Utamaro and the Tempo Reforms

Utamaro Kitagawa - Biography
Love
copyright protected

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

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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.

Precarious Woodblock Prints

Ukiyo-e
Courtesan Miyabito
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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.

Utamaro's Punishment and Following Death

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 ...

The World of Edo
Beauty Smoking
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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

Toyotomi Hideyoshi
Fan on Finger Tips
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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 Genji allowed artists to depict forbidden luxury in unprecedented flights of fantasy.

Censorship and Ukiyo-e

The Tale of Genji
Bijin With a Fan
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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 (July 2003)
(updated by Dieter Wanczura (July 2009)

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