Category Archives: Japan

by Joel | 30 November 2010 · 5:31 pm

A Japanophile Dutch Banker’s Disillusionment, 1970s

From The Magatama Doodle: One Man’s Affair with Japan, 1950–2004, by Hans Brinckmann (Global Oriental, 2005), pp. 210-211:

My ‘Magatama Doodle’ metaphor was inspired by the whimsical linking of an observed physical habit (the doodling of comma-shapes on tabletops and chair arms) of certain functionaries, when confronted with a problem or pressed for an answer, to their assumed preference for evasion and procrastination. Japan’s leaders, I had always felt, were fully capable of taking decisions, and if they did not, that was because they chose not to.

I still believed this analysis to hold good for the corporate sector, but I no longer could credit the government and the bureaucracy with similar ability. After all, the cabinet members, from the prime minister on down, were beholden to their party colleagues waiting in the wings for their turn at government. And all politicians lived at the mercy of the business establishment, which financed their election campaigns. They were also constrained by the bureaucratic elite, which provided continuity and expertise for the government of the day. Some bureaucrats in turn were rumoured to be supplementing their income with donations from the major corporations, to whom they also looked for their eventual amakudari on their retirement from the civil service in their early fifties. Few senior civil servants could afford to retire at that age, so they were all interested in a second career as adviser or senior director at a major bank or corporation. The result of these cosy relationships was a woeful lack of discretionary power on the political level, and even a prime minister travelling overseas had to weigh every word and frequently backtrack on his public statements in the face of opposition at home.

I could now see that it was the stasis in Japan’s body politic that had bedevilled its relations with other countries, most of all the US, for decades. Earlier on I had, like probably almost every Japanese, habitually blamed the periodic strains in Japan-US ties largely on American impatience or intransigence. American leaders and negotiators, I was convinced, did not understand Japan, and their patronizing attitude only managed to infuriate their Japanese counterparts and thus stall progress in the talks. But without exculpating pushy American negotiators altogether I had come to suspect that the cause of the recurring tensions, especially in matters of trade and investment, lay mostly with the Japanese.

Through my Investment Committee at the American Chamber of Commerce and other sources I had heard stories about the ‘impossibility’ of dealing with Japanese negotiators on issues such as regulating the flow of car exports and improving access to Japan’s still heavily protected consumer market. The negotiators had no mandate and had to refer to Tokyo on every detail without in the end coming up with any kind of helpful response or compromise. The US side would be kept waiting interminably while their counterparts tried to placate them with pleas for understanding Japan’s slow-moving consensus system and promises of an eventual satisfactory outcome. More often than not, no such outcome ensued, and the Americans either had to back off with gritted teeth or threaten unilateral action to force an agreement. On several occasions the US Congress stepped in with mandated sanctions when negotiations stalled, to the consternation of the Japanese, whose own parliament had no such power.

All this would not have been so bad if the Japanese had put their cards on the table. But they seldom did. To the home audience they usually played the victim card, blaming the heavy-handed Americans for bullying them into concessions, and asking the public to accept these ‘sacrifices’ in the interest of preserving good relations with the American ally. In this way they not only shifted the blame for any unwelcome outcome to the Americans, but they also obfuscated the system’s structural inability to produce effective and timely decisions, actually turning this shortcoming into an advantage.

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by Joel | 21 November 2010 · 2:12 pm

A Japan-trained Dutch Banker’s Impressions of Chicago, 1968

From The Magatama Doodle: One Man’s Affair with Japan, 1950–2004, by Hans Brinckmann (Global Oriental, 2005), pp. 184-185:

Seven years earlier, our first US visit was no confrontation. We were wide-eyed tourists then, basking in America’s sun and easy smiles without care or consequence. Even our brief stay in Illinois in 1965, a year after my bank’s takeover by the Chicago bank, was little more than a courtesy call made out of our safe and trusted Japanese home base.

But this time it was different. This protracted stay was intended to be confrontational. There were wise men in the head office suspecting their ‘man in Tokyo’ of alien sympathies. They were right, twice over.

