JAPANESE PRINTS
A MILLION QUESTIONS
TWO MILLION MYSTERIES
Ukiyo-e Prints
浮世絵版画
|
Port Townsend, Washington |
Utagawa Hiroshige II
二代歌川広重
うたがわひろしげ
(1829-69) |
Print from the series
"Edo no Hana Zukushi" (List of Beauties of Edo)
江戸の花尽くし
えどのはなずくし |
Print size: 9" x 6
3/4" |
Date: 1849-50 |
Censors:
Kinugasa
(Kinugasa Fusajirō) and Watanabe (Watanabe Shōemon) |
衣笠
きぬがさ |
渡辺
わたなべ |
Print type: aizuri-e
藍摺絵
あいずりえ |
Signed: Shigenobu
ga
|
Publisher: Wakasa-ya
Yoichi
若狭屋与市
わかさやよいち |
$118.00
SOLD! |
花を欺く美人 |
**** |
はなをあざむくびじん
Hana wo azamuku bijin
"A WOMAN AS PRETTY AS A FLOWER" |
**** |
The translation of
Japanese terms can be a bit confounding. For example, the title of this
series is Edo no hana zukushi which can be translated as "The List of
Beauties of Edo."
However, the word
hana can mean either "a flower" or (by extension) "a beautiful woman."
This explains the pairing of the two major elements of this print.
An afterthought: The linking of women with flowers must be fairly universal.
In the West it is not uncommon for a woman to be named Rose, Lily, Iris,
Daisy, Violet, Jasmine, etc. |
**** |
両手に花
Ryōute ni Hana
りょうてにはな |
The expression shown
above has a dual meaning: 1) to be doubly blessed or 2) to be a man sitting
between two women, i.e., flowers.
Literally it
translates as having flowers in both hands. |
**** |
大和撫子
Yamato Nadeshiko
やまとなでしこ |
Yamato nadeshiko
or Japanese pink - the flower and not the color - also means a woman who has
all of the qualities most admired in traditional feminine virtues.
This is a particularly interesting phrase because of the pink's allusion to
best female traits.
In Renaissance Europe
the stem of a pink or carnation was often held in the hands of a woman who
was betrothed to be married.
The symbolism clearly
compares the fleeting beauty of bride at her best to that of a flower which
eventually will fade and die.
The bride's
half-length portrait would always be paired with that of her husband or
fiancé. |
**** |
蕾
Tsubomi
つぼみ |
THE VIRGIN AS METAPHOR |
In the West when a
female loses her virginity it is commonly said that she was deflowered ---
especially in the case of a sexual assault.
However, in Japan a
virgin is often compared to a flower bud or tsubomi. When a Japanese woman
loses her virginity she is like a bud which then blossoms. |
**** |
徒桜
Adazakura
あだざくら |
The above term can
mean ephemeral like easily scattered cherry blossoms or it can be a fickle
woman. |
**** |
姥桜
Ubazakura
うばざくら |
An uba is an
aged woman and zakura is a cherry blossom --- hence a faded beauty. |
**** |
花魁
Oiran
おいらん |
The term oiran
which designated the highest order of courtesan in the 19th century is a
combination of the word hana (花)
which means flower
plus the word kai (魁) which means charging ahead of others --- or the
leading flower. |
**** |
花街
Hanamachi
はなまち |
If women are flowers
then it makes sense that the red-light district would translate literally as
the flower district. |
**** |
壁の花
Kabe no hana
かべのはな |
A shy woman is
described as a wall (壁) flower (花) as in the West. |
**** |
花柳
Karyu
かりゅう
|
Flower + willow =
red-light district |
**** |
花柳病
Karyubyō
かりゅうびょう |
Flower + willow +
disease = venereal disease |
**** |
花婿
Hanamuko
はなむこ
Flower +
son-in-law = bridegroom
花嫁
Hanayome
はなよめ
Flower +
daughter-in-law = bride |
**** |
百花繚乱
Hyakka-ryōran
ひゃっかりょうらん |
Literally this is a
profusion of flowers, but by allusion it is also a gathering of many
beautiful women in one place. |
**** |
I have used a number
of sources for the information listed above.
Especially useful was
Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women by Kittredge Cherry
and published by Kodansha in 1987. |
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There are two triptych by Hiroshige II in the collections of the Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco which also link women with flowers. Both are from
1857 and are entitled "A Procession of Women on a Journey of Flowers " or
Hana no tabi onna gyoretsu (花の旅女行列 or はなのたびおんなぎょうれつ).
Anyone passionate for prints and paintings
and unfamiliar with the image base of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
should seek it out and bookmark it. It is one of the greatest resources of
its kind on the Internet. |
藍摺絵
AIZURI-E |
The need for a colorfast blue must have been obvious to the print
makers of the late
18th century. Aigami (藍紙 or
あいがみ?), an organic colorant made from the dayflower (1), faded
quickly --- especially when exposed to daylight. Ai, an indigo blue, was not
much better. Any collector of Harunobu, Shunsho or Kiyonaga, et
al., must have been aware of this problem and perhaps just a little
mortified.
