Cover
Andō Hiroshige, Sekiguchi jōsui-bata Bashōan
Tsubakiyama (Bashō’s Hermitage and Camellia
Hill on the Kanda Aqueduct at Sekiguchi), 1857,
colour woodcut print, from: Meisho Edo hyakkei
(One Hundred Famous Views of Edo), Mackelvie
Trust Collection, Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tāmaki.
Published in 2014 by Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki on the occasion of
the exhibition Fragile Beauty: Historic Japanese Graphic Art at Auckland Art
Gallery Toi o Tāmaki 3 May – 8 November 2014
Director: Rhana Devenport
Curator: Mathew Norman
Contributing writers: Lawrence E Marceau and Doris de Pont
Editor: Clare McIntosh
Catalogue design: Christina Brooke
© 2014, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki and contributors
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
PO Box 5449
Cnr Kitchener and Wellesley Streets
Auckland
www.aucklandartgallery.com
10
11
Left
Figures 2–4
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Nagato no kuni Akama
no ura ni oite Genpei ōgassen Heike ichimon
kotogotoku horobiru zu (In the Great Battle
between the Minamoto and the Taira in Akama
Bay in Nagato Province, the Taira Clan is Utterly
Destroyed), c1845, colour woodblock prints,
Mackelvie Trust Collection, Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tāmaki.
12
13
From the Collections:
Historic Japanese Woodblock Prints
Mathew Norman
Of all the subjects which featured in Japanese woodblock prints
during the Edo period (1600–1868), it is the bijin-ga (pictures of
beauties) which are perhaps best known in the West. Fascinating
for their colourful descriptions of young women in exotic costumes,
bijin-ga exercised a powerful influence on the Western imagination.
However, bijin-ga represent only one theme among the many which
animated the artists and print-collecting public of Edo-period Japan.
By way of an introduction to the field, this essay provides an overview
of just six of the main themes, including pictures of beauties and
actors, depictions of warriors, landscapes, birds and flowers, and
privately printed surimono.
Published to accompany the exhibition Fragile Beauty: Historic
Japanese Graphic Art, the themes explored in this essay stem from the
approximately 300 Japanese woodblock prints in the collections of
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Most of these works date from the
last century of the Edo period when Japan was largely closed to the
outside world.The majority of the prints belong to the Mackelvie Trust
Collection, an important permanent loan of historic international works
of art.The date and circumstances under which the Trust acquired
those works is unclear, but a number were shown at the Gallery in
two exhibitions of private collections held in 1927 and 1934.1
Those
works acquired by the Gallery have been limited to a small number of
gifts and purchases, the latter apparently made without a view to the
structured growth of that aspect of the collection: one major lacuna
is the erotic shunga (spring pictures) which were so widely available
in pre-Meiji Japan.2
Despite this, the Gallery is able to present an
informative cross-section of thematic interests from the period in
question and illustrate the richness of the wider tradition.
Japanese Woodblock Prints in Context
Commonly known as ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world), the
Japanese colour woodblock print is the product of a long tradition
of graphic art that travelled to Japan from China, perhaps as early as
the 7th century. Ukiyo (floating world) has its origins in a Buddhist
term which characterised life as both fugitive and sorrowful. However,
by the mid-17th century, different characters had been used to
form a homonym which, inverting the meaning of the term, instead
emphasised the joy of temporary pleasures and even a certain
hedonism.3
This pleasure in evanescent or ‘perishable’4
things is
Left
Figure 1
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Actors Ichimura Uzaemon
XII as Ōboshi Yuranosuke, and Iwai Kumesaburo
III as Ōboshi Rikiya Yoshikane,1847, colour
woodblock print, from: Kanadehon Chūshingura
(The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), Mackelvie
Trust Collection, Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tāmaki.
14
part of a Japanese aesthetic which has no analogue in Western culture
and is perhaps best illustrated by the annual celebrations of blossoms
in spring and maple leaves in autumn.
