Red Flag

Three More Little Prints Plus One

Another trip to Old Japan in Lenox, Massachusetts, where this time, I was prepared and could shop without being overwhelmed by riches. It seemed as if the selection of e-hon prints (those from illustrated books) was smaller. The selection, as last time, ranged from ikebana arrangements to stories as well as several from a series on Japanese poets. I also spent some quality time looking through the restrike prints from blocks by woodblock masters Hiroshige and Hosukai.

Two Ikebana Prints

As noted in the August 2008 posting on a previous ikebana print, these two also show a non-realistic perspective, one that would be unlikely were these arrangements to be seen in the tokonoma (sacred alcove). No doubt, this is attributable to the fact that these images are for instruction rather than art for art’s sake.  Ikebana is frequently called the art of flower arranging, but some commentators contend that it is more correct to say that it is the art of flower contemplation.

The print top right shows two containers fitted together and resting on an open fan, the fan on top of some sort of fringed material. The container at the right is light colored with a curved spray of branches, serving as a lovely complement to the iris planted in it. The container at the left, possibly a blue and white porcelain case with Japanese characters and a modified Greek key design holds a plant with blade-like leaves or flowers. The harder edges of the plant are well-suited to the writing on the vase, both of which serve as counterparts to the organic motif on the vase at the right. In addition, the left vase appears to be a parallelogram while the right vase has right angle. Fitting these together would angle the pair into a slight V. This V is repeated in the open fan, its panel wedge-shaped and its edges forming more Vs. The two plants themselves also form several V. The florid, almost Latin fan with its filigree motif and the frothy swirls of the material underneath serve to offset the angularity of the vases.

The second ikebana print at right is more minimalist, with what looks like a chrysanthemum growing from a bell shaped pot on a pedestal of three elephant heads. The vase sits on a low black, lacquer table. The fierce elephants remind me of netsuke, miniature carvings in ivory or wood used to fasten pouches to a kimono. Not unlike ikebana, netsuke evolved from functional to objects of great beauty and detail, valued for their own sake.

The elephant in Japanese culture holds various places from a children’s song to being used in wartime in Burma to the modern practice among school children of using elephant dung charms to improve test grades. There was also a recent theatre production of the stories of Haruki Murakami called The Elephant Vanishes.

Loop or Mirror Print

Unlike the ikebana prints above which each measure approximately 6 1/4 x 8 1/4, this print measures 6 inches by 3 inches—the perfect size for a bookmark as the owner of Old Japan points out. The focal point is the off-center loop or mirror, presumably black lacquer with two tasseled cords. The text to its right is interspersed with circles. My theory is that the circle—both the image and those within the text— may refer the enso, or the circle motif that is important in Japanese art. The simple, empty circle is called the mirror enso and has no inscription leaving all meaning to the viewer’s interpretation. In the zen world, the enso can also be the universe (all the cosmos), the moon (enlightenment), the zero (the emptiness of time and space that is the birthplace of all things), and the “What is this?” enso, the most frequently used inscription on Zen circle paintings and a way of saying, “Don't let others fill your head with theories about Zen; discover the meaning for yourself!” (all this by way of the Shambala Zen Art Gallery).

Komakata Hall and Azuma Bridge, Hiroshige restrike

According to monograph One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–58) (George Braziller, Inc., Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1986), this restrike is #62 from Hiroshige’s woodblock series. The owner of Old Japan believes the print I have is 50 years old; if so, it has been well-preserved and though trimmed close, it has only one tiny spot of foxing.

Overall, Hiroshige’s trademark intense colors are there along with a hint of mica in the sky. The registration is perfect and I can’t resist noticing that this image is complete with its entire heavy black rule frame unlike the Brooklyn Museum print which is torn vertically along the right.

As Henry D. Smith II notes in his commentary, the mood of this image is determined by the blue-gray rainy sky and the red flag being tossed in the breeze. The red symbolizes rouge and is the sign of a cosmetics dealer. Above the flag, a hototogisu, a small cuckoo that migrates through Edo, lets out a cry that Smith describes as similar to “tearing of cloth, a cry associated in poetry with dawn and with loneliness.” Smith further notes that the cuckoo, the red flag, and the building in lower left, Komakata Hall, form the kind of complex imagery that Hiroshige was known for, a composition that is not only pleasing to the eye but also draws in natural and literary connotations. The hototogisu above Komakata Hall would have called to mind for the nineteenth-century Japanese connoisseur a famous love poem composed by Takao of the Yoshiwara, a celebrated courtesan (or series of courtesans who bore that name):

“Are you now, my love, near Komakata? Cry of the cuckoo!”