This problem was finally resolved by the
importation of Prussian blue (2) through the port of Nagasaki
(長崎 or
ながさき)
in the 1820s. Roger Keyes (3) notes that one of the earliest known examples
of the usage of this pigment on a Japanese print appeared in Osaka in 1825
on the cap of a flying immortal in a surimono dedicated to the retirement of
Nakamura Utaemon III
(三代中村歌右衛門). This deep blue color didn't show up in commercial prints in Edo until the
spring of 1829 in the work of Eisen. |
|
(1) Aigami
was made from the Commelina communis or dayflower of lily family. In
Japanese it is called Tsuyukusa ( 露草 or つゆくさ) or rainy season plant. The beauty and
intensity of this plant's flower make it understandable that artists would
want to use it as a colorant. Unfortunately the color was just as fugitive
as the flower itself.
Roger Keyes pointed out in a
paper delivered at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 that aigami turns
greenish yellow when fading. However, he also added, that all pale colored
prints are not necessarily faded. Some were printed pale as a cost saving
measure.
(2) Prussian blue (プロシヤ青)
is also
known as Berlin blue or bero-ai (ベロ藍).
(3) Japanese Woodblock Prints: A
Catalogue of the Mary A. Ainsworth Collection, Roger Keyes, Allen
Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, 1984, p. 42, plate #140, p. 91 and
catalogue entry #439, p. 185. |
|
To the right is a dayflower.
It is from this that fugitive colorant aigami was made. It was replaced by
the more colorfast Prussian blue in the 1820s. |
|
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To
the left is an example of Prussian blue pigment. |
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BY WAY OF
ANALOGY...
WHY THE
INTRODUCTION OF A NEW COLOR CAN HAVE
SUCH A PROFOUND
EFFECT ON THE NATURE OF A NATION'S CULTURE. |
When I was young, because my mother
thought of herself as cultured and that her children should be too, I was
made aware of a specific category of ceramics referred to as blue and white.
Blue and white was everywhere: delft ware, Willow Pattern, Worcester, etc.
In my mind it quickly became very ho hum. It wasn't until decades later when
I was studying the historical development of Chinese porcelain that I
realized what an exciting moment it must have been when that particular
category first appeared during the Yüan dynasty in the 13th century. The
Mongol Yüan were crude ruffians by Chinese standards. blue and
white became inextricably bound to that period and to those usurpers. But
the Chinese knew a good thing when they saw it and by the time of the
reestablishment of a native ruling class, i.e., the Ming, blue and white was
fully embraced. By the 16th century the purification of the blue element,
cobalt, and the refinement of pottery techniques was beginning to rival the
glory days of the earlier Sung dynasty.
*
Although blue and white
porcelains are now among the glories of the world's great museums most
people hardly notice them. Stand in a room or corridor at the Met, for
example, and watch the hordes walk right by these masterpieces. Like single
malt Scotch blue and white is an acquired taste.
*
When the rarity and expense of
importing East Asian porcelains meant that only the wealthiest Europeans
could afford it necessity became the mother of invention.
Augustus the Strong, the Elector of
Saxony and King of Poland, paid huge sums for individual pieces of Chinese
porcelain. This
was one of his passions and it depleted his treasury enormously. That was
when he decided it would be cheaper to reinvent Chinese porcelain than to
buy it. The end result: Western production was off and running. In
time Europeans started making cheaper and cruder knock offs and the spread
of blue and white quickly caught on among the burgeoning middle class.
Eventually manufacturers in China began the mass exportation of
cheaper versions of what had once been available only to the Chinese
emperor. According to Robert Copeland in an article entitled "Joshiah Spode
and the Origins of the Willow Pattern" published in the 'Antique Collector'
in 1978 much of the export ware bound for Europe was stored in the bilge
water "...to act as a platform on which the more expensive and vulnerable
cargos of tea were stowed..." Inspired by these pieces Spode* created
the Willow Pattern which was so amazingly popular in nineteenth century
England and America and is still much sought after by dedicated collectors
today. Little did Spode or the original buyers
know that this lovely little motif of the graceful willow had an
iconographic association with prostitution in China. If the 19th century New
England descendants of the Puritans had understood the symbolism do you
think they would have said grace over these plates before beginning their
Sunday repast? I don't think so.
But all fads must pass --- even the
fads which last for centuries. If you were to ask anyone under the age of
30, or maybe even 40, let alone 20, what 'blue and white' is they wouldn't
be able to tell you. Of course, there might be a few exceptions, but those
would only come from youngsters who had the equivalency of an education from
a girl's finishing school. |
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*One astute reader of this page wrote to
tell me on April 28, 2005 that I had made a factual error in the text above.
Originally I had stated that the Willow Pattern was produced in China and
exported to the West. The reader was kind enough to point me in the right
direction by sending me a link to the history of this pattern at
www.spode.co.uk.
There they reproduce the article by Copeland for all to read. I want
to thank this correspondent and hope that more of you contact me when or if
you find similar errors in these pages. |
|
On May 19, 2005 I was reading
Women of
the Pleasure Quarters by Lesley Downer. On page 39 she notes that in
1589 the first licensed district devoted to prostitution was called
Yanagimachi (柳町 or やなぎまち) or Willow Town. |
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