First, there was my typical European prejudice against the might and swagger of America, its superficial, money-based way of life, its waste and hyperbole, even that questionable concept – the ‘pursuit of happiness’. This spoon-fed mindset was overlain by a less expressible, more internalized reserve about the United States, Japan-grown and stubborn. It was directed at the American mentality, the casual arrogance that is the birthright of the strong. It was a silent protest against the overweening, patronizing manners of so many Americans towards anyone and anything foreign, and especially Asian. Above all, it was a deep-seated resistance against the immodest American approach to life itself, its aggressive ‘conflict model’, its blatant emotionalism and lack of restraint, its materialism and physicality and holier-than-thou Christian orthodoxy.

Thus I arrived in Chicago heavily burdened with opinion but also willing to change my views ‘in the light of new experience’. Well, experience is what we got. From the first day I had to place my mental constructs on the back-burner. Actual, visceral life, took precedence. The accommodation the bank had arranged for us, a small, furnished apartment in Old Town, turned out to be an address of ill repute, teeming with prostitutes. Within our stingy rent allowance we found a better place, near the Ambassador East Hotel, with mostly decent tenants. But we had to decide how to deal with the neighbours across the hall, a friendly well-groomed woman with an attractive grown-up daughter for whom – Toyoko had to conclude to her astonishment – she was acting as a ‘discreet’ pimp.

The confrontation with American reality brought home to me the vast cultural gap that separated that society from the Japanese – and the Dutch. But the comparison was not necessarily negative. The office, for instance, far from being a nasty environment steeped in power-crazy adrenaline, was more like a large living-room filled with people exchanging easy banter while glancing at a document or two, or discussing golf scores with a customer on the phone. The informality was deceptive. While telling jokes or kidding around these well-educated bankers kept a beady eye on the boss’s door, to see who would go in next or to wait for an opportunity to slip in with a ‘hot deal’. I was amazed to see that in spite of their relaxed style of communication they did get their job done.

The looser structure was an immense relief from the tensions and social rules of Japan. What is more I soon discovered that the much-maligned ‘shallowness’ of American social relations was actually more like an open, unprejudiced kind of hospitality which we tight-arsed Europeans and fastidious Japanese would do well to try and emulate, to our benefit. Americans, I found, opened their doors first and then sorted out what they had let in. Europeans and Japanese, distrusting spontaneity, were forever trying to determine the suitability of others before deciding whether they wanted to get acquainted.

My lifelong latent resistance against America’s ways had collapsed inside a week. Not on fundamentals, but – let us say – on the attractions of their lifestyle. These Americans lived their lives instead of fretting about them. They had no time for wrenching soul searching or weighing up the relative merits of their civilization. They were victors, and victors are free of doubt.

Vietnam was supposed to have changed all this. But not here, not yet, in this heartland of assured capitalism, where seating a single black graduate from Northwestern University on my bank’s carpeted ‘platform’ for all to see, was deemed to constitute an adequate gesture to the irksome demands of the Civil Rights movement. The headlines of the Chicago Tribune copies scattered about the desks might be screaming indignantly about the seizure of the US Navy ship Pueblo by the North Koreans or about the Communist Tet offensive just launched by the Viet Cong, but loan requests had to be processed and the 17.37 back home to the comforts of Winnetka had to be caught.

The self-assuredness was astounding. Laced as it was with magnanimity and the decency of family concerns it was a far cry from the imperial hauteur of the British and French or the self-conscious pride of the Japanese. But it was daunting nonetheless. Paraded around Chicago as ‘our man in Japan’ I had to make frequent appearances at meetings, both inside the bank and on calls to important corporate customers, to shed light on the mystery that was Japan. I was expected to explain the peculiarities of the market and dispense hot tips on how to breach its protectionist shell.

My audience was eloquent, courteous and sceptical.

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by Joel | 15 November 2010 · 5:54 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Yakinokori-zei, Yoyū-jūtaku-zei

From The Magatama Doodle: One Man’s Affair with Japan, 1950–2004, by Hans Brinckmann (Global Oriental, 2005), pp. 99-100:

She had contracted tuberculosis towards the end of the war, and had spent her teenage years in hospital and at home to fight the disease and recuperate. American-made streptomycin, not available in Japan at the time, saved her. Bought at great expense on the black-market, it consumed a good part of what remained of the family’s fortune after MacArthur’s confiscatory property taxes, including the infamous yakinokori-zei, ‘having-survived-the-bombings tax’ [焼き残り税 ‘burn-remainder tax’], levied on houses that were left standing, followed by the yoyū-jūtaku-zei, the ‘excess living space tax’ [余裕住宅税 ‘surplus residence tax’]. As she had been unfit to attend class, she had been tutored at home to prepare her for higher education.

