EDUTAINMENT

Select Category

Auction China Contemporary Art - 548 ends Wednesday, May 14, 2008 at 8:00:00 PM local time (CET) = 6 hours ahead of US EAST in 2 days, 2 hours and 56 minutes. New users please register now!

Edutainment > Articles on Art > Edo to Meiji > From Protest to Participation: Politics and the Meiji Popular Print

  <  Part Four: The Edo Society  >  

Meiji

Busy Street in Edo
by Hiroshige, ca. 1853

This article series outlines roughly 120 years of Japanese printmaking from the Edo period under the Tokugawa shogunate until the Westernization of Japan during the Meiji era. The article describes the development of the popular Japanese print as the result of the political, social and economic environment of the times in which they were made and the people for whom they were produced.

Part four is a short description of the urban Edo culture as the socioeconomic basis for woodblock printing.

Commoner Culture in the Edo Period

I would like now to turn to an analysis of how the desires of the commoner were mobilized to national ends, and how the popular print transformed from a mode of satire and resistance to political authority in the late Edo period, to one of active participation in Meiji. As I do so, I wish too to question part of the framework I have set up here, by interrogating the idea that a popular culture can ever represent a pure reflection of "the people", outside of political control.

In order to set up the vastly altered political orientations of the Meiji print, I would like for a moment to look back briefly at the relation between the government and commoner culture in the Edo period. The woodblock print itself developed as a commercial venture completely outside of government intervention or control, though this very development was made possible by the socioeconomic changes brought about by the Tokugawa bakufu.

Merchants and Samurai

Meiji

Samurai
by Tasamune Torii

In removing samurai from the land and establishing them in castle towns, the bakufu unintentionally set into motion a series of complex social transformations with extreme consequences. One of the most significant of these is the rise to wealth of a merchant class, who was responsible for supplying the city samurai-bureaucrat with his material needs, in return for cash.

This merchant group, in turn, supplied both the initial venture capital and the original audience for experiments in woodblock printing, with the concentration of goods and specialized artisans in the big cities (Edo, Kyoto and Osaka) providing the necessary materials and skills for woodblock production.

Urban Culture and Woodblock Printing

The single-sheet print (ichimaie) developed in the 1660's out of illustrations for early books, from which it should be distinguished, for the ichimaie, being less demanding of wealth and literacy, soon spread to all classes of merchants and artisans, and even to the countryside in the nineteenth century.

For this reason, the print is even more ubiquitous than popular fiction, even after the development of the urban lending library, for it could touch the lives of children, the illiterate and those without leisure for reading, and in its use as a display item in teahouses and restaurants, even those who had not purchased it. The print, then, was a form that had the potential to influence all sorts of lives, and certainly not only reflected, but shaped, the outlook of the urban commoner in particular.

Dan McKee

The author, Dan McKee is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Japanese literature program at Cornell University, NY.  He has a Master of the Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University, as well as an M.A. from Cornell. Dan McKee is presently writing a dissertation on "surimono as a literary practice in nineteenth century Edo."

All copyrights for the text of this article are held by the author, rights on images are held by artelino GmbH. Text and images are for personal viewing purposes only and may not be copied or distributed without the prior permission of the author, respectively of artelino GmbH.

Back to Index Page: Meiji Prints

Search for Meiji

You can buy art on this site in our ongoing art auction, or direct. See also our upcoming auctions and our art products. If you have any questions, please contact us.

The images on this web site are the property of the artist(s) and or the artelino GmbH and/or a third company/institution.  Reproduction, public display and any commercial use of these images, in whole or in part, require the expressed written consent of the artist(s) and/or the artelino GmbH. . 

Bid and Buy with Confidence

1. Register over our secure line.
2. We verify your registration.
3. We delete your credit card details..
4. You can bid and buy.
5. We are certified and audited every three months by src GmbH for the PCI security standard required by VISA, Mastercard and Amex.
Free and Secure Registration   Auction Catalog

Edo to Meiji