The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 14 | Issue 16 | Number 2 | Article ID 4941 | Aug 15, 2016

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Selections from “Ukiyo-e Landscapes and Edo Scenic Places”

Nagai Kafū

Translated and introduced by Kyoko Selden and Alisa Freedman

Introduction

Author Nagai Kafū (1879-1959; given nameNagai Sōkichi ) is best known for hisfictionalized personal travel accounts AmericanStories (Amerika monogatari, 1908) and FrenchStories (Furansu monogatari, 1915), shortstories and novellas about Tokyo courtesansand low-ranking geisha, and an extensiveillustrated diary, Dyspepsia House Diary(Danchōtei nichijō, 1917-59). Kafū wasfascinated with Edo-period (1603-1868)culture, especially that of the chōnin, or urbancommoners. He prided himself on hisresemblance to Edo literati, such as poet ŌtaNanpo (also known as Shokusanjin, discussedin the selection below), who used kyōka(playful, often satirical, poetry) as an elegantform of veiled social commentary. Kafūchallenged authority throughout his career, asevidenced in his professed dislike of Meiji-period (1868-1912) leaders, his opposition tothe war and Japanese militarism in the 1930sand 1940s, and conflicts with censors andpublishers.

“Ukiyo-e Landscapes and Edo Scenic Places”(Ukiyo-e no sansuiga to Edo meisho) firstappeared in 1914 in the journal Mita bungaku(Mita Literature), the literary organ of KeiōUniversity that Kafū helped to edit. It wasreprinted, along with additional essays between1913 and 1918 on ukiyo-e, theater, andliterature, in a 1920 book On Edo Art (Edogeijutsu-ron) published by Shunyōdō. Perhapsin homage to the culture he describes, Kafūrewrote these essays in his own version of Edo-

period prose style, influenced by classicalChinese and replete with wordplays, literaryallusions, and parenthetical references. Thebook was published without illustrations, buthis detailed descriptions enabled readers tovisualize the colorful prints and sense themoods that they evoked. Kafū collected ukiyo-ein Japan and was widely read in the history ofWestern art.

In addition to offering a wealth of informationabout ukiyo-e artists, schools, and movementsand introducing texts written in English andFrench about them, this lyrical essayepitomizes many of the themes of Kafū’sliterature and shows the faith he had in theability of artists to capture the tenor of theirtimes and the power of art to shape the wayspeople view cities. In particular, Kafū soughtthrough ukiyo-e landscapes access to daily lifein the Tokugawa city of Edo, which he idealizedas more refined, “honest,” and less pretentiousthan early twentieth-century Tokyo (the citythat Edo became). Ukiyo-e, like kabuki andkyōka poetry, was also a means to understandhow people expressed themselves under rigidgovernment censorship. At the end of this five-part essay, Kafū goes as far as to say thatukiyo-e died in the Meiji period.

An annotated, illustrated translation of “Ukiyo-e Landscapes and Edo Scenic Places” in itsentirety was published in the Review ofJapanese Culture and Society, vol. XXIV(December 2012): 210-32. The followingexcerpt (mostly from the third section), inwhich Kafū closely examines prints by Utagawa

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Hiroshige (1797-1858), well displays Kafū’sattention to visual details, contextualization ofukiyo-e in Western and Japanese art history,and attention to the profundity of seeminglyordinary urban places and practices. Kafū’svivid descriptions of specific ukiyo-e landscapesalmost seem like literary urban sketches, as ifhe were leading his reader through the streetsof Edo and explaining how to view the scenery.

Hiroshige’s Edo landscapes include single-sheet prints of simultaneously occurring sceneslike those in One Hundred Famous Views ofEdo (Meisho Edo hyakkei, 1856-58), EightViews of the Suburbs of Edo (Edo kinkō hakkeino uchi, around 1838), Famous Places in theEastern Capital (Tōto meisho, 1831-32), ScenicViews of Edo (Kōto shōkei, between 1833 and1842), Famous Restaurants of Edo (Edo kōmeikaitei zukushi, 1852-53), and Scenic Slopes ofEdo (Edo meisho saka zukushi, 1844-53), aswell as those included in such picture books asEdo Souvenirs (Edo miyage, 10 vols., 1850-57)and Famous Places in Edo with Kyōka (KyōkaEdo meisho zue, 16 vols, 1856).