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by Joel | 25 October 2010 · 6:26 am

Dull Eating along the Tokaido in Edo Times

From Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. and ed. by Gerald Groemer (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1997), 163-164:

After so much talk of famine, we too need some relief. Let us turn next to the food that travelers ate at the fifty-three stops of the Tōkaidō highway. In 1817 Yamagata Heiemon Shigeyoshi, the master of the scholar Yamagata Bantō (1748–1821), was summoned by the lord of Sendai. Yamagata left Osaka by boat on the eighteenth day of the first month and then traveled on highways to arrive in Sendai on the twelfth day of the second month. In his detailed travel diary, he recorded exactly what he ate at each of the inns at which he lodged.

For lunch on the nineteenth, while looking out over Lake Biwa near Atsuta, Yamagata ate corbicula soup; a dish of carrots, burdock, and kelp; and a dish of trefoil dressed with white sesame sauce. Toward evening he arrived at Kusatsu in snowy weather; here it was so cold that even the lamp oil froze. Supper consisted of a vinegared dish (namasu) of giant white radish (daikon), persimmon, and greens; a soup of greens and dried bean curds; a hira of kamaboko, gourd shavings (kanpyō), and burdock; and a broiled salted mackerel. The next morning he ate white beet soup; a hira of Japanese cabbage (mizuna), shiitake mushroom, and dried bean curd; a choku of pickled salted plums; and a roasted dried fish. Yamagata crossed Suzuka Pass in heavy snow and spent the night at the bottom of the opposite slope: the twenty-first found him in Kuwana; the twenty-second, in Miya. Although the surroundings changed considerably, food on the Tōkaidō highway stayed basically the same at every inn. As soups, hira, tsubo, or broiled fish were not varied by introducing locally available specialties, the cuisine was quite monotonous.

This was an official trip. Travel expenses for Yamagata and his attendant, a doctor, five porters, three packhorse drivers, and three horses were probably paid by the lord of Sendai. Thus meals at each post town must have been of a high quality. Although one must take into account that Yamagata’s journey took place in the middle of winter, the lack of variety in the cuisine is surprising. Soups always included giant white radish, either fresh or dried; the hira always featured combinations of dried gourd shavings (kanpyō), tofu, burdock, carrot, potato, kelp, shiitake mushrooms, and, as recorded on a few occasions, dried laver (nori) and kamaboko. The tsubo consisted of kokushō; of tofu boiled in water, soy sauce, and sake; of burdock; or of light wheat gluten cakes. Broiled fish usually meant mackerel, young sea bream, sole, or yellowtail. Exceptional meals included the eel served for supper at an inn at Arai and the “fluffy eggs” eaten for breakfast at Fukuroi. Today Japanese travelers would tire of such fare in two or three days. Such cuisine gives us yet another insight into conditions on the Tōkaidō during an age in which the pace of life was much slower than it is today.

Once Yamagata had passed Edo and headed for the northeast, some local color appears in his meals. At Kasukabe broiled carp (funa) was served; at Odawara he ate a wild duck. Broiled fish was almost invariably salmon or gurnard (kanagashira), but at Koshigawa he received dried cod flavored with sake. Nevertheless, both soups and hira featured nothing out of the ordinary. Even the fact that udo (probably yamaudo) was eaten at the stay at Kasukabe on the fifth day of the second month seems remarkable in this context. If high-class inns on the Tōkaidō and Ōshū-kaidō served this kind of fare during the late Edo period, one may assume that both the quality and preparation of food at townsmen’s homes must have been quite mediocre by today’s standards.

NOTES: Although I was familiar with kinpira (金平 lit. ‘gold ordinary’), I wasn’t aware that hira (平 ‘level, plain, common’?) could be used for all types of similarly prepared (sauteed then simmered together) vegetable dishes. Perhaps tsubo (壷) ‘pot, jar’ dishes differ from nabemono (鍋物 ‘hot pot‘) by being prepared in the kitchen rather than at the dining table. Kokushō (濃く漿, ‘thick sap/serum/plasma’?) seems more commonly known as 重湯 omoyu (lit. ‘heavy hotwater’) ‘thin rice gruel’, like okayu (お粥) ‘rice gruel, jook, congee’.

