Edutainment > From Protest to Participation: Politics and the Meiji Popular Print

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Musha-e
by Yoshitoshi, ca. 1886

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.

In part three, the author takes a closer look at the role of the common people in the ukiyo-e production process and makes an amazing and convincing conclusion.

The Fifth Player

The buying public was really the fifth player in the "ukiyoe quartet", and perhaps even the most important, as the consumer base on which the livelihood of the other four rested. To be successful in the terms of the time, a print did not have to be an accomplished work of art; it had to sell. In brute truth, that was really all that counted. To sell, it had to appeal to the buying public, to give them what they asked for, or to anticipate what they wanted, even if they didn't yet know it.

Popular Ukiyo-e Subjects

The styles and themes of prints that sold were repeated until they no longer did, creating what seems like an endless series of fads throughout the early modern period, while those that didn't sell were simply dropped and left behind.

In this way, clear genres of prints emerged, bijin-ga (prints of beautiful women), shunga (erotic prints) and yakusha-e (prints of actors) being constant staples, musha-e (prints of warriors) and sumo-e (prints of sumo wrestlers) gaining popularity from the late 1780's on, fukei-ga (landscapes), genji-e (pictures of the Tale of Genji) and kacho-e (pictures of birds and flowers) being relative latecomers to the scene, popular from the 1830's.

Print Subjects and Society

Each of these developments represented not merely a change in production, but an accompanying alteration in commoner society, the sudden popularity of the landscape print, for example, coming with an increase in travel, or that of the warrior and genji prints with the rise of a backward-looking proto-nationalism.

It should not be surprising then that the works of the Meiji period, though dismissed as derivative and stultified for carrying on each of these genres much as they had been for years, should in fact contain multiple new genres as well, to reflect the vastly changed interests of and influences upon the common people.

Why Did People Buy Woodblock Prints?

But why did the common people want woodblock prints anyway? If not art, and with the exception of those pieces with practical usefulness or informative value, what was to be gained, for example, in the purchasing of a print representing a cultural hero or celebrity of the time? What made the common person willing to make the financial sacrifice to buy a print of the emperor, or of Ichikawa Danjuro, or of Japanese soldiers in Korea, or of the latest in the line of Ogiya no Hanaogi?

I believe this is an essential question to answer in order to understand the nature of the print as an aspect of Meiji popular culture.

Clearly desire was the key motivating factor in the purchase of a print, a desire to possess what had in fact already been forbidden and barred by being raised to the level of icon. Possession of an image of famous heroes or media stars seemed to promise a means of identifying with them, and sharing the limelight by participating in their greatness.

The print could also be displayed as a mark of one's identification, and of being up-to-date with the times. For it was, after all, the "new" that was most valued in the popular print from its inception on into Meiji: the latest kabuki performance, the freshest fashion trend in kimono pattern or hairstyle, the hottest news or scandal, as well as the most recent innovation in the print technique itself.

A Stylish Commodity for an Obsessive Public

Genji-e
by Hosai Baido, ca. 1880

Prints were thus a commodity invested with a fetish value far greater than that of their material/labor content, but this fetish value, as "the new", was by definition fleeting and ephemeral, meaning always an incomplete and unfulfilled desire that required continual acquisition to satisfy momentarily.

This built-in mechanism was essential for commercial exploitation of the buying public, who in order to continue to participate in the popular culture of the moment, had to invest in small pieces of it, lights that faded as the show ended, the teahouse girl married and fell from grace or the next battle was waged.

The Power of the Market ..

What I have attempted to show in this introduction is that the Japanese popular print was not a mere reflection of an artist's vision of the world that the viewing audience could aspire to understand or emulate, but rather a reflection of the desires and felt realities of the commoners themselves, that artist-designers strove to capture.

By avoiding the approach that takes the popular print as an art form, I hope to change the focus of attention from the artists to the purchasing audience as the real constituents of this cultural form. For as a commercial commodity dependent on broad public patronage, the popular print could never simply dictate taste, style or subject matter to the people, but had always to be aware of existing values, while striving to appeal to them in new and fashionable ways that would attract positive attention.

.. Defined The Popular Print

Bijin-ga
by Chikanobu, ca. 1897

Mass desire thus set conservative checks upon the print, while simultaneously installing a dynamic mechanism within the form, explaining how prints of actors and courtesans could continue for some 200 plus years to capture unchanged interest, while perpetually transforming in style, colors and format.

The new genres of Meiji as well, though they mark a sharp contrast with those of Edo in participating in the exercise of political authority and official government ideology, cannot be seen as mere propaganda from above, but must too be a reflection of the desires of the print-buying commoner.

Dan McKee

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