dr. William Sturgis Bigelow that comprises over half of the print collection.
We anticipate that the greatly increased availability of this primary material will facilitate research on a variety of topics. This panel introduces four very different research projects currently underway at the MFA. In lieu of formal discussants, additional time is allotted to discuss possible future developments.
Bontenkoku, the Land of Brahma: From Muromachi Tale to Ukiyo-e Print, Via Puppet Theater and Kabuki
Sarah E. Thompson, Musem of Fine Arts, Boston
The Spaulding Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, includes a large and beautiful hand-colored tan-e print by Torii Kiyomasu I that is apparently a unique surviving impression, depicting two figures in exotic costumes riding through clouds in a flying carriage, accompanied by a karyobinga (kalavinka, a Buddhist heavenly creature that is half-human and half-bird). Dateable to either 1701 or 1706, the print represents one of the performances of the kabuki play Bontenkoku takarabune, “The Treasure Boat of the Land of Brahma,” in which a Japanese hero marries the daughter of a king of India and subsequently rescues her from demons who have kidnapped her. The couple are eventually revealed as Buddhist deities, and the tale is therefore classified as a honji or divine origin story. The kabuki play was based on a puppet play that in turn was derived from a Muromachi-period story, also reproduced in early printed books. By fortunate coincidence, the MFA collection contains, in addition to the print, a program booklet with illustrations by Torii Kiyonobu I for the 1701 production of the play, as well as several seventeenth-century illustrated manuscripts of the original tale in both scroll and codex form. This paper will compare in detail the various painted and printed versions of Bontenkoku in the MFA collection, for a case study of the transition between manuscript culture and print culture in seventeenth-century Japan and the role of the performing arts in that transition.
Patterns of Identity: Kimono Pattern Books in the Collection of the MFA, Boston
Rachel Saunders, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The MFA’s enormous collection of Japanese prints is world-famous. Less well-known is its wide-ranging collection of Japanese woodblock printed books, many created at the same time and by the same artists as the masterpieces in the print collection. It is certainly one of the largest, if not the largest, in the United States. We are now in the initial stages of a major project to catalogue, re-house, and photograph the collection, and to make these images and data available on-line. Even at this early stage, it has become clear that the collection contains volumes which are no longer extant in Japan.
As part of this project, in the summer of 2005 it was discovered that the MFA possessed a major collection of kimono pattern books (known in Japanese as hinagatabon), dating from the mid-seventeenth century. On first sight they appear to be simply utilitarian order books used by customers. Closer examination though reveals that they were also sophisticated fashion magazines, appealing to different audiences on different levels. They were aimed at satisfying seekers of fantasy and entertainment as much as fulfilling the more prosaic need for fashion guidance in a social and political environment which tightly controlled what people could wear. A number were designed by well-known artists of the day and provide an exquisite vantage point for viewing the fast-changing and colorful world of early modern Japan.
The Actor Prints of Utagawa Kunisada I and a Dating Method Based on Them
Masae Kurahashi, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto
The artist Utagawa Kunisada I (also known as Utagawa Toyokuni III, 1786-1864) headed the Utagawa school after the death of Toyokuni I and played a leading role in the world of Ukiyo-e during the latter half of the Edo period. Kunisada’s works include not only commercial ukiyo-e prints but also surimono (privately commissioned prints), book illustrations, and paintings. His depictions of beautiful women (bijinga) are especially elegant; but his real forte was portraits of Kabuki actors, with actor prints forming the largest single genre of works within his oeuvre. Until now, research on Kunisada has concentrated on his bijinga, paying comparatively little attention to his actor prints. One reason for this relative neglect has been the enormous size of the corpus, due to Kunisada’s long active period.
Since 2005, I have been researching actor prints by Kunisada in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and have catalogued approximately three thousand works that provide information indispensable for research on Edo kabuki during the final years of the Edo period. Furthermore, I am compiling a chronological list of the censors’ seals that appear on Kunisada’s actor prints. When the date of a print has been established by confirming the production date of the play depicted, the seals can then be dated to the year and even to the month. These seals can then be used as a tool for the precise dating of other prints, such as Kunisada’s bijinga and the works of his contemporaries Kuniyoshi and Hiroshige.
A Play on Provinces: Isshusai Kunikazu’s print series Dai nippon rokujū yo shū
Quintana Heathman, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Katsushika Hokusai’s popular series Fugaku sanjū rokkei (“Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji,” 1829-1831) launched a trend of landscape woodblock print series depicting views of famous cities, notable landmarks, and the “sixty-odd” provinces or kuni (normally around 68 are included). While artists such as Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige may be most famous for working within this genre, other artists created landscape prints for the enjoyment of the public.
Isshusai Kunikazu (active 1848-1868), an Osaka-based print artist, not only produced “famous view” series of the Kansai area and Osaka, but kabuki actor prints as well. His series Dai nippon rokujū yo shū (“Views of the Sixty-odd Provinces of Japan,” 1857-1861), examples of which have been on view recently at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, puts an Osaka slant on the popular theme of the sixty-odd provinces: instead of depicting a landscape for each province, Kunikazu uses a scene from a kabuki play.
These elaborate and visually stunning prints demonstrate the knowledge of the Osaka print consumer not only of kabuki plays and actors, but also of the kuni of Japan and locations therein. This print series, though containing images of actors instead of landscapes, can be considered part of the “travel boom” of the Edo period and the growing interest in regions of Japan outside of one’s own immediate area. Kunikazu’s series of actors and kabuki plays thus shows the extent of the idea of the sixty-odd provinces in the imagination of the Edo print-viewing public.