In their ambition to capture “real life,” Japanese painters, poets, novelists and photographers of the nineteenth century collaborated in ways seldom explored by their European contemporaries. This course offers learners the chance to encounter and appreciate behavior, moral standards and some of the material conditions surrounding Japanese artists in the nineteenth century, in order to renew our assumptions about what artistic “realism” is and what it meant.
Learners will walk away with a clear understanding of how society and the individual were conceived of and represented in early modern Japan. Unlike contemporary western art forms, which acknowledge their common debt as “sister arts” but remain divided by genre and discourse, Japanese visual and literary culture tended to combine, producing literary texts inspired by visual images, and visual images which would then be inscribed with poems and prose. Noticing and being able to interpret this indivisibility of visual/literary cultures is essential in understanding the social and psychological values embedded within the beauty of Japanese art.
From the lesson
Samurai Portraits
One good way to gauge the distance between literary and visual culture in early modern Japan is to examine the ways in which painters and poets depicted their contemporaries. Portraits of samurai are especially rich in information about how men at the top of the social ladder wished to be “viewed” as physical entities, and how they expressed themselves as moral actors within society. In the first module, we will learn the basic formal aspects of samurai portraiture, and at the same time begin to interpret poems and prose inscribed onto the images themselves.
(Former Affiliation) Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo (Current Affiliation) Director-General, National Institute of Japanese Literature
One important sequel or development from this production
of a series of portraits with different things written on it
which he left was that these portraits were used in the coming years and
decades as a sort of emblem or icon for the fight against
the Tokugawa regime by young warriors in the Chōshū domain.
I'm showing you a slide right here of a printed book,
a woodblock printed book, which was published, printed in Chōshū.
It's a so-called provincial edition of writings by Shōin.
In prison in Edo, right before he was executed, these came back to,
were transported back to Chōshū, read by all of the young men that were there,
and sort of urged them on to battle.
There were two major battles between, or there were two major expeditions
against the Chōshū domain by the bakufu in the years before the Restoration.
And the book that this illustration is in was used by these warriors,
these young warriors,
were actually taken into battle as almost sort of charms or emblem,
almost like charms or talismans to help them succeed in battle.
Today I brought along a copy of the book that this illustration is included in.
This is a traditional thread-bound woodblock print Japanese book.
It's very, very, thin.
Very, very soft, as you can see.
And you can also, you may notice also that there's no title to it.
And when we open up the back, there's no colophon:
there's no information here about when and where the book was published.
We can open up the front though, and we see on the reverse of the front cover.
The name of the academy that Shōin founded and
that he taught in before he was executed in 1859.
This was published later on in the early 1860s,
right before the second bakufu expedition against the Chōshū domain.
It was published after he'd been executed and the frontispiece,
this illustration right here is a copy from one of the several portraits that
Yoshida Shōin had painted by his student Shōdō before he was transported to Edo.
It also says right here, claims that it's Yoshida Shōin, for people who don't know,
who didn't know, perhaps, what he actually looked like.
And included in it is writings, simple writings,
that he composed in the last days, before he was executed in prison in Edo.
This is what the simple woodblock illustration,
which was used by young warriors, in the 1860s of Yoshida Shōin, looks like.
Once again, let's compare that with the portrait itself.
We can see that he's been given a sort of close-up sort of angle here.
We can see that the new adaptation, the woodblock print,
is sort of taken as a sort of close-up.
It's focused in more on him.
We don't see the book that's he's reading or the sword at his side.
There's more emphasis on his face and
his rather idealized expression.
What he's writing about here are quotations from Chinese writers,
especially from Southern Song dynasty in the 13th century,
who were battling, resisting the Mongol Empire,
who had invaded most of China and were just about to start the new Yuan dynasty.
Especially, he is fascinated and quotes heavily a literatus
of the Southern Song dynasty named Wen Tianxiang,
who wrote a poem which we translate as Song of Righteousness,
in Japanese it's Seigi no Uta,
which became a sort of theme song for young activists in this era.
And it's a song of resistance.
Wen Tianxiang was captured by the Mongolian forces.
He was interrogated, tormented, and executed.
And left a lot of writings behind, and became one of the very, very strong,
sort of, anti-Yuan dynasty, sort of patriotic figures
of the era in China, and he was also very, very well read in Japan.
We see him quoting and reinterpreting a lot of the mottoes,
some of the poetic quotations from resistant or
resisting poets like Wen Tianxiang in here.
So there's sort of connection with history using sort of
historical figures and well-known episodes in Chinese,
sometimes Japanese, history to reinforce and, to authorize,
and to motivate younger men into, often armed battle.
We know from contemporary documents that this thin volume was
used specifically in the second expedition against the Chōshū domain by the bakufu,
by Chōshū domain samurai, who would take this and put it within
their collars or their sleeves, or within their battle gear,
and actually carry this book, the living expression of life