Japanese woodblock prints bring to mind the famous ukiyo-e images from the Edo Period (1615-1868): beautiful courtesans in flowing kimono, kabuki actors in costume, and landscapes featuring mountains or the ocean. For those who have done any small amount of Googling, erotic shunga prints and images of samurai also top the list. But what about strongwomen, water deities, or monster cats? What about … a road?
During the Edo Period, the Tokaido, or East Sea Road, linked the Japanese capital of Edo (modern-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. This road was Japan’s most important highway, broken up by fifty-three post stations along its route. By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Tokaido was firmly part of the Japanese national imagination, with the journeys of poets, artists, novelists, and travel writers all feeding the desire for not only glimpses of faraway places, but also for travel guides, many of which took the form of woodblock prints combining narrative and image that provided local facts and recommendations.
The book Tokaido gojusan tsui or Fifty-Three Pairings along the Tokaido, published in the mid-1840s, reflects fresh reinterpretations of the Tokaido at the time. While collections of prints related to the various stations along the road were a well-worn genre, this book’s dynamic artwork and unconventional representations of the places paired the artistic image with poetry or narrative about the place that often appealed to the popularity of supernatural stories and local folklore. Tokaido Texts and Tales:Tokaido gojusan tsui by Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige, and Kunisada provides the keys to unlock the many layers of text, meaning, and symbolism in each careful print.
In the first introductory chapter, by Laura W. Allen, “An Artistic Collaboration: Traveling the Tokaido with Kuniyoshi, Hiroshige, and Kunisada,” we learn that the project came about through the collaborative efforts of several of the era’s most famous printmakers, Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861), Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858), and Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1848), all artists who defined their own styles out of the printmaking lineage of Utagawa Toyoharu (1735-1814). Their project drew together their artistic strengths—Kuniyoshi’s heroic figures, Hiroshige’s theatrical landscapes, and Kunisada’s beautiful women. At the same time they skirted the new government regulations of public morality (the Tenpo reforms) that threatened the lucrative publishing industry surrounding the pop-culture figures of the day. Indeed, by having text that focused on particular places or local legends, they were able to hide forbidden representations of popular kabuki actors or beautiful women in plain sight—in their roles as historic or legendary figures. Allen explains how the reforms changed not only the content of prints but also who was allowed to make them, spurring the collaborative endeavors of numerous publishers to share the printing costs of large collections and drawing people from other professions–like fan-making—into printmaking. Six different publishers collaborated on the Fifty-Three Pairings, and their unique brands can be found in the differing shapes of the text boxes on each print. In the last part of this chapter, Allen describes how this book fit into traditions of portraying the Tokaido, as well as the kind of artwork that followed it.
In the second introductory chapter, by Ann Wehmeyer, “Folklore and Legend in the Fifty-Three Pairings along the Tokaido ,” we learn of the many intriguing supernatural and folkloric figures in the book, such as water deities, dragons, and women of amazing strength, as well as supernatural encounters with monsters, ghosts, and spirits. The chapter touches on many elements which might be lost on the contemporary viewer relying upon image alone. Wehmeyer notes that with travel itself placing people in liminal, unknown spaces, the prints build on the hopes and fears of the Edo-period readership, as well as on their taste for the fantastic (24).
The rest of this large and lavishly illustrated art book dives into the Tokaido gojusan tsui itself. Following a key to each plate that explains where to find and how to identify aspects such as the artist’s signature, labels of characters, the censor’s mark, the publisher’s mark, the title, and so on, each print has an explanation that describes what is happening in the print and gives crucial context for understanding the significance of both text and image. While many images come from the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, which owes much of its Asian art collection to David A. Cofrin, for whom this book series is named, this section of the book also draws together comparative images from other institutions and provides an excellent English-language resource.
While many books have been published on the Tokaido gojusan tsui, most are in Japanese. Tokaido Texts and Tales brings together text and translation, transcribing the premodern cursive Japanese text in the original print into a standard Japanese font, then transliterating it into Romanized Japanese text. Finally the text is translated into English. This alone makes this book a helpful resource and study tool, especially as cursive script and premodern Japanese are both tricky for the nonspecialist. Beyond only text and translation, the book also includes some images of earlier artwork whose motifs the artists clearly drew upon, drawings that formed the basis for the woodblock carving, or in the case of Kunisada’s print of Narumi, station number 41, photos of twelve of the individual woodblocks used to print the image, stained with many colors of ink. After the plates featuring each image and explanatory text are twenty-nine additional pages—the “Image Compendium” lays out multiple other color-variants of the prints.
There are only a few things I would have liked to see with this lovely volume, which is clearly the result of so much time by experienced curators of Japanese art and experts on woodblock prints. While Allen’s introductory chapter notes the likeness of certain sumo wrestlers to an anonymous person, and notes the salt toothpaste being utilized in station 52, Ishibe, as being a local specialty, these details are not included in the explanatory text on the plates themselves, which tends to focus more on the implications of the print’s text. Likewise, Wehmeyer’s essay on folklore and legend focuses on the monstrous, supernatural aspects, while overlooking the many fascinating aspects of folklife found in so many of the prints, such as the woman with the fishing net at Yui, the mention of the well-known mochi in Fuchu and its local tea, or even the detail on the process of shibori dyeing. However, these are minor complaints, as the explanations are intended to be informative, not exhaustive.
This book is highly accessible and a pleasure to read, and is suitable both for a long immersion in its beautiful texts and pictures, as well as for brief interludes dipping into particular stories or scenes. Its price tag makes it unsuitable for the classroom, although either introductory chapter would make a good reading in art history, Japanese history, or a folklore classroom, as well as for anyone interested in exploring the culture and history surrounding the Tokaido. Like the book that it so carefully introduces, Tokaido Texts and Tales is an invitation to a place you haven’t been, but can still glimpse through its pages.
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[Review length: 1173 words • Review posted on May 31, 2017]