Japanese woodblock prints of the 18th and 19th centuries are, one comes to realize, one of the earliest example of mass commercial art, at least purely secular art, and one that still resonates with modern sensibilities. As testament to their volume, Britain’s Victoria & Albert Museum has, quite literally, tens of thousands of prints, a collection which began with an acquisition from the 1886 Exposition Universelle in Paris and rounded out, if that’s the word, with a purchase in 1886 (“at the height of Japonisme”) of more than 12,000 from the London-based Asian art dealer, SM Franck & Sons. Fortunately, this volume, which features prints from the collection, also testifies to their aesthetics and long-lasting appeal.
The lushly-illustrated Fashion and the Floating World ostensibly focuses on the way these prints portray clothes and the people that wear them, but the book also delves into the social context in which they were produced and consumed. The prints are, it hardly needs saying, marvelous and those selected are not always the usual suspects.
The authors start with some history.
It was during the Edo period that a market-driven publishing industry developed in major cities. Although Kyoto and Osaka initially played the central role in commercial publishing, Edo rose to prominence in the eighteenth century with the spread of single-sheet prints and popular literature illustrated by ukiyo-e artists… As the commercialization of polychrome prints advanced in the 1760s, their rich colours were compared to silk brocades, and prints published in Edo came to be branded as Azuma nishiki-e or ‘eastern brocade pictures’. So popular did the medium become that, from 1790, the government made it a legal requirement to add the name of the artist, the trademark of the publisher and a seal indicating the official approval of the government censor (kiwame-in) to all commercial prints.
And commercial they most certainly were!
Cheap woodblock prints allowed information about the latest trends to circulate easily, offering inspiration for those eager to emulate the stylish men and women they depicted… Woodblock prints were consumed like modern-day magazines and social media, and, within a fashion system further analogous with that of today, it was a cult of celebrity that encouraged spending on clothes and prints.
More than one print in the volume is an explicit or implicit advertisement. One advertises Arimatsu, a town near the Tōkaidō post road between Tokyo and Kyoto and its shibori fabric. Another features Echigoya on the busy shopping street of Surugachō, the kimono store founded by Misui Takatoski; several Mitsui corporation buildings still take pride of place on the same street. Another print is of fashionably-dressed women outside a Daimaruya. In another
lies the distinctive blue-and-white packaging of Bien Senjokō face whitening powder. This product was first sold in the Kyōbashi district of Edo. Its popularity quickly spread and illustrations of the product were incorporated into prints. The face powder is known as one of the most effectively marketed products of the Edo period, and a seminal campaign in the history of Japanese advertising.
The authors detail the various textiles used included a surprising number that were imported from India by the Dutch East India Company.
Divided into such sections as “Creation and Commerce”, “Looking Good”, “Style and Seduction” and “Fashioning Life”, there is much to savor in Fashion and the Floating World, from the glorious illustrations on every page to the succinct and pertinent explanatory text which covers everything from the industrial and social context and details of fashion trends to the identities of many celebrities who find their way into the prints. There are of course cherry trees, bridges, boats, kimonos and kabuki, but the authors always have an eye for the pertinent detail and the story behind the picture. In one called “Imitating Shūka”:
Unable to leave the licensed prostitution district, courtesans frequently sent letters to their patrons, often on paper with red-lead edges. The content of the letter, revealed above, begins ‘Please, please, please come to me tomorrow…’. The paper in the woman’s mouth and that twisted on the floor suggest she has struggled through a number of drafts.
Another shows a woman playing the “One Hundred Poets, One Hundred Poems (hyakunin isshu)” game, which seems to have been a rather more erudite version of “Trivial Pursuits”:
In this card game, which was among the most popular New Year amusements during the Edo period, one player reads out the first half of a classical waka poem while the other players compete with each other to find the corresponding card with the second half of the poem…
Nevertheless, one sometimes gets the feeling that authors included a print just because they like it. One of the earliest examples in the book, the late-18th-century “Lovers in an Upstairs Room” by Kitagawa Utamaro which deploys the somewhat more subdued coloring of the period, is—regardless of its erotic subject matter—a masterpiece of composition and line. Whatever the commercial considerations may have been, art seems to have always come first.
Even if one has the wherewithal to visit the V&A, only a small portion of their collection can possibly be on display at any one time. This book is an excellent substitute.