Utagawa Hiroshige, Ships EnterTsukudajima Port (Tsukudajima irifune nozu) from the series Famous Places in the

Eastern Capital. Courtesy of JordanSchnitzer Museum of Art, University of

Oregon.

Westerners who have a good eye for paintingmost likely regard Hiroshige and Hokusai asJapan’s two master landscape artists. Thesetwo masters portrayed similar geographicalareas numerous times based on Westernperspective drawing and the study of life inukiyo-e. However, their stylistic differences areobvious at first sight. Hokusai added elementsof nanga and Western painting to ukiyo-e.1 ButHiroshige seems to have exclusively followedthe style of Hanabusa Itchō (1652-1724), whobranched off from the Kanō School.2 Hokusai’sstyle is strong and firm, while Hiroshige’s isgentle and calm. Despite the fact thatHiroshige’s technique for depicting the study oflife is often more minutely detailed, at a glance,his work always appears purer and lighter thanHokusai’s sōga.3 To make a literary analogy,Hokusai recalls travelogues that abundantlyemploy ornate kanji epithets, while Hiroshigeresembles the flowing style of gesaku writerswho smoothly describe minute details.4 Themasterpieces of Hokusai’s mature period oftenmake us sense something that is not Japanese,as I have discussed, but Hiroshige’s worksgreet us with more Japanese, purely regionalfeelings. The latter’s art does not exist apartfrom the Japanese climate. I considerHiroshige’s landscapes and Ogata Kōrin’s(1658-1716) flowering plants to be the mostimportant art that richly conveys thecharacteristics of the Japanese milieu.

On choosing a landscape to depict, Hokusaiwas not content to present the landscape itselfbut instead always surprised viewers with hisunconventional designs. Hiroshige’s approach,on the other hand, was so unvaryingly calmthat he tended to be somewhat monotonousand lacking in variety. Hokusai took pleasure inpresenting mountains and waters dynamicallywith storms, lightning, and torrents. Hiroshigewas at his best in adding greater calm to alonely night scene with rain, snow, moonlight,and bright stars. Figures in Hokusai’slandscapes are strenuously at work, or if not,they gesture at landscapes in admiration or

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amazement. In Hiroshige’s pictures, a boatmanrowing does not seem to be in a hurry to get toa destination, and a traveler in a hat onhorseback always seems tired or half asleep.Those who walk on the crowded streets of Edolook as if they were ready to spend a long daywith a dog by the roadside. Through the twodifferent approaches demonstrated in theirworks, we can readily see the sharplycontrasting dispositions of these masterlandscape artists.

Utagawa Hiroshige, Ryōgoku in theEastern Capital (Tōto Ryōgoku) from the

series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji.Courtesy of Jordan Schnitzer Museum of

Art, University of Oregon.

After choosing a landscape, Hokusai sharpened

his awareness, set his expectations high, andinvariably took great pains to come up withsome new design or device. Hiroshige, on thecontrary, seemed to pick up his brush with easeas he observed and as interest moved himwithout reserve. Hokusai’s pictures are alwaysintentional, even his fast, sketchy drawings,although they seem as if he only arrived thereafter painstaking effort and refinement. On theother hand, Hiroshige’s simplified drawingsseem like mere products of occasionalimprovisation. When comparing masterdrawings used to carve the woodblocks (ukiyo-ehanshita), those by Hiroshige make it seem thathe never worked hard as Hokusai did. At onepoint, so many reprints were made fromHiroshige’s woodblocks that the results werequite crude. Even if we look at his oldest andmost carefully reproduced prints, his colortones rarely stir the delicate pleasure that weexperience when facing Hokusai’s nishiki-e. Inparticular, in One Hundred Famous Views ofEdo, produced in the Ansei period (1854-59), inHiroshige’s later years, the green and redcoloring, among other qualities, greatlydisappoints us despite the creative designs anddelightfully agile brushstrokes. Hiroshige usedblack ink for drawing outlines as in traditionalJapanese painting and used coloring only as aconvenient way to compensate for themonotony of a scene. Even so, nobody couldhope to equal him in skillfully creating acomplex, beautiful effect by the arrangement oftwo or three colors. See, for example, how hecontrasts the blue flowing water and theevening glow of the pink sky against the whiteclouds, or how he arranges a boat with a yellowthatched roof between the blue evening riverand the uniformly grey sky. The extremelysimple and clear coloring is the very reasonthat the viewer can freely experience the feel oftime, air, and light.

