In their ambition to capture “real life,” Japanese painters, poets, novelists and photographers of the nineteenth century collaborated in ways seldom explored by their European contemporaries. This course offers learners the chance to encounter and appreciate behavior, moral standards and some of the material conditions surrounding Japanese artists in the nineteenth century, in order to renew our assumptions about what artistic “realism” is and what it meant.
Learners will walk away with a clear understanding of how society and the individual were conceived of and represented in early modern Japan. Unlike contemporary western art forms, which acknowledge their common debt as “sister arts” but remain divided by genre and discourse, Japanese visual and literary culture tended to combine, producing literary texts inspired by visual images, and visual images which would then be inscribed with poems and prose. Noticing and being able to interpret this indivisibility of visual/literary cultures is essential in understanding the social and psychological values embedded within the beauty of Japanese art.
Na lição
The Literary Photograph I
What methods did early modern Japanese artists and writers have at hand to “capture the moment,” and how did these methods influence the introduction and adaption of western photography in the mid-nineteenth century? In this module we will see how photographic modes of representation were assimilated into the literary tradition of portraiture, which was covered in modules 1 and 2.
(Former Affiliation) Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo (Current Affiliation) Director-General, National Institute of Japanese Literature
We've just looked at Nakane Sekkō's portrait from the 1860s.
Notice the writing in Japanese which is inscribed directly on his own portrait.
And then the Chinese-style quatrain here which he
took the time out to write on a piece of paper and to preserve,
make sure that he's preserving with the photo graph itself.
So sort of summary, again, of his life at the age 60, are of very,
very importance sort of milestone in the life of a Japanese samurai at this time.
We see a lot of photographs appearing from maybe 1864,
1865 through the last couple of years in the Edo period.
Here's one, again, a samurai sitting in a Western-style
chair but looking like a samurai with his Japanese clothes on and
his hair prepared in the traditional style.
There's nothing written on the obverse of the photograph.
There's just him sitting there with some space on top of him.
There are hundreds and hundreds of photographs like this,
obviously not just in Japan but all over the world at this time.
What we need to do, though, to make sure
that there's really nothing written on it though, it to turn the photograph over.
This is something that I've been doing for more than ten years now,
whenever I travel to the provinces or go to an old book store or
to a museum that has old Japanese photographs.
I immediately ask the proprietor or the owner to turn over the photograph,
so that I can see the back of it.
And often what we find is, writing, like this very,
very beautiful calligraphy, by the way.
Again, a Chinese-style quatrain by this samurai whose name is Ichikawa.
Nakane Sekkō at 60 had his portrait done,
and wrote his reflections on it to commemorate that birthday.
This man here, we know from the writing, has just turned 40.
Which is, again, 40, 50, 60, these are important birthdays,
and he writes about his willingness and eagerness to study.
Again, he reflects on the fact that he hasn't gotten as far as he wants to.
But he declares his commitment to improving himself and
to being a constructive, productive man in society at the time.
It's dated here 1862 and he also gives us his sign.
His signature says that this is a photograph of myself, he writes on
the back of his own photograph, which is an interesting act in itself, I believe.
We go on and move away from photographs to look at people's diaries,
their travelogues, all kinds of documents from the late
1860s into the Meiji period which begins in 1868.
Many of the samurai nobility sent their children, young men and
young women as well, to study abroad in the years right after the Meiji Restoration
to the United States, colleges there, or perhaps in England, in Scotland, Prussia.
Some even went to Italy, often many young men and women studied in France.
And we have a lot of bureaucrats in the new government as well,
traveling throughout the United States and Europe to discover, and explore, and
record, at first hand modern Western society.
Right about this time, for example,
in 1871 there was a large world agricultural exhibition going on.
There are different world exhibitions going on in different places in Europe and
the United States.
This is something throughout the 19th century, and into the early 20th century,
that Japanese young intellectuals, and bureaucrats, and industrialists would use,
take the opportunity, they would go to these world exhibitions.
So that they could learn about and record, often purchase
items which were right on line, were just coming onto line or
coming on line as new innovations in the Western world.
And what I've put up here is a short sort of excerpt that
I've translated from the travel log diary of a young
bureaucrat and poet as well whose name is Hosokawa Junjirō.
Who traveled to San Francisco in 1871 as part of his work to
attend the exhibition there.
He also moved from there.
After being in San Francisco, he took the railroad which had just joined
the east and the west of the United States in 1869, travelled to Chicago.
And was in Chicago during the Great Fire, the Great Chicago Fire there and
left a very, very detailed first-hand document in classical Chinese
of the mayhem and the destruction of the great city of Chicago in that year.
But anyway, before that, he's in San Francisco and he's walking around,
he's preparing, he's just arrived.
And on the 22nd day of the 6th month,
we're still in the lunar calendar so I don't want to say June.
In the sixth month here,
he's telling us what he did in the daytime before he went to work.
"I made a visit to the photographer's studio in order to have my portrait taken.
Recently, men and women use portrait photos as calling cards."
We've seen that in the case of Ms.
Harriet Lane, the niece of the United States president.
And we also know as a fact that in France and
in Britain and in the United States, by this point in the 1870s,
these photographic calling cards are very, very common.
He learns about this custom here for the first time.
And decides to go to a studio to have his portrait taken.
Sometimes people will actually request one photo.
This is fascinating.
A young Japanese bureaucrat in 1871,
pre-earthquake, San Francisco during the Gold Rush, and there are lots and
lots of different people, from all over the world visiting, and trying to work and
enriching themselves in the gold mine, in San Francisco at this time.
And he's there, he's walking around, and sometimes people,
when he's introduced to them as a representative of Japan, will ask him for
his photograph and that surprised him obviously, so he's prompted to go off and
have his own calling card made.
"Without a portrait photo then, one is basically left out in the cold."
In other words, in order to participate in polite society,
get your job done in San Francisco in 1871, you have to be carrying around
a small sort of parcel of portrait cards, and hand them out to people, so
that people will know your name and who you are, and so forth.
By the way, most Americans at this time, when they have these portrait
cards made, they will sign them on the back, they will perhaps write a simple
sort of commemoration to the person to whom they are giving it to.
They will date it sometimes.
But as we've seen in Japan with photographs, most Japanese people
will write something more extensive, or they will reflect on something.
And create a formal poem
to write specifically on this one image of themselves,
which is something that, again, we don't see very often in the West at this time.
Most of today was spent working at the exhibition hall.
We can imagine Junjiro walking off to the exhibition and being very, very
proud of himself and being able to sort of hand out picture calling cards of himself.
And I really don't know, how many of them survived and
whether he actually wrote on the backs of them or not.
But we can see this new technology and this new custom, which arose from
the technology of having your photograph taken and it representing you.
Exchanging images of your face and
your entire countenance with people and the sort of work or social context,
in order to embed yourself or to participate in local society
Robert Campbell(Former Affiliation) Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo
