Edutainment > The Tokugawa Bakufu

World of Edo
Tokugawa Shogun Pleasure Boat
copyright protected

This essay describes the ambiguos attitude of the bakufu government towards the rather permissive world of the popular print culture.

The images on this page are link-sensitive and take you to other articles or web sites in which you might be interested.

Print Culture and the Tokugawa Regime

The Tokugawa bakufu was not long in recognizing the dangers of this form, and reacting against the hedonistic urban culture in which, as image, the print played a major, structuring role. Its initial concerns were for the print as a source of information, and of potential attack against its own authority, though later its attention expanded to focus on the "moral" aspects of the print, and its challenge to official, Confucian values and hierarchy.

Prohibition in the Late Seventeenth Century

Punishment of Utamaro
Procession of Tokugawa Shogun
copyright protected

The earliest series of prohibitions against this rising print culture date to the late seventeenth century, and attempt to enforce a ban on the depiction of current events through periodic repetition. Apparently, the stern warnings in these edicts had only temporary effect, requiring re-promulgation approximately once a decade.

Bakufu Sporadic Censorship

Throughout the Edo Period, in fact, censorship was sporadically, rather than regularly enforced, with short periods of harsh threats and strict punishment alternating with times of relative autonomy for print makers. This pattern suggests not only the inability of the bakufu to control the general populace, but also its general lack of interest in investing the energy and time to do so.

Prohibition of Depiction of Contemporary Figures

From Tokugawa Regime to Meiji Period
Last Shogun - Tokugawa Family Annual Almanac
copyright protected

Loosely speaking, precisely to the extent that the common classes did not participate in the official Confucian world order, they were considered unworthy of attention, and below serious consideration by the bakufu.

Therefore, although depiction of contemporary figures was prohibited, the bakufu at most times saw no contradiction of the law in the portraits of entertainers (courtesans, actors sumo wrestlers, print artists and gesaku writers) who as hinin ("non-people") were invisible to its gaze.

Urban Popular Culture as a Niche

Popular culture, in this way, existed in a niche outside of official reality, a position willingly accepted by its inhabitants, who had no desire to participate in politics, and no possibility for doing so without a revolution, a concept which was utterly beyond its own realm of thought. Though urban popular culture may have formed an implicit challenge to the official world order, this challenge was rarely direct or aimed against the bakufu itself.

Harsh Crack-Downs by the Tokugawa Regime

The Edo Society
Linage of the Tokugawa Shoguns
copyright protected

There are exceptions to this general rule, however, when the structure of mutual lack of recognition broke down, or more accurately, was broken through, by bakufu social reformers who wished to pull the general populace in line with the Confucian hierarchical order.

And in reaction to the harsh limits set upon their livelihood and the punishments meted out to their number, print makers responded to these incursions of the bakufu not only with passive resistance, but also with direct and aggressive acts of satire, aimed at the government.

The more covert and salacious these prints were, the more they were treasured by the general populace, who at such times were also frustrated by limits placed on their dress and behavior by strict sumptuary codes.

Dan McKee
(July 2003, updated by Dieter Wanczura in August 2009)

Back to Index Page: Meiji Prints

	Web www.artelino.com

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. .