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by Joel | 24 October 2010 · 9:14 am

Wordcatcher Tales: Frikadel, Shippoku-dai, Zhuofu

From Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. and ed. by Gerald Groemer (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1997), p. 146:

During the early years of the Edo period, Japan engaged in much trade with East Asian countries. As a result, a remarkable amount of foreign cuisine was imported. Unusual ingredients, previously seen but rarely in Japan, were introduced. Their use was at first limited to social or ceremonial events and special banquets, but in time they were consumed by a broad range of the population.

A number of new foods are recorded in contemporary writings: red-and-white hanpen (a cake of pounded fish); yaki-dōfu (broiled bean curd); sarasa-jiru (a soup made with fresh chrysanthemums); a Javanese dish called gōren (“goreng“) made with fried fish; and furugasuteru (“frikadel“), a dish apparently of Dutch provenance in which beef and cabbage were finely minced, combined with egg, seasoned with wine, covered with bread crumbs, and fried.

The spread of such cuisine brings to mind my own experiences as a child. My hometown was in the Kansai area, in a rural area around the city of Akō in Harima. Things may have changed now, but in my childhood we called a dining table a shippoku-dai. Usually everyone ate from individual boxlike trays, but local tradition required the use of a shippoku-dai when guests arrived. The word shippoku, which originates from the Chinese word zhuofu (tablecloth [桌布]), denotes a Chinese-style dining table. But what we called shippoku-dai was a purely Japanese-style table with no hint of Chinese influence. Shippoku cuisine, a Japanese version of Chinese food, is today a specialty of Nagasaki; this cuisine and the shippoku-dai were probably transmitted to Japan in much the same manner. Although shippoku cuisine did not spread to the rural areas, the shippoku-dai, by contrast, spread to every nook and cranny of the Japanese countryside. Many people of the Kansai area must have fond recollections of this kind of table.

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by Joel | 23 October 2010 · 4:53 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Kohada-zushi, Konosirus punctatus

From Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. and ed. by Gerald Groemer (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1997), pp. 170-171:

At the end of the Edo period the charming sight of sushi vendors selling kohada-zushi (sushi topped with a small gizzard shad) could be seen in the streets of Edo. Nigiri-zushi—bite-sized sushi made by squeezing a small amount of rice in the hand—was an Edo specialty that appeared during the Bunsei Period (1818–1830). This sushi soon became all the rage. The most conspicuous nigiri-zushi vendors sold kohada-zushi. These hawkers covered their heads with a hand towel in Yoshiwara fashion; they wore narrow-striped kimono tucked up behind, short coats with broad stripes and black silk collars, sashes known as Hakata obi, cotton leggings with white socks, and sandals made of straw and linen. Such a unique outfit made kohada-zushi vendors quite striking in appearance. From the start of spring until early summer sushi peddlers sauntered through the streets and called out in a mellifluous voice, “Sushi! Hey! Kohada-zushi!” …

Nigiri-zushi was also sold by “Atakematsu” of Atakegura in Honjo; eventually this sushi came to be known simply as “Matsu’s sushi.” … Most were mere street stalls, but true restaurants existed as well. At any rate, sushi was highly popular. From Edo the sushi fashion spread to the Kamigata area. In the late 1820s a restaurant called “Matsu no sushi” appeared south of Ebisubashi in Osaka. This was the first Osaka outlet of Edo sushi: but before long this specialty was sold at shops throughout Osaka.

Kohada （小鰭） and shinko （新子） are young and younger stages of konoshiro ‘dotted gizzard shad’, Konosirus punctatus (Temminck & Schlegel, 1846), according to Japanese Wikipedia, but a species utterly missing from English Wikipedia, where gizzard shad is summarily redirected to American gizzard shad (Dorosoma cepedianum), in a genus limited to eastern North America. The other five genera of the subfamily Dorosomatinae (gizzard shads) are not covered at all. The systematics of shads appear to be extremely complex.

I first heard of shad from my youngest uncle, who had a cabin down by the James River near the site of Virginia’s peculiar political gathering, the Shad Planking.