In the catalogue for the 1898 ukiyo-e exhibitioncurated by Kobayashi Bunshichi (1861-1923),the American Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908)comments on Hiroshige’s picture of Mount

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Atago:5 “A distant view of the sea, dotted withwhite sails, skillfully suggests soft winds andalso spontaneously conveys the reflection oflight in the distance. Small figures as in thework of his contemporary English masterpainter Turner, are often no more than a row ofwooden stakes, but this also helps to emphasizevarious points of the landscape.” About theview of the Eitai Bridge, he writes: “Thepresentation of the boats should be calledfundamental and grammatical. The artisteffectively combines two-shade coloring andblack-and-white drawings, contributing to theclear demarcation of parts. It is beyond theachievements of colors in oil painting. I preferthis work to Whist ler ’s most famouscopperplate etching.”

Because the [Japanese] translation is quite stiffand the explanation of the art is minimal, thosewho do not remember the 1898 exhibition haveno way of clearly knowing which printsFenollosa is praising.6 However, this praiseprovides a sense of the characteristics ofHiroshige’s prints.

Among Hiroshige’s depictions of the famousplaces of Edo are the series of horizontal printsFamous Places in the Eastern Capital andScenic Views of Edo and the series of verticalprints One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.Although these collections depict the samelandscapes of the Edo urban areas andsuburbs, the dates of publication and thedifference between horizontal and verticalsettings naturally create distinctive artisticstyles. Famous Places in the Eastern Capitaland Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaido(Tōkaido gojū-san tsugi no uchi, 1833-34) havehorizontal arrangements based on minute studyof life, and the coloring is not especially vivid.Thus they make us experience the kind ofcharm that we have generally come to expectfrom ukiyo-e. On the other hand, One HundredFamous Views of Edo unfortunately deviatesfrom realistic study, and despite the absolutefreedom of brushwork and the extremely

unconventional composition, the coloring in theprints is far from beautiful. In particular, thedeep, raw red and green hues greatlydisappoint us. This makes us sense how ukiyo-eprinting skills degenerated with eachsuccessive year starting in the Tenpō period(1830-44). At the end of a monograph on thelife of Kitagawa Utamaro,7 Edmond deGoncourt wrote that Hiroshige strove to returncolor prints to what they had been in Utamaro’sheyday but that he never succeeded.

To collect all the pictures of Famous Places inthe Eastern Capital and explain them in greatdetail, as Goncourt did of Hokusai’s andUtamaro’s work, is beyond my present scope.Therefore I will select two or three importantexamples of the places Hiroshige enjoyedpainting in different ways.

F i rs t , H i rosh ige en joyed dep ic t ingKasumigaseki Hill, where the white walls ofdaimyō houses continue near the great EdoCastle from the Benkei Canal of OuterSakurada. One picture presents a summerafternoon after a sudden rain shower. A largerainbow has boldly appeared at an angle in thebroad sky above the hill, with a lookout stationat the top, and commoners’ houses and sails inthe Shibaura Bay below. But aside from awoman with her umbrella half closed and thechild accompanying her, no passers-by seem tonotice the beautiful rainbow. Passers-byinclude samurai in formal clothing, eachwearing a pair of swords; a townsman in asummer kimono jacket decorated in a finepattern; and merchant venders carrying whatseems to be a box of medicinal loquat leaves orfans, who shield their faces under large sedgehats, looking somewhat troubled by the windthat sweeps the hems of their clothes. Thesefigures show the care with which the artisttries to let the viewer imagine how high the hillis. In another picture, on both sides of theclimbing slope we can see long houses withgrey roofs, white walls, and pale indigostonewalls in their foundations, and the Sannō

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Shrine festival procession of floats and peoplewearing hats adorned with flowers. Thesedetails are accompanied by the distant view ofthe slope and houses as far as the eye can see,becoming gradually more distant and smaller.Needless to say, the contrast between theprocession of people wearing hats with flowersor parasols and the houses on both sides seenfrom above and the perspective approach areextremely refreshing.

Utagawa Hiroshige, Sannō FestivalProcession on Kasumigaseki (Tōto

Kasumigaseki Sannōsai nerikomi no zu).Courtesy of Jordan Schnitzer Museum of

Art, University of Oregon.

The landscape from the Eitai Bridge to TsukudaIsland and Teppōzu and the arc of the seashorefrom Takanawa to Shinagawa most easily allowHiroshige to produce the best and simplestpictures of water and sky, bridges, and boats.First, toward the bottom left part of the longbridge depicted at an angle is a lonely nightcarriage and a man with his head and cheekswrapped in a towel. To the right of the vastwater, Tsukuda Island at night floats like acloud, and to the left, specks of lamplight glowfrom the windows of courtesan houses in theNew Yoshiwara, facing the fires of the ice-fishing boats scattered on the water. A fullmoon floats between the masts of large boats

anchored for the night, and, in that vast sky isthe faint form of cuckoo or a line of wild geese.These are the characteristics that permitted thesimplest and most charming cityscapes thatHiroshige strove to depict.

Everyone knows that snow heightens thebeauty of various Edo landscapes. Hiroshige’smost outstanding landscapes in the snowinclude those of Ochanomizu, the stone steps ofthe Yushima Tenjin Shrine, the embankment ofSusaki Bay at high tide, and Yabukōji Street inShiba, while Mukōjima, the Nihonbashi Bridge,and the Yoshiwara embankment, contrary toexpectations, did not inspire masterpieces.Hiroshige set a snowy landscape in the yearendmarket at Asakusa’s Sensōji Temple. There, thebrightly white roof of the temple rises sharplyagainst the sky full of dancing snowflakes, asgroups of countless umbrellas climb the steps.This picture is rather unexpected from thebrush of Hiroshige, who always preferredloneliness and quiet grace.

The Mimeguri Shrine in Mukōjima, the HashibaFerry, Imado, Masaki, the San’ya Moat, andMatsuchi Hill are famous places that couldinspire any artist to create great landscapes.8

This was certainly the case for Hiroshige. Whatwe should note, however, is that despite thefact that he was also skilled at human portraitsas a student of Utagawa Toyohiro (1773-1828),he deliberately avoided the large crowds ofpeople viewing cherry blossoms, even whendepicting the Sumida River. Instead, Hiroshigeconsistently sought the calm of rushes andwhite sails. Consider Cherry Blossoms in FullSpring along the Sumida River (Sumidagawahanazakari) in Famous Places in the EasternCapital . Hiroshige f irst presents theembankment that rises like a hill. As one looksup at the cherry blossoms on the embankmentfrom the vast river, one can only imagine thecrowds of people coming and going. Also, uponthe water, there are no roofed pleasure boatswith courtesans, sake, and revelers. Instead wesee fishing boats, rafts, and seagulls. Such an

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inclination is particularly striking in Hiroshige’srepresentations of the Yoshiwara.

The scenes he preferred to depict were not thesplendors of a magnificent district that neverseemed to sleep but the loneliness of men,heads covered with cloth, hands tucked in theirkimono, walking after midnight in twos andthrees, looking cold outside the lattice doorsalong the riverbank after the courtesans havealready left for their lodgings (Edo Souvenirs,volume 6) or an early morning scene in whichthe wooden gate to the Yoshiwara’s mainstreet, the Nakanochō, looks like a barrierhouse in the mountains (Dawn Clouds in thePleasure Quarters [Kakuchū shinonome] in OneHundred Famous Views of Edo). Even when thenight cherry blossoms are at their peak onNakanochō Street, Hiroshige might provideonly a view from high above of humble rooftiles with just a glimpse of the treetops. Alongthe Nihon embankment are commoners’ housesburied in snow and the traffic of carriageshaving difficulty on the way, evoking the pathosof traveling rather than the sentiment of theprevious night’s revelry. In this respect,Hiroshige is through and through a poetrepresenting wayfarers. The Yoshiwara that hedepicts has something reminiscent of the rusticcharm of a post town. The Nakanochōteahouses, each with a lit lantern under theeaves, when depicted with Hiroshige’s refinedtouch, are no different from landscapes ofShinagawa, Itabashi, and the like. The crowdedEdo Sanza theaters, which were moved to thepost town of Asakusayama in 1841,9 receive thesame treatment as the Yoshiwara. InHiroshige’s landscape prints, one can no longersee the jovial din and bustle in Fukiya andSakai that Shunrō, Toyokuni, and other artistsdepicted.10 Disregarding the crowds gatheringfor the annual troupe performances and thesplendid teahouse decorations in honor of theseoccasions, Hiroshige considered it enough todepict countless banners fluttering overhumble roof tiles, as seen through the thick

foliage of Matsuchi Hill. For the sights in frontof the theaters, he showed a closed gate in themoonlight, passers-by thinning out, a dogsleeping near a rainwater barrel under theeaves, and a night palanquin waiting for apassenger, thus creating his own uniquecharm. In representing the precincts of theKannon Hall of Sensōji Temple, he does notfocus on the crowds near tea stalls, arrowstands, mechanical doll shows, and otherentertainments, but instead, for example,makes the great lantern of the Kaminari Gateoccupy the entire space, with seeminglycountless umbrellas beneath.

Utagawa Hiroshige, A Shower Over theNihonbashi Bridge (Nihonbashi no hakuu)in the series Famous Places in the Eastern

Capital. Courtesy of Jordan SchnitzerMuseum of Art, University of Oregon.

These selections are excerpted from NagaiKafū. Ukiyo-e no sansuiga to Edo meisho(Ukiyo-e Landscapes and Edo Scenic Places),originally published in 1914. This translation isbased on the version in Nagai Kafū zenshū(Collected Works of Nagai Kafū), vol. 10(Tokyo: Iwanami, 2010). The Englishtranslation of the entire essay was published inReview of Japanese Culture and Society, vol.XXIV (December 2012): 210-32.

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SPECIAL FEATURE

Japan in Translation IIIIn Honor of Kyoko Selden

Edited by Alisa Freedman

Artistic Legacy of the Fifteenth Century Selections from Japan: The Shaping of DaimyoCulture, 1185-1868, translated by Kyoko Selden

Cho Kyo, Selections from The Search for the Beautiful Woman: A Cultural History of Japaneseand Chinese Beauty, translated by Kyoko Selden

Suzuki Shin’ichi, Selections from Nurtured by Love, translated by Kyoko Selden with LiliSelden

Osaki Midori, Wanderings in the Realm of the Seventh Sense, translated by Kyoko Selden andAlisa Freedman

Three Heian Poems, translated with calligraphy by Kyoko Selden

Author Nagai Kafū (1879-1959; given name Nagai Sōkichi) is best known for his fictionalizedpersonal travel accounts American Stories (Amerika monogatari, 1908) and French Stories(Furansu monogatari, 1915), short stories and novellas about Tokyo courtesans and low-ranking geisha, and an extensive illustrated diary, Dyspepsia House Diary (Danchōtei nichijō,1917-59).

Kyoko Selden (1936-2013) taught Japanese language and literature as a senior lecturer atCornell University until her retirement in 2008. Author, translator, artist and calligrapher, shewas the translation coordinator of the Asia-Pacific Journal. Her major works as translatorcentered on Japanese women writers, the atomic bomb, the Ainu and the Okinawans. Hermajor translations included Japanese Women Writers: Twentieth Century Short Fiction, MoreStories By Japanese Women Writers, An Anthology, Kayano Shigeru’s Our Land Was a Forest,Honda Katsuichi’s Harukor: Ainu Woman’s Tale, The Atomic Bomb: Voices From Hiroshimaand Nagasaki, Shin’ichi Suzuki's Nurtured by Love, and Cho Kyo’s The Search for theBeautiful Woman, A Cultural History of Japanese and Chinese Beauty.

Alisa Freedman is an Associate Professor of Japanese Literature and Film at the University

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of Oregon. Her books include Tokyo in Transit: Japanese Culture on the Rails and Road(Stanford University Press, 2010), an annotated translation of Kawabata Yasunari’s TheScarlet Gang of Asakusa (University of California Press, 2005), and co-edited volumeson Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan (Stanford University Press,2013), and Introducing Japanese Popular Culture (forthcoming from Routledge). She haspublished articles and edited special journal issues on Japanese modernism, Tokyo studies,youth culture, gender, television, humor as social critique, teaching pedagogies, andintersections of literature and digital media, along with translations of Japanese literature.She is Editor-in-Chief of the U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal.

Notes1 Nanga is late Edo period painting inspired by Chinese literati painting.2 Founded by Kanō Masanobu in the mid-fifteenth century, the Kanō School was the dominantschool of painting in the Edo period.3 Literally “grass-style drawing,” sōga are simple ink paintings or light-colored drawings donewith rough brush strokes.4 More “serious” literary works in a lofty, ornate, rhetorically-controlled style were influencedby Chinese scholarship and targeted at urban intelligentsia, while gesaku, