Edutainment > Meiji Prints as Fine Art?

Meiji Print I

Meiji Period
Toshikata Mizuno 1866-1908
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This essay on Japanese woodblock prints from the Meiji period (1868-1912) takes a look at the appreciation of art critics and collectors over the course of time, and explains the production process of Japanese woodblock prints.

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The Popular Print of the Meiji Period

The popular print - ukiyo-e or fuzoku hanga - of the Meiji Period (1868-1912) has only in the last quarter century begun to receive the attention it richly deserves. Unquestionably, this lack of focus is the result of a long-standing tendency in Western criticism to view Japanese popular prints according to the structure of Western art, as the free expressions of individual artists creating from within themselves for an audience of connoisseurs, who eagerly follow their every move.

Meiji Prints and Western Art Concept

Meiji Prints II

Emperor and Empress Meiji
Emperor Meiji and Empress at Niju-bashi Bridge
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Though Japanese critics at first resisted this view of the popular print, insisting that ukiyo-e was unrelated to high art, indeed, unworthy of critical mention at all, from the 1950's, they have adopted the Western view, taking nationalistic pride in the creations of Edo printmakers as internationally recognized fine art.

Such a structure, however, while it does highlight the aesthetic peaks of the form, does an injustice to the majority of works within it, for it overlooks the original nature of the form itself. The Meiji print, despite the interest of its cultural complexity, has been one victim of this tendency, until recently dismissed as garish, derivative and lacking in all the artistic qualities of sinuous line, graceful design and harmonic coloring for which the Edo print has been lavishly praised.

Collectors Mentality

No doubt this tendency is partly due to "collector's mentality", which sees what is rare and valuable as aesthetically superior to what is plentiful and cheap. Writers on the print (who are almost all collectors or curators) can thus praise the relatively crude works of the early primitives, while ignoring even the subtler pieces of a Meiji designer like Yoshitoshi as unmentionable (until recently at least, when Meiji prints have also become rare.)

Fine Art in the Western Sense?

Meiji Prints III

Chikanobu Toyohara - Biography
Emperor Meiji
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But none of this is to say that the criticisms of the Meiji print as fine art are far wrong. The Meiji print, even in its most refined forms, was certainly not fine art in the sense that Western critics have used the term, but then, neither for that matter was the popular print of Edo.

Though remaining prints may certainly be appreciated as fine art today, bought and sold to connoisseurs who find depths of meaning and aesthetic pleasure within them, to project this attitude back onto the print in its own time can be a grave error.

The majority of works produced from the introduction of single sheet prints (c.1660) to the death of the woodblock (c.1900) were simply not intended to be taken as "art" in the elevated Western sense. To miss this point is to dismiss the better part of woodblock production as unworthy of comment, when in fact the less "artistic" designs can sometimes speak louder, and culturally far more meaningfully, than the highly refined artwork.

When one stops looking for high art in the woodblock, and begins focusing on the material aspects of its production, prints cease to be merely reflections of the psyche of individual artists, and become broader mirrors of the times in which they were made and the people for whom they were produced.

The Ukiyo-e Quartet

Meiji Prints IV

Ukiyo-e - Introduction
Beauties and Cherry Blossoms
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This is as true of the Edo print as of the popular work of Meiji. Indeed, very little changed in the actual processes of production as the popular print passed its 200th year and entered into the modern, enlightened world of Meiji.

The popular print was still the commercial product of the "ukiyo-e quartet", consisting of a designer, block carver, printer and publisher, in which the leading role was actually played by the publisher, who supervised and coordinated the roles of the others.

The publisher's primary goal was hardly ever refinement of artistic expression or even technical excellence, but profit, and though the former qualities may have sometimes been desirable in helping sales, they were just as often dispensable.

The Dominant Role of the Meiji Prints Publisher

Hiroshige III Utagawa 1842-1894

The Meiji Era
Nihonbashi - Kokon Tokyo Meisho
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Profit depended on giving the people, the print-buying audience, what they wanted, which was at times and for some groups aesthetic excellence, but at others information on recent celebrities, fashion or events, a souvenir of a famous site or kabuki performance, an object for use value such as a fan or paper doll, or a fantasy of military heroism, distant places, unobtainable luxury or impossible eroticism.

The same print could be made to serve any number of these purposes, while publishers were not above pirating famous designs, making reprints of big sellers from worn-out blocks, or re-cutting the name block on an old print of a courtesan, sumo wrestler or kabuki actor to update the image.

These are but a few examples of the practices of publishers in which the aesthetic excellence of the print was sacrificed to save money and increase profits. Probably the most heinous of these artistically in the nineteenth century was overproduction, which forced print designers to create stereotypical and formulaic designs to keep up with the demand for new works.

Dan McKee (June 2003)
(updated by Dieter Wanczura, June 2009)

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