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by Joel | 2 October 2010 · 12:58 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Moroheiya tempura, Henohenomoheji sake

A few weeks ago, I came across a food item in my local Japanese grocery store that was new to me. The package of deep-fried, dark green leaves was labeled “moroheya tenpura.” Of course, I couldn’t resist trying some. The leaves were crispy and oily, stuck together by their own slime, rather than by tempura batter. They tasted oily, slightly bitter—and very healthy!

The Japanese name for the leaves is usually written in katakana as モロヘイヤ moroheiya, ultimately from Arabic muluxīya but probably via some non-Arabic intermediary language with /o/ in place of /u/. The leaves of jute plants (Corchorus spp.), also known as mallow leaves, are widely eaten wherever jute is grown between West Africa and South Asia, and there are many different transliterations of its name in local varieties of Arabic: mulukhiyah, molokhia, mulukhiyya, malukhiyah, mloukhiya. It now shows up in Japanese cuisine, where it’s valued for its healthy slimy quality as well as high vitamin content.

The Japanese name for the plant (Corchorus olitorius) is shima-tsuna-so (縞綱麻 ‘stripe-rope-hemp’), also called タイワンツナソ Taiwan tsunaso ‘Taiwan rope plant/hemp’, ナガミツナソ nagami tsunaso (possibly) ‘long-body rope plant/hemp’, or simply ジュート juuto ‘jute’.

In Nagoya this past summer, we made a return visit to the exquisite Kyoukamo Restaurant (京加茂), famous thereabouts for its Kyoto-style kaiseki cuisine. You can see photos of what we ate and drank starting here.

Our affable hosts served two award-winning sakes this year, both in the West (Kansai and western Japan) division, where they were ranked like sumo rikishi. The first won the Ōzeki (‘champion’) prize and the second won the Yokozuna (‘grand champion’) prize. The latter had such a floral/herbal nose that it resembled an Alsatian Gewürtztraminer. When I asked our hostess for the name of the sake, she said, Henohenomoheji. I asked, “What is that supposed to mean?!” So she showed me the magazine page reproduced here, where the hiragana characters of the name sketch a human face beneath a triangular hat. Each への pair forms an eyebrow and eye, the も forms a nose, へforms downturned lips, and じ delineates the cheeks and chin.

The brewery is Akishika (秋鹿 ‘Autumn Deer’) of Nose Township, Toyono County, where Osaka Prefecture intrudes between Kyoto and Hyogo prefectures. The restaurant owner gave me their address and I decided on a whim to pay the brewer a visit on the last day of our trip, when I had a day to kill on my own and a still-valid JR railpass.

Well, it turned out to be well off the JR lines. I hopped a bullet train to Shin-Osaka, took an express to JR Amagasaki, took the JR Fukuchiyama Line uphill to Kawanishi-Ikeda, then walked over to Kawanishi-Noseguchi, the downhill terminus of the little Nose Dentetsu (owned by Hankyu Railway), where a lady at the ticket window said I would have to take a bus from the rail terminus at Myōkenguchi.

Myōkenguchi, the entrance to Mount Myōken (妙見山), consisted of little more than a parking lot, a post office, and a combination restaurant and souvenir shop. A bus was due to arrive soon, but it would take 30 minutes to get to the brewery and only ran once an hour. So, as a trophy for my misbegotten adventure, I bought a big bottle of Akishika-brand sake from the very friendly shop owners, who threw in a couple of empty バンビカップ ‘Bambi cup’ glasses as souvenirs, saying they were their bestsellers and not widely available. (I later discovered you can buy them online.) then I hopped the return train and transferred my way back toward Nagoya, where I left the sake bottle and cups at our hotel’s front desk, for them to pass on to the friend who treated us to that wonderful kaiseki dinner at Kyoukamo.

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by Joel | 23 September 2010 · 6:56 pm

Wordcatcher Tales: Kamigata, Kudarimono, Edokko

Tokyo may be the center of modern Japan. All trains bound for the capital, whether coming from northern Japan or western Japan, are nobori-ressha ‘upbound/ascending trains’, while those bound for “the provinces” are kudari-ressha ‘downbound/descending trains’. But the older Kamigata (‘upper’) capital region of Kyoto and Osaka still had the upper hand, both culturally and industrially, well into the Edo period. Goods manufactured in Kamigata for customers in the Tokugawa capital were kudari-mono ‘downbound/descending goods’. I wonder when the directions were officially reversed. Was it after Edo became Tokyo (‘Eastern Capital’) during the Meiji era?

From Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. and ed. by Gerald Groemer (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1997), pp. 41-43:

The center of Edo was the shogun’s castle. At least until the Genroku period (1688–1704) the city was primarily the capital of the warrior. It was a teeming metropolis, a million strong, with men outnumbering women by more than two to one. Edo bustled with warriors, craftsmen, merchants, and performers from throughout the land. The upper class amused itself at the kabuki or in the Yoshiwara pleasure quarters; the activities of the big spenders captured the public imagination.

The shogun, daimyo, and their retainers spent almost all their money in the city; Edo was a center of consumption. Originally, very little was produced there, neither daily necessities nor high-grade cultural artifacts. Instead, articles were imported from Kamigata, that is, from the Kyoto and Osaka area. Such goods were called kudarimono—quality products that had “come down” from Kamigata. Wares that had not “come down” were considered inferior: thus the origin of the word kudaran (“not come down”), meaning uninteresting or worthless. The sale of imported goods netted great profits for Edo branches of stores headquartered in Ise, Ōmi, or other provinces. From around the Genroku period these businesses, known as Edo-dana and located at Nihonbashi, Denmacho, and elsewhere, expanded greatly. This expansion signaled the rise of the Edo chōnin‘s economic power.

As mentioned earlier, Edo-dana were staffed exclusively by men who had come to Edo only to work. These men even saw to their own cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Unable to sink their roots in the city, Edo-dana employees remained perennial outsiders. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, however, a new type of individual appeared: the Edokko, a pure Edo chōnin, who was rooted in the city itself. The first recorded usage of the term Edokko occurs in a senryū [satiric, witty verse identical in form to more serious haiku] of 1771, and thereafter was used by many authors….

One finds no label corresponding to the Edokko in Osaka and Kyoto. No concept of an “Osakakko” or a “Kyotokko” exists; nor is there any parallel in Nagoya, Kanazawa, or Hiroshima. Thus we must ask why the idea of such a native arose solely in Edo. The answer to this question is simple. In Osaka, Kyoto, and other cities, almost the entire chōnin population corresponded to what the Edokko was in Edo. In the capital, however, a huge number of unassimilated provincials remained “outsiders,” providing a contrast to the distinctly native Edokko. During the city’s early years, this heterogeneous population grew larger and developed evenly; but by the second half of the eighteenth century a marked contrast between natives and nonnatives begins to appear. This contrast was not entirely missing in other large cities such as Osaka or Kyoto, but in Edo a much larger part of the population remained nonnative.

Within Edo there existed yet another distinction: the sharp contrast between the uptown (yamanote) and the downtown (shitamachi) areas. These terms can already be found in the hanashibon (storybook) known as Eda sangoju (Beads of Coral) published in 1690. The yamanote area was a diluvial terrace packed with warrior residences; the shitamachi area was an alluvial area with a concentration of chōnin dwellings. Since the chōnin class was further split between Edokko and a large population of Edo-dana “outsiders,” Edokko were constantly confronted with a large number of people unlike themselves. The unmistakable character of the Edokko developed within this social context.

The Edokko‘s sense of nativeness that emerged during the second half of the eighteenth century fostered the efflorescence of Edokko culture. This unique culture was, however, not created by Edokko alone. Instead, it resulted from the interaction of three groups, each of which complemented the others: the warriors, the provincial chōnin “outsiders,” and the Edokko.

My first younger brother was born in Tokyo, and so claims to be an “Edokko.” But my other two brothers born in Japan have never been labeled “Kokurakko” or “Kyotokko” after their birthplaces. Until I read the passage above, I had never thought to ask why not.

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by Joel | 19 September 2010 · 4:53 pm

Westernized Edo-period Woodblock Prints

From Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. and ed. by Gerald Groemer (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1997), pp. 70-71:

Gennai, who was well versed in Western art and painted in oils himself, was surrounded by a cultural group whose role in Edo-period culture can hardly be overestimated. Gennai’s coterie included scholars of Western learning, doctors practicing Dutch-style medicine, scholars of Chinese literature, calligraphers, and many others. The interaction of these men led to the creation of a number of ukiyo-e and books.

