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, 2 hours and 50 minutes. New users please register now!

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

  <  Part Six: Oppression - Utamaro and the Tempo Reforms  >  

Utamaro

Utamaro Beauty

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 six deals with the case of a prominent victim of the Tokugawa shogunate, Utamaro Kitagawa, 1750-1806 and the Tempo reforms.

The Rebellious Utamaro

The first example of such active opposition can be seen in a group of prints by Utamaro published in 1804, shortly after the Kansei Reforms, which had harshly punished his publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo and collaborator Santo Kyoden.

Utamaro, who had almost exclusively concentrated on prints of beautiful women throughout his career, suddenly in 1804 produced an anomaly, a series of warrior prints depicting Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the one-time enemy of Tokugawa Ieyasu in the sixteenth century. This alone would have been enough to signal to the print-loving public that something was afoot, but Utamaro's images, based on scenes from a forbidden novel, moreover showed Hideyoshi in various lecherous poses, earnestly fondling the hand of a pageboy, or at a banquet surrounded by the beautiful women of his harem.

In the latter work, Utamaro audaciously dared to label each historical figure with his/her actual name, a flagrant violation of the codes then in effect. Though the fervor of the reforms had by then begun to die out, the prints raised enough of a public stir to gain bakufu notice, and Utamaro was sentenced to three days in prison and fifty of home arrest in handcuffs. It is believed that this punishment led to his decline in health and death the following year.

The Tempo Reforms ...

A second round of open antagonism between political authority and popular culture was begun in the 1840's, with the so-called Tempo Reforms. By far the harshest attack on the popular print by the bakufu, these reforms effectively attempted to suppress ukiyo-e entirely, by banning its staples, prints of actors and courtesans, and fixing the price of a print at a low standard that essentially forbade luxurious productions, while drastically limiting publisher's profits.

In Osaka, where print production almost exclusively centered around the kabuki theater, this ban meant a virtual shutdown of the industry, albeit temporarily. As in Edo, print makers there were forced to redefine themselves by venturing into new subject matter, meaning, ironically, the diversification and strengthening of the popular print form.

... and the Impact on Printmaking

Utamaro

A Waitress in Tempo Era
by Yoshitoshi, 1888

Thus while some early critics of the print like James Michener argue that government suppression was what stultified and destroyed artistic inventiveness in the ukiyo-e, in fact, it seems clear that just the opposite was the case.

In Edo, government regulations became the dull-witted and static barriers around which print designers cleverly danced their way in an elaborate game that no one enjoyed more than the print-buying public. Courtesans were depicted in series supposed to represent moral virtues, actors as historical figures related to the current kabuki drama, or else as ordinary citizens of Edo, while prints on The Tale of Genjiallowed artists to depict forbidden luxury in unprecedented flights of fantasy.

The ultimate effect of the Tempo Reforms, therefore, was not to destroy the print and its popularity, but to enliven it, while political authority was made into the common enemy against which even former competitors in the print world could unite, to make the butt of a great joke.

It is small wonder then that this period has been romantically characterized in the twentieth century as a great victory for "the spirit of the common people" over oppressive government.

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 Utamaro

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