Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan by Cecilia Segawa Seigle

Author:Cecilia Segawa Seigle [Seigle, Cecilia Segawa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Asia, Ethics, History, Japan, Non-Fiction, Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 9780824814885
Google: 4T-kJB8vKvcC
Amazon: 0824814886
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 1993-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

The Ukiyoe

Another example of an art flourishing in the second half of the eighteenth century under the influence of the Yoshiwara is the multicolored ukiyoe prints, replacing earlier, simpler versions. Woodblock prints from the late seventeenth into the early eighteenth century were in black and white, some of them hand-colored after the prints were made. By the 1740s many ukiyoe in red and green called benizuri-e had been executed by such artists as Okumura Masanobu, Ishikawa Toyonobu, Torii Kiyomitsu, Okumura Toshinobu, and Nishimura Shigenaga. There were even a limited number of prints that used more than two colors: red, green, yellow, and dark blue. But none of these efforts approached the technical excellence and elegance soon to be developed.

In the third month of 1765, Edo was witness to the introduction of an innovative print technique through the efforts of wealthy hatamoto who published calendars privately. Merchants and samurai who were bound by their common interest in haiku had for some years designed small woodblock print calendars called surimono and exchanged them as year-end gifts. A calendar was a daily necessity in those days because, according to the lunar calendar, each year the lengths of the months changed. Commercially printed calendars included not only long and short months but also other almanac information. Hatamoto amateur haiku lovers, on the other hand, preferred single-sheet designs without almanac information. For these seemingly ordinary pictures, the challenge was to hide the information on long and short months as part of the design. Dilettante samurai and merchants competed with each other for the decorativeness, originality, and cleverness of the picture. They gathered socially for calendar exchange under the informal leadership of Okubo Jinshiro Tadanobu (nom de plume Kyosen) and Abe Hachinojo Masahiro (Sakei). Both hatamoto Okubo and Abe were dilettante painters and literati who befriended artists and merchants and exchanged calendars with them in 1764 and 1765 with special enthusiasm.

As the competition for producing attractive calendars intensified, many hatamoto decided to have their ideas executed by professional artists, woodblock carvers, and printers. One outstanding artist serving several such patrons was Suzuki Harunobu (1725-1770), who through his creation of a number of artistic calendars came to the attention of publishers, patrons of the arts, and the public. His prints were characterized by suppleness of line, rhythmic composition, simplicity and economy of design, and bright but delicate use of green, blue, purple, brown, pink, yellow, and gray. The innocent expressions on the doll-like women and boyish men, and the lyrical and etherial aura of the designs, were particularly irresistible. Earlier artists had drawn beautiful courtesans, too, but the collaborative art of the ukiyoe, the design of the artist, and the techniques of the woodblock carver and the printer had evolved over the years. The new colors added by Harunobu, the excellent technique of chiseling out fine lines and printing them with precise registration, the new technique of kimekomi (blind printing of the full-length figure) and karazuri (embossing or gauffrage) for special effects for rich fabrics, all opened up new possibilities.

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