Having come to signify pleasure, ukiyo-e would be inextricably linked
with the rise of the new urban middle class which characterised the
rapidly developing city of Edo (now Tokyo).The seat of the head of the
Tokugawa clan,Tokugawa Ieyasu, from 1590, and of his shogunate
(military dictatorship) from 1603, Edo grew swiftly during the course of
the 17th century, drawing in migrants from all over Japan. In addition
to the growing population of chōnin (townspeople), from 1635 Edo
played host to each of the provincial daimyo (lords) who were required
to spend half their time at the shoguns’ court. While this shift was
motivated by the centralising policies of the Tokugawa, it was mirrored
in the provinces by the increasing number of the military caste, the
samurai (those who serve), who had left their own country estates to
settle in towns and cities as salaried vassals of their daimyo.
The changing relationship between lord and vassal, at both national
and local levels, resulted in corresponding changes in the economy.
The samurai were salaried in rice, which they were obliged to sell
through merchants in order to fund their newly urban lifestyles. While
nominally at the top of the social hierarchy – summarised as shinō-kō-shō
(samurai, farmers, craftsmen, merchants) – the samurai
were increasingly reliant on the system of exchange controlled by
the merchants. Viewed as parasitic, merchants occupied the lowest
rank in the hierarchy (below even peasants). Despite this, the new
cash economy favoured merchants at the expense of their social
superiors.5
The financial success of this urban middle class was
viewed with suspicion by the authorities, whose use of sumptuary
laws was calculated to limit public expressions of wealth incompatible
with class. Rivaling the traditional elites in resources, the merchants
were nonetheless excluded from the sites of political power and high
culture. Partly as a result, they resorted to novel forms of culture,
including the popular kabuki theatre and woodblock prints.
Alongside kabuki theatre, with its origins in the early 17th century, and
to which it remained closely linked, the woodblock print became one
of the foremost expressions of the burgeoning but disenfranchised
urban population. What the mirror of official society did not reflect,
uikyo-e recorded in dramatic detail: from kabuki to courtesans, erotica
to actors, ukiyo-e were central to the developing sense of identity for
a community whose pleasures were both more earthy and tinged with
an official approbation which, doubtless, added a certain frisson to
their enjoyment. As a result, both kabuki and ukiyo-e were subject to
repeated interventions by the shoguns’ government, which sought
to control and even suppress entirely these expressions of popular
culture. It is a measure of the popularity of the prints and inherent
flaws within the Tokugawa shogunate that few such measures enjoyed
lasting success, and both prints and the popular theatre thrived.
Above
Figure 2
Keisai Eisen, Nakamanji-rō Yatsuhashi
(Courtesan Yatsuhashi of the Nakamanji-rō
House), 1815–42, colour woodblock print,
from: Keisei Gokenjin (Courtesans of Five
Houses), Mackelvie Trust Collection,
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
15
Given the market economy, the themes which occupied the
imaginations of woodblock artists reflected the interests of their
public and covered a wide range of topics. Perhaps most notable
of the themes selected for this exhibition are images of actors from
the kabuki theatre (fig 1) and courtesans of the Yoshiwara ‘pleasure
district’ of Edo (fig 2). Closely connected to kabuki, portrayals of
great warriors from Japanese and Chinese history were also firm
favourites. Landscape came into its own as a distinct and highly
popular genre only in the late 1820s, while depictions of flowers and
birds and the privately printed surimono reflect an aesthetic informed
by, and coupled with, literary and poetic interests. Regardless of its
subject matter, each print was the product of a highly specialised
production process.
Woodblock Printing
The production of Japanese woodblock prints required the
collaborative efforts of four people: the ukiyo-eshi (artist), designer
of the image; the horishi (block-cutter), who cut the design onto
the blocks; the surishi (printer), who inked and printed the blocks;
and the hanmoto (publisher), the commissioner and coordinator of
the project.6
Working to the publisher’s commission, the artist would produce a
design in ink on thin paper which was then adhered face down on
the prepared surface of a block of fine-grained wood, often mountain
cherry (Prunus donarium Sieb. var. spontanea Makino).This facilitated
the cutting of the keyblock which carried the overall design.The
block-cutter would rub away much of the paper, leaving the design
exposed, before cutting around the artist’s lines, removing the wood
from areas that did not need to print. Fine tools were used to cut
around delicate lines, such as those depicting hair, while broad areas
of wood were removed with larger chisel-like tools.
Proofs from the keyblock were then printed, enabling the artist to
establish his choice of colours. As each colour required the cutting
of a separate block, the marked proof impressions would then go
through the same process.The print would only be complete when
each block was printed on the prepared sheet, carefully aligned with
the aid of kentō (registration marks).
This system had been perfected by the mid-18th century, enabling
multiple colours to be printed on one sheet and reaching a highpoint
in the nishiki-e (brocade pictures) in the 1760s, so-called
because of the similarity to richly coloured, figured silk brocades.
Techniques including karazuri (gauffrage or blind printing), kimedashi
(embossing) and burnishing presented artists with the opportunity
to mimic textures as diverse as fabrics and feathers, through to the
highly polished finish of lacquer. Such expensive and time-consuming
techniques were limited to high-status items, notably the privately
printed surimono.
16
Surimono: Art of Poets
The examples of surimono (printed thing) in this exhibition are all in the
shikishiban (square paper size) format and are largely representative
of the saitan (New Year’s Day) surimono which were popular gifts at
that time of year (fig 3). Each is inscribed with one or more poems
in the kyōka (‘witty’ or ‘crazy’) format of 31-syllables, mimicking the
ancient structure of courtly waka (Japanese verse) poetry. Kyōka poetry
often parodies the conventional subjects of waka, while the complex
relationship between image and text elicits unexpected meanings.
Among the most refined of Japanese prints, the surimono occupies
a special place in the history of printmaking. Unlike the majority of
prints in this exhibition, which were produced for the mass market,
surimono were not subject to the same commercial imperatives.
Produced for private circulation, often among kyōka poetry groups, but
also as announcements and for commemorative purposes, surimono
show some of the finest printmaking techniques which were simply
too expensive or labour-intensive for those prints intended for the
general market. In addition to conventional colour printing, surimono
were printed on thick and absorbent paper, embossed, burnished and
enriched with reflective metallic powders, giving voice to the fullest
extent of creative expression in Japanese printmaking.
While the word was first recorded in the 11th century, surimono – in
the modern sense – appear to have come of age in the mid-18th
century, before adapting in the 1810s to the shikishiban seen in the
exhibition, which itself succumbed to the economic turmoil of the
1830s.7
Japanese enthusiasm for these prints was emulated in the
West later in the 19th century when surimono, along with other ukiyo-e,
were widely collected and had a marked impact on European avantgarde
art. Perhaps as a result of this enthusiasm, an industry evolved to
cater for demand by reproducing early surimono, including Katsushika
Hokusai’s Vases, Trays and Materials for Flower Arrangement; The
Flower Shell, originally published in 1821 (fig 4). Of varying quality,
some of these reproductions were sold in wrappers with English labels,
pointing to an external market. 8
Bijin-ga: Pictures of Beauties
Perhaps the best known of the themes represented in the exhibition
are prints of beauties. Generally these images capture the selfconscious
splendour of the Yoshiwara, the walled district of Edo in
which prostitution was licensed by the shoguns’ government from
1617 – ceasing only in 1958. Elegant young women, often in dazzling
costumes, are represented in conformity with ideals of beauty which
only applied within the confines of the Yoshiwara, a prime locus of the
‘floating world’ (fig 5). Manufactured traditions, distinctive modes of
dress and deportment, and even a unique patois, characterised the
closed nature of the community into which girls as young as seven
were sold for training as kamuro (apprentices). Having graduated to
one of the three ranks of shinzo (newly constructed) in her early teens,
Above
Figure 3
Utagawa Kunisada, Woman from a Samurai
Household on a Visit to a Shrine, early 1830s,
colour woodblock print, Mackelvie Trust
Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
Above
Figure 4
Katsushika Hokusai, Vases, Trays and Materials
for Flower Arrangement; The Flower Shell,
Unknow artist after 1821, colour woodblock
print, from: Genroku kasen kai-awase (A
Matching Game with the Genroku Poem Shells),
Mackelvie Trust Collection, Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tāmaki.
17
a girl might be a prostitute in her own right, or wait upon an oiran
(high-ranking courtesan) as part of a larger retinue (fig 6).
The formative years of these indentured children were spent being
instructed in the social graces and cultural attainments deemed
necessary for a courtesan whose clientele might include the elite of
Edo society. Calligraphy and the composition of poetry featured on
the curriculum, sometimes under the tutelage of respected teachers.
However, such intellectual cultivation was only the corollary of
instruction from a yarite (brothel supervisor) in the sale of sex.
Mythologised in the West and often mistakenly conflated with
geisha (entertainers – who did at times function as prostitutes), the
courtesans of the Yoshiwara drew visitors from all over Japan. Ukiyo-e
promoted the cult-like following of these women, idealising their
beauty, praising their accomplishments and, almost without exception,
ignoring the unsanitary and unsavoury aspects of life in the Yoshiwara.
Nonetheless, combined with the yoshiwara saiken (Yoshiwara
guidebooks) and yūjo hyobanki (courtesan critiques), providing detailed
information of the brothels and their denizens, bijin-ga provide a
detailed picture of life within the ‘pleasure quarter’.
Musha-e: Warriors
Whereas the Heian period (794–1185) had been marked by relative
stability and the efflorescence of aristocratic culture, the following
centuries of Japanese history were punctuated by military disturbances
as the power of the throne dissipated and provincial warlords vied
for power. Despite the founding of the first, Kamakura, shogunate in
1185, it was not until the founding of the third shogunate, that of the
Tokugawa in 1603, that Japan would enjoy a prolonged peace.
The intervening period of instability saw the rise of a military caste,
the samurai, whose feudal relationships with provincial lords became
one of the defining characteristics of Japanese society. But Tokugawa
Japan had little need for the hereditary samurai, whose militancy and
feudal ties were at odds with the prevailing centralisation of power.
And though the name of the shoguns’ government, bakufu (tent
government), pointed to the military origins of the system, Japan’s
continuing internal peace made the inherited duties of the samurai
caste increasingly redundant.
Nevertheless samurai had come to occupy a special place in the
popular imagination and tales of heroic deeds were repeated in literary
accounts, including the Kanadehon Chushingura, the Heike Monogatari
and tales of the exploits of the 12th-century hero Minamoto no
Yoshitsune.The latter figure appears in the design for a triptych
by Utagawa Yoshitora (active 1850–70), seated at the apex of the
appropriately titled Eiyū-zoroi (A Gathering of Heroes) (fig 7). Not all
subjects were exclusively Japanese: the rich legacy of Japan’s historic
relations with China included numerous literary accounts of ancient
heroes, one of whom, Chohi (Chinese: Zhang Fei), features in an
Above
Figure 5
Keisai Eisen, Imayō sugata kagami (Voluptuous
Forms in the Mirror Following the Latest Trends),
1815–42, colour woodblock print, Mackelvie
Trust Collection, Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tāmaki.
Above
Figure 6
Keisai Eisen, Ōgiya uchi Hanaōgi Yoshino
Tatsuta (Courtesan Hanaōgi of the Ōgiya House
and Her Two Apprentices Yoshino and Tatsuta),
1815–42, colour woodblock print, from: (ShinYoshiwara
zensei) Shichikenjin (Seven ‘Sages’
of the Seven Houses, at the Pinnacle of ShinYoshiwara),
Mackelvie Trust Collection,
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
18
Left
Figure 8
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Sangokushi Chōhan hashi
no zu (The Three Kingdoms: Chōhan Bridge),
1852, colour woodblock prints, Auckland Art
Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of the relatives of Mr
T V Gulliver, 1939.
Left
Figure 7
Utagawa Yoshitora, Eiyū-zoroi (A Gathering of
Heroes), 1860, ink, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o
Tāmaki, purchased 1971.
Far left
Figure 9
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Nakamura Utaemon
IV as Kō no Moronao, under Attack by Onoe
Kikugorō III as Oboshi Yuranosuke, 1847, colour
woodblock print, from: Kanadehon Chūshingura
(The Treasury of Loyal Retainers), Mackelvie
Trust Collection, Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tāmaki.
Left
Figure 10
Utagawa Kunimori II, Actor Sawamura
Gennosuke II, 1817–31, colour woodblock
print, Mackelvie Trust Collection, Auckland Art
Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
19
impressive triptych by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), showing the
battle of the Chohan Bridge from the 3rd century (fig 8).
Yakusha-e: Actors
Closely related to musha-e are the pictures of actors of the kabuki
theatre. Performing plays which often draw on historic events (albeit
carefully altered in order to avoid censorship by the government,
such as the Kanadehon Chushingura (fig 9)) kabuki was the object of
widespread enthusiasm among the chōnin. As a result, yakusha-e were
the most popular of all ukiyo-e prints.
Unlike the elite nō theatre, kabuki had its origins in popular open-air
dances performed on the dry bed of the Kano River in Kyoto in the
early 17th century. While it borrowed from the traditions of both nō and
the comic kyōgen theatres, kabuki rapidly evolved its own conventions
and repertoire, even diversifying to include regional variations: the
aragoto (rough stuff) of Edo and wagoto (soft stuff) of the Kamigata
(Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka). Such was the popularity of kabuki that, as
early as 1629, the government banned actresses; only to then ban, in
1652, the attractive youths who had taken their place in the affections
of the audiences. As such, kabuki relied on an all-male cast featuring
onnagata (woman person; men cast in female roles) (fig 11).
Appearing at the very end of the 17th century with the first singlesheet
ukiyo-e prints, images of kabuki actors remained a perennial
favourite with fans of theatre and ukiyo-e in general. Popular actors
enjoyed ‘rock star’ status among devotees, who collected images of
their idols both in and out of role (fig 10).The government periodically
sought to stifle the cult around the theatre and its stars, targeting
related ukiyo-e during both the Kansei (1790s) and Tenpo (1841–3)
reforms. In the former, close-up portraits in the ōkubi-e (large head
pictures), such as those depicting actors, were banned; while in
the latter, portraits of actors were banned outright. It is a measure
of the popularity of such prints that publishers and artists saw fit to
risk punishment by circumventing the law – placing their subjects in
historic or literary settings in order to overcome the prohibitions of the
shogunate.
Fūkeiga: Landscapes
In marked contrast to the internecine strife of the preceding centuries,
the prolonged peace of the Edo period (1600–1868) made travel
through the country relatively safe. At the same time, the development
of the Gokaidō (five highways) facilitated the regular movement of
daimyo between their provincial seats and the capital and made travel
much easier. A network of inns and restaurants sprang up, forming an
association in 1804, servicing travellers who, defying the government’s
opposition, often concealed their leisure travel under the guise of
pilgrimages (fig 12).
20
Fūkeiga (landscape pictures) developed into a distinct genre from the
late 1820s, in part reflecting the growing interest in domestic tourism,
itself stemming from an older tradition of meisho (‘named’ or famous
places), but prompted in the main by the widespread availability
of the synthetic, fade-resistant dye bero-ai (Berlin or Prussian
blue).9
Landscape elements had long been incorporated in prints
of other subjects, notably as backdrops to depictions of beauties.
The emergence and sudden perfection of the genre in the work of
Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) and Ando Hiroshige (1797–1858),
and the subsequent spread of their prints to the West, has given the
genre worldwide fame.
An example of Hokusai’s masterly union of subject and technique is
seen in the print, Sōshū Shichiri-ga-hama (Shichiri-ga-hama [beach]
in Suruga Province) (fig 13) from the Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji,
of which the famous Kanagawa-oki nami-ura (Under the Wave, off
Kanagawa, also known as The Great Wave) is also part.The view of
Shichiri-ga-hama terminates in the monumental form of Mount
Fuji, floating upon a bank of clouds, while the tension between the
scale of the trees and huts in the middle ground reveals a certain
playfulness. Executed entirely in bero-ai, the careful gradations of the
single colour – achieved through bokashi, the judicious wiping of ink
over the surface the block – demonstrate the painterly potential of this
graphic art.
Kāchoga: Pictures of Flowers and Birds
Of the themes canvased in the exhibition, kāchoga perhaps best
illustrates the influence of the historic schools of painting that
flourished in Japan, including Kanō, Rimpa and Shijō. Each school was
part of a long tradition influenced by examples of Chinese painting
imported into the country, and through the small number of Chinese
artists who had been active in Japan. In both countries, paintings
of flowers and birds formed one of the three principal genres in
traditional painting, alongside landscape and human figures.
In turn, ukiyo-e masters of kāchoga drew on these traditions to form
a unique vision in print, revealing flowers, birds and other animals
in vivid forms. However, recording the physical reality of any subject
was not the sole intent of the kāchoga artist, who also sought to
capture the spiritual and cultural significance of the subject. Freighted
with meaning, images of flowers, birds and other animals fulfil dual
functions. On the one hand, these images give expression to an
aesthetic interest in nature, though not for the purposes of botanical
or ornithological accuracy. On the other, subjects were linked to times
of the year (the seasons and the months of the lunar calendar), the
Chinese zodiac, personality traits and specific events such as festivals.
The small number of kāchoga in the Gallery’s collections permit only
a narrow view of this rich genre. Nevertheless, the four woodblock
examples included in the exhibition draw our attention to the finesse
21
Left
Figure 12
Andō Hiroshige, Ōyama, Fujisan, Kōrai-ji-yama
(No. 8, Hiratsuka: Mount Ōyama, Mount Fuji
and the Mountain of Kōrai-ji), 1850–1, colour
woodblock print, from: Tōkaidō-Gojūsan tsugi
no uchi (The Tōkaidō Road – The Fifty-three
Stations), Mackelvie Trust Collection, Auckland
Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
Left
Figure 13
Katsushika Hokusai, Sōshū Shichiri-ga-hama
(Shichiri-ga-hama [beach] in Suruga Province),
1830–33, colour woodblock print, from: Fugaku
sanjurokkei (Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji),
Mackelvie Trust Collection, Auckland Art Gallery
Toi o Tāmaki.
Left
Figure 11
Utagawa Kunisada, Actors Sawamura Tanosuke
III as Koshimoto Okaru, Bandō Hikosaburō V
as Hayano Kanpei, and Nakamura Gantarō as
Sagisaka Bannai, 1862, colour woodblock
prints, from: Kanadehon Chūshingura (The
Treasury of Loyal Retainers), Auckland Art
Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, gift of the relatives of Mr T
V Gulliver, 1939.
22
with which individual animals (in this case, all birds) were wrought in
print, capturing the lively movement of swallows on the wing (fig 14),
or the playful glance of a sparrow perched on dangling wisteria in
bloom (fig 15).The much larger impression of Falcon on a Pine Branch,
Rising Sun Above by Utagawa Toyoshige (1777–1835) presents a view
of the elaborate arrangement of feathers on the wings and tail of a
falcon (fig 16), apparently mimicking the mikaeri (looking back) pose
used in bijin-ga. Each, in its own way, evokes distinct moments in time
and, in the last case, the noble mien of an animal long associated with
the aristocratic and military elites.
Like the related exhibition, this essay points to the richness of
Japanese woodblock prints and the milieu in which they were
generated. Ukiyo-e enjoy a close relationship to painting in the
same genre, and it is worth noting that the sensibility that animated
woodblock artists drove the work not only of contemporary painters
(and the two were often one and the same), but also writers, poets
and playwrights. And while Japan had been forced to open to the
world in the mid-1850s, the Meiji Restoration of 1868 fundamentally
altered the complexion of Japanese society through a radical policy
of modernisation which drew heavily on European models. As such,
the six thematic groups examined here provide a compelling record of
Japanese culture during the closing phase of the Edo period.
Far left
Figure 14
Andō Hiroshige, Swallows and Iris Blossoms,
1853, colour woodblock print, Mackelvie Trust
Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
lMiddle left
Figure 15
Andō Hiroshige, Sparrow and Wisteria, 19th
century, colour woodblock print, Mackelvie Trust
Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
Left
Figure 16
Utagawa Toyoshige, Falcon on a Pine Branch,
Rising Sun Above, 1790–1804, colour
woodblock print, Mackelvie Trust Collection,
Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki.
23
1.	 The first exhibition drew on the collections of Harry Sproston Dadley and Captain G
Humphreys-Davies, but only works from the latter collection can be safely identified
among the Gallery’s collection. Of the 121 catalogue entries, 39 can be securely
identified against works currently in the Mackelvie Trust Collection. See Catalogue
of a Loan Collection of Japanese Colour Prints Owned by Mr H S Dadley and Capt G
Humpreys-Davies, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, 1927.
Some of the works identified in the 1927 catalogue, and which are now in the
Mackelvie Trust Collection, featured again in the 1934 exhibition, indicating that
they had not been acquired by the Mackelvie Trust at that time. See Catalogue
of a Loan Collection of Japanese Colour Prints from the Collection of Capt G
Humphreys-Davies, Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, 1934. Dadley died in 1933 and
his collection did not feature in the 1934 exhibition where, again, the catalogue
enables us to identify works from Humphreys-Davies’ collection which are now in
the Gallery’s collection.
2.	 For a recent study of shunga, see Timothy Clark, C Andrew Gerstle, et al (eds),
Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art,The British Museum Press, London,
2013.
3.	 Amy Reigle Newland (ed), The Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints,
Hotei Publishing, Amsterdam, 2005, vol 1, p 47, vol 2, p 500.
4.	 Donald Keene, The Pleasures of Japanese Literature, Columbia University Press,
New York, 1988, pp 18–22.
5.	 Harold Bolitho,‘The Edo Period, 1603–1868’ in Reigle Newland, The Hotei
Encyclopedia, vol 1, p 22–3.
6.	 For a detailed account of the production process of woodblock prints in the
Japanese tradition, see Shiko Sasaki,‘Materials and Techniques’, in Reigle Newland,
The Hotei Encyclopedia, vol 1, pp 325–50.
7.	 For a concise introduction to surimono, see Roger Keyes, The Art of Surimono:
Privately Published Japanese Woodblock Prints and Books in the Chester Beatty
Library, Dublin, Sotheby Publications, London, 1985, vol 1, pp 13–40.
8.	 For an analysis of the different types of copies, and a list of relevant examples: as
above, pp 509–21.
9.	 Ellis Tinios argues that, alone, the growth of leisure travel and publications
depicting meisho (‘named’ or famous places) cannot account for the sudden
popularity of landscape prints, instead emphasising the newly affordable bero-ai,
which was both fade-resistant and more stable than traditional blue dyes. See Ellis
Tinio,‘Diversification and Further Popularization of the Full-colour Woodblock Print,
c1804–68’, in Reigle Newland, The Hotei Encyclopedia, vol 1, pp 204–5.
Further reading
Cynthea J Bogel, Israel Goldman, et al, Hiroshige: Birds and Flowers,
George Braziller, New York, 1988.
John T Carpenter, Reading Surimono: The Interplay of Text and Image in
Japanese Prints, Hotei Publishing, Leiden, 2008.
Timothy Clark, C Andrew Gerstle, et al (eds), Shunga: Sex and Pleasure
in Japanese Art,The British Museum Press, London, 2013.
Roger Keyes, The Art of Surimono: Privately Published Japanese
Woodblock Prints and Books in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin,
2 vols, Sotheby Publications, London, 1985.
Amy Reigle Newland (ed), The Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese
Woodblock Prints, 2 vols, Hotei Publishing, Amsterdam, 2005.
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