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

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Meiji

Battle at Ryojun-ko
by Nobukazu Watanabe, 1894

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 eleven deals with the glorification of the Japanese nation by printmakers during the Meiji era.

Japanese Propaganda Prints

The very same printmakers, however, when the issue was not domestic policy but a foreign enemy, were quick to take the side of government and nation in creating propaganda prints of the Meiji government's foreign wars. Kiyochika, for example, was the most popular and prolific designer of prints of the Sino-Japanese War (1894-95), which typically depicted the Chinese enemy as a primitive and colorful horde, and the outnumbered Japanese as solemn, fearless heroes who broke through their ranks regardless.

The Sino-Chinese War in Korea

Meiji

Battle at Ryojun-ko
by Nobukazu Watanabe, 1894

These war prints were almost entirely the creations of designers who had never been to the Korean Peninsula to view any of the actual landscape or battle scenes, who instead relied closely on the traditions of warrior prints and kabuki depiction for dramatic effect. War prints, like those of historical warriors in Meiji, were an open affirmation of the greatness of the nation, but superior to warrior prints in depicting present and immediate heroes, the Japanese (of any class) who had excelled just days before on the battlefield.

Images of War Heroes

There were certainly anonymous scenes of naval battles or trench warfare, but the most popular war prints focused on particular acts of heroes, whenever possible identified by name and birthplace. In this manner, war offered the common man an opportunity to achieve the status of celebrity, and though his depiction in the print might not resemble his actual features at all, in this transformation to handsome, young soldier, he was made into a symbol of national greatness and universally celebrated.

The war print thus offered the buying public the opportunity to see themselves and their fellows as potential heroes of the same order, drumming up support for the war effort, while sanctifying the actual Japanese losses as brave sacrifices to the nation worthy of commemoration in image.

Collectors' Mentality in Meiji

Albums of prints assembled by their owners and surviving from the Meiji Period show that the audience for these different genres of prints was not necessarily divided, but that the same gatherer might display a kabuki actor on one page, a print of the emperor on the next, and a war scene later on. In this way, the albums seemed to form a scrapbook record of an individual's life, rather than a celebration of any particular value or cultural form.

Emperor Meiji: Images of Public Events ...

Meiji

Meiji Emperor and Empress
by Chikanobu Toyohara, 1881

With this background in mind, care is needed in approaching the relationship between prints of the emperor and the buying public. Though the emperor was nominally of sacred status, such images were not necessarily religious icons for veneration, nor did they immediately strike at the hearts of an adoring public.

Rather, at public processions, a curious crowd who seemed otherwise incapable of picking the emperor out in a line of similarly uniformed and bearded dignitaries relied on prints to properly direct their attention, and tell them what they had seen. Initial images of the emperor were thus desired by the print buying public as a means of information, of becoming acquainted with their mysterious national figurehead, much as Yokohama prints had met the need for information about the strange Western intruders and their ways.

They also functioned as souvenirs of recent public events, much like prints of festivals or of the visit of a foreign dignitary like U.S. President Grant.

... And Single Portraits

Only later, by the 1880's, did the emperor attain a status that allowed for single portraits of him without particular occasion, much as the leading kabuki actors might be depicted in roles other than their current ones, simply to capitalize upon their popularity in the market. Not until these careful portraits - drawn, significantly, by the kabuki, not the warrior, artists - did the emperor become a first-class celebrity in the print world, an object of desire solely in and of himself. His image was at last made to represent the nation itself, much as the founding fathers of Meiji had hoped and campaigned for.

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.

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Edo to Meiji