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, 3 hours and 3 minutes. New users please register now!

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

  <  Part Five: The Tokugawa Bakufu  >  

Tokugawa

Procession to Chiyoda Palace
by Chikanobu, ca. 1897

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

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.

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.

Censorship - From Easy-Going ...

Tokugawa

Tokugawa Ieyasu (middle)
by Yoshitoshi, ca. 1881

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.

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.

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.

... to Harsh Crack-Downs

Tokugawa

Scene from Chiyoda Palace
by Chikanobu, ca. 1898

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

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 Tokugawa

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