Utamaro became a canonical, very, very,

important ukiyo-e illustrator from the 1870s to the 1880s.

Especially in Europe, during the decades of Japonisme, he was introduced early,

he was appreciated especially by French, but then American, Polish,

other connoisseurs of ukiyo-e art.

He was also appreciated and used, perhaps we can say channeled,

very often by ukiyo-e artisans, illustrators in the Meiji period as well.

We might imagine that ukiyo-e

as a genre itself stops right at the Meiji restoration, but it doesn't.

It continues all the way through the Meiji era, and has it's own elan and

inspirations, fascinating aspects of it as a medium of art as well.

The next slide I wanted to take a look at has been published

in 1878 as part of a series by one of the most prominent

Meiji era ukiyo-e artists, Toyohara Kunichika.

And it shows here, again, women in different positions, situations,

moments, instants in their daily lives.

This one shows an instant in the life of a widow,

she's described here, the colors are very different, as you notice.

They're using these bright red colors which were introduced into Japan, and

were used very, very, often in the 1870s and the 1880s.

Anyway, we notice that she's in the same position,

doing exactly the same thing as the clever young girl in Utamaro's

earlier rendition of this, the original rendition of this,

she's reading a book. The woman has no eyebrows, which lets us know

that she's been married; the title speaks of her as a widow, so we know that.

She's lying down, again, reading a book. We can't really tell what the book is.

The title there slip has the same words as the title of the image itself,

so we don't know exactly from the title what she's reading.

But the cover, the color of it, the pattern of it, lets

a contemporary reader into the fact that she's reading a book by Fukuzawa Yukichi,

one of the most important educators,

Western learning promulgators and thinkers in the Meiji era.

So, again, this woman in her age and her era is spending her

precious free time off from work trying to learn about new ethics and

morals, and different ways to live in the modern era.

One other print in the same series has, again,

a young woman concentrating on a book, she's reading.

We can see right away that the original pose of the woman has been changed,

really 180 degrees from the way Utamaro,

at the beginning of the 19th century, imagined a young woman reading.

This young lady is wearing Japanese clothes, but

we can see her hair is done in a more Western style.

She's sitting in a chair,

a very ornate sort of green painted, probably wooden chair.

And she's sitting at a desk also, which would have been something very,

very new, foreign to most Japanese people at the time.

So she's sitting in Western style, reading, of course, a Western book.

If we take a very close look at what she's reading there,

we can see that the sentences are laid out

horizontally rather than vertically, and the letters really don't make much sense.

I don't think that's whats important, they we're looking not for much realism here.

But the fact she had her elbows down on the table, and was concentrating,

reading a foreign text, is what the artist was trying to convey.

The fact that she was trying to get ahead and learn a new language, and

to learn more about the world, and what was going on, as a young Japanese citizen.

We also see a small sort of chalkboard, blackboard there, which

she would've used to write down words, and to note words that she didn't know.

One of the contemporary 19th century ways of learning that we have.

Again we see a diachronic sort of lineage of women in their free time,

using it to read, to educate themselves.

To sort of promote their literacy, and their ability to work,

or live within each of their sort of contemporary societies, and so forth.

This change, this basically dynamic, of portraying young woman reading,

it doesn't change from before the Meiji Restoration until after it.

The mode of reading itself does, what they read does, changes very, very much.

And it's, one interesting way to gauge the pace and the quantity and

the quality of cultural change and habits, among Japanese men and women,

and the way that they were represented in this era.

2-8 Beauties in Ukiyo-e II

Words Spun Out of Images: Visual and Literary Culture in Nineteenth Century Japan

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