Nishiki-e were an artistic development that stood in sharp contrast to earlier Japanese prints. In Japanese painting before the age of nishiki-e, empty space was charged with great meaning. Use of blank areas was deeply related to the Buddhist notions of emptiness (kū), to specifically Japanese ideas of space (ma), and to Japanese philosophies of nature. These concepts are in turn related to the idea of nothingness (mu) found in Eastern thought in general. From the time of Harunobu’s nishiki-e, however, virtually the entire surface of the picture was filled with color. Moreover, many nishiki-e employed Western techniques of perspective. This denial of the Eastern concept of mu and departure from the design and coloration of previous Japanese pictorial art was in part the result of a familiarity with Western techniques of oil painting and copperplate etching. Not everything was taken from these sources, but the works of Harunobu, Haruaki, Sharaku, Utamaro, and Hokusai unambiguously show such influence. These men (with the possible exception of Sharaku) often attended the daishōkai [calendar designing and printing events] and were good friends with Hiraga Gennai, Shiba Kōkan, and Gennai’s outstanding disciple Morishima Chūryō.

The establishment of nishiki-e with perspective within the context of traditional “flat” Japanese painting was an epoch-making event in the history of Japanese pictorial art. Western techniques had here been completely absorbed into Japanese culture. Although the roots of these techniques could be traced back a century and a half to Western influence at the start of the Edo period. Western procedures now reemerged as something entirely new. Nishiki-e met with such unusual acclaim by the Japanese commoner population because Western techniques had been so thoroughly assimilated.

This process of assimilation also led to the nishiki-e fads in Europe and the United States. From the end of the Edo period to the early years of the Meiji era, a tremendous number of nishiki-e masterpieces were sold to foreigners. The works of Hokusai, which were perhaps the most Western in tone, were especially prized and often became the subject of scholarly studies.

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by Joel | 16 September 2010 · 8:27 pm

Edo-period Sinophilia & Hollandophilia

From Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban Japan, 1600–1868, by Nishiyama Matsunosuke, trans. and ed. by Gerald Groemer (U. Hawai‘i Press, 1997), pp. 13-14:

There is yet another reason why Edo-period culture has not been properly appreciated: the influence of Chinese culture has not yet been properly understood. During the Edo period Chinese culture was highly venerated. Its deep and lasting influence was important, not just for Japanese Confucianism and Confucian scholarship, but for a whole range of other pursuits as well. The effect of Chinese poetry and literature, or of Ming and Qing dynasty art and scholarship, can hardly be overestimated. For example, the book Tianxia yitong zhi (Records of All the World) greatly influenced the fudoki (gazetteers) produced throughout Japan. This volume was published as Dai Min ittō-shi (Records of the Ming Dynasty) at the beginning of the Genroku era (1688–1704) by a warrior from the Wakayama domain. Similarly, the volumes Gai yu congkao (Gaiyō sōkō in Japanese) by ZhaoYi (1727–1814) were also profoundly influential. The respect for things Chinese lasted until the Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), but thereafter the fact that Chinese culture had once been of great importance faded from memory.

Similarly, “Dutch learning” (that is, Western learning, rangaku) was also highly important during the Edo period. Over one hundred times throughout the Edo period, the chief of the Dutch settlement at Dejima in Nagasaki came to Edo to receive an audience and present gifts to the shogun. For some twenty or thirty days during the spring, the chief and his retinue stayed at the Nagasaki-ya, a lodge at Hongoku-chō. From around the middle of the Edo period, a number of cultured individuals made use of these few weeks to engage in unfettered cultural exchange widi the Dutch. Japanese were strictly forbidden to enter the Dutch outpost of Dejima in Nagasaki, but within Edo much free activity was possible. After the Meiji Restoration, however, the diplomatic relations maintained by the Tokugawa bakufu with the Dutch were overshadowed by the Meiji government’s policy of strengthening ties with England, France, Germany, and the United States. In turn, much that concerned rangaku was forgotten. Although cultural exchange with the Dutch was once of great significance, its conditions and historical role have only recently begun to receive scholarly attention. Such examples show that Edo-period culture demands reevaluation. The type of historical perspective suggested here should begin to make a correct appraisal possible.

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