In this rainy dawn, the lover, said to be the lord of Sendai, portrayed in kabuki drama as the paramour of Takao II, is returning to Edo (like the migrating cuckoo, which also has associations with cuckold). The courtesan misses her man in the lonely dawn and wonders if he as far as Komakata. Smith even points out the similar staccato sounds of hototogisu and Komakata, which, although interesting, may only be remarkable to Western ears.

This print was made from more than 10 blocks and is a fine example of Hiroshige's mastery of the exquisite art of ukiyo-e, or pictures of the floating world (though usually associated with images of theatre and the pleasure life, later came to include landscape prints as well). Hiroshige himself was born in Edo and spent a lifetime cultivating his perceptions of this city of more than one million. Hiroshige was a member of the samurai class, and his father was an official with the shogunal firefighting organization entrusted with protecting Edo Castle and residences of the shogunate retainers. Tokutaro (Hiroshige’s childhood name) succeeded to doshin (lower rank samurai) at age 13 following his father’s death and continued in his official duties even while he worked as an ukiyo-e artist. All of this sounds very prestigious, but men such Hiroshige and his father lived in poverty and second jobs were necessary.

This supplemental income frequently took the form of handicrafts, making umbrellas or lanterns. Woodblock prints was another. Ukiyo-e master Utagawa Toyohiro taught the young artist he renamed Hiroshige for 17 years. During this apprenticeship, Hiroshige developed his love of drawing and “absorbed the values of the [ukiyo-e] world: a commitment to careful workmanship, a disdain of accumulating worldly goods, a love of the theater, and a certain parodic spirit that tempered the serious classical training that he must have received as a samurai” (Smith).

Hiroshige quickly established a specialty in landscapes, making over his lifetime close to 2,000 sheets. The One Hundred Famous Views of Edo mark a shift, according to Smith, that includes “a renunciation of the world” associated with Hiroshige's decision to shave his head and take at age 60 the vows of a Buddhist priest. This recognition of the nearness of the end of life, Smith adds, may have led to the predominant sense of loneliness or melancholy that characterizes so many of the prints.

Komakata Hall (plate 62) also shows Hiroshige’s propensity for the Western technique of cutting off elements in the composition as with the Hall at the lower left. The foreground-background juxtaposition—the flatness that influenced so many Western artists—appears here with the more active, symbolic elements in the foreground against passive, conventional landscape elements. The red flag, the cuckoo, and the Hall link the story line from top to bottom while the harbor, ships, houses, and forest recede. Uniting these elements, the gray dawn sky and blowing rain lend the melancholy strain that runs through many of the prints from this series.

Among Hiroshige’s technical innovations in One Hundred Famous Views of Edo is the use gradation, or bokashi, seen here in the sky and the harbor surface. Komakata Hall also includes the use of mica (kira) which was probably applied as a dust to the colored area while it was still wet.

Famous views of Edo would have been old news to Hiroshige’s contemporaries, but the printmaker re-introduced his fellow citizens to their city by making 100 scenes on large-scale sheets that demanded their attention. The series was very popular in no small part because Hiroshige’s art was already well-known. The original Table of Contents described the views as Hiroshige’s “grand farewell performance,” itself a dispirited start but oddly fitting to a series where the color blue predominates.

However, it is the color red which also draws attention, especially in Komakata Hall. In Japanese culture, the color red (aka) has a host of connotations and as many shades of meaning as there are shades of red. In language, it forms part of several expressions, many of which are familiar to Westerners, but some unique to Japanese (including the ironic “shu ni majiwareba akaku naru” or “you cannot touch pitch without being defiled”). In this print, Hiroshige’s chop, or signature, appears midway down at the left at the same eye level as the cosmetic dealer’s red flag—in fact, the flag blows to the left in effect pointing to the chop. I’d like to think of this as Hiroshige’s way of bringing his signature into the foreground of the composition and thus aligning himself with the narrative. He becomes part of the courtesan’s loneliness just as he is part of the landscape of Edo. Ultimately, I think that it is this empathy with the surrounding world in all its manifestations that makes Hiroshige so interesting. The appeal of the Japanese print relies on this subtle harmony with life.