Section 4, Visual and Performing Arts | Session 2B, Panel
Chair: Drew Gerstle
Panel participants: Tim Clark, Akiko Yano, Drew Gerstle
The panel members are organizing an exhibition, Kabuki Heroes on the Osaka Stage, 1780-1830 at the British Museum (30 June to 11 September 2005). The exhibition will also travel to the Osaka Museum of History (1 October to 23 November 2005) and finally to the Waseda Theatre Museum in Tokyo (1 December 2004 to 20 January 2006). The focus is on what we are calling 'Kabuki Culture' in which celebrity was created through the visual arts and through poetry salons. The exhibition will have over 300 items and include paintings, albums, books, prints, surimono, banzuke, an actor mask, an ema votive painting. An important theme is how performance was a stimulant for the creation of art.
In Osaka and Kyoto the commercial network for ukiyo-e was not as developed as in Edo. In this context many non-professional fans of Kabuki participated in Kabuki culture by being active in Kabuki fan clubs, writing actor critiques, designing prints and surimono, learning theatre music, chanting and dance, and welcoming actors into their poetry circles. Very few of the many artists who designed actor prints in Osaka or Kyoto were professional artists.
The three presentations will focus on the development of the representation of Kabuki actors in the technology of full-colour woodblock printing, which flourished from the 1770s onwards. Tim Clark will compare the development of the art of bust portraiture in the period from the 1770s to the 1790s, comparing the styles of Edo and Osaka/Kyoto. Akiko Yano will focus on Ryûkôsai Jokei the first Osaka artist to produce colour actor prints. Drew Gerstle will examine the relationship between Kabuki actors and their patrons, particularly the role of poetry (haikai and kyôka) circles that stimulated the production of surimono.
Tim Clark, British Museum, London
Was the enigmatic artist Sharaku (worked Edo, 1794-5) actually Ryûkôsai (worked Osaka, 1777-1809)? The answer seems to be no, but the question highlights the exciting 'non-professional' qualities of Sharaku's actor portraits, very unusual in an Edo context. Edo actor portraits in the 1790s were dominated by hundreds of 'face-resembling pictures' (nigao-e) of first the Katsukawa, then Utagawa schools. These had to be recognisable, but also had to conform to fairly standardized schema developed by Shunshô (Katsukawa school) and Toyokuni (Utagawa school). In Osaka, only Ryûkôsai, and perhaps Shôkôsai and Shigeharu were 'professional' artists, and there was more latitude in how faces could be drawn, amateurs taking a much more significant role. The down-to-earth (true-to-life?) qualities of Osaka drama seem to have been reflected in more candid actor portraits.
Close-up, realistic portraiture developed late in Japan. Actor portraits painted on fans seem to have stimulated the development of printed versions in both Edo and Osaka. Torii Kiyomasu II experimented in the late 1730s with printed half-length portraits of actors -- some in fan-shaped borders -- that had a tinge of novel realism. But it was the use of full-colour woodblock printing on a commercial scale in Edo, from the later 1760s, that provided the final element necessary for sustained development of more realistic actor portraiture. This did not transfer fully to Osaka until the 1790s.
My paper describes the origins and development of realistic actor portraiture in Edo and Osaka and examines cross-influences and mutual rivalries between the two cities. Just as actors regularly travelled up and down the Tôkaidô Highway , so did novelties of the style and marketing of actor imagery and, occasionally, the artists themselves.
Akiko Yano, SOAS, London
Actor prints have been studied almost exclusively within the discipline of theatre studies. By combining the methods of both theatre study and art history, I would like to suggest the possibility of a more precise and fuller understanding of the key Osaka-print artist Ryûkôsai. The Osaka Kabuki Exhibition will present many hitherto unknown Ryûkôsai works.
I will examine how the development of Ryûkôsai's style of actor prints can be traced using art historical methods. Ryûkôsai is known to have been active about 1777-1809 in Osaka , and designed actor prints, illustrations for theatre books and poetry books, actor paintings, and fan paintings. He is known today as the first actor-print artist in Kamigata (Osaka/Kyoto area) and as the artist who established the 'Kamigata-style' in ukiyo-e.
Research on Ryûkôsai has been done by only a few scholars, such as Kuroda Genji and Haruyama Takematsu both of whom were active in the early 20 th century, and most importantly Matsudaira Susumu, who worked on Kamigata prints and artists from the 1970s until 2000. He produced a chronological list of Ryûkôsai prints. His dating is primarily based on banzuke (theatrical playbills). Several works unknown to Matsudaira have surfaced recently. I shall analyse the chronology of Ryûkôsai's prints established by Matsudaira and his disciple Kitagawa Hiroko using art historical methods, considering composition and also taking into account the different publishers who issued his prints during the 1790s. My purpose is to clarify further the dating of the prints and also to examine the development of his artistic style. A clear understanding of the development of his style is important in order to discuss how his works differ from Edo prints, and to determine what the next generation learnt from Ryûkôsai. Since Ryûkôsai is considered the founder of a 'Kamigata style', it is important to have clear analysis of the characteristics of his work and further to categorise what is unique to Kamigata as compared to Edo.
Drew Gerstle, SOAS, London
Kabuki is known for its verve and erotic appeal, and at least in the Edo period was considered officially to be immoral. It was tolerated by the Tokugawa authorities but was controlled under government licence. The sexual appeal of star actors has remained an essential element of Kabuki over its 400-year history. Regardless of the official status of actors as beneath the four-class system, many actors participated in 'high' society mixing with daimyo, courtiers and others of high social or economic standing. The arts, particularly poetry salons, were the vehicles through which they socialized across class, gender and region. Kabuki actors needed to be proficient in many arts, including haiku (haikai) and kyôka, and to gain wide patronage actors needed a penname (haimyô) that they used when participating in poetry circles or in other artistic contexts. Everyone who participated in these circles did so under a pseudonym, and it seems to have been an unwritten convention that these art salons were outside the official class system, and therefore relatively equalitarian.
I will examine how the poetry circles fostered relations among actors, patrons, artists and publishers, and show how these poetry circles supported the production of actor prints, illustrated books and surimono. My focus will be on the Kyoto/Osaka area, but some comparisons will be made with works produced in Edo. The main artists will be Ryûkôsai (active 1770s-1808), Shôkôsai (active 1790s-1809), Hokushû (active 1802-1832), Ashiyuki (active 1813-1833), Yoshikuni (active 1813-1832), and Niwa Tôkei (1760-1822). The time period will be 1780s-1820. I will argue that a literati (suijin) culture actively promoted the careers of the top actors and encouraged them to practise poetry and other arts, and importantly presented the actors as literati in their own right. The main actors will be Nakamura Tomijûrô I (1719-1786, penname Keishi), Arashi Hinasuke I (1741-1796, Minshi), Sawamura Kunitarô I (1739-1818, Kitô), Arashi Kichisaburô II (Rikan, 1769-1821), Nakamura Utaemon III (1778-1838, Shikan) and Kanô Minshi I (1783-1826, Shichô, Koka). One literati figure in particular Tomi Doran (1769-1819), a Kyoto courtier, was very active as a haiku teacher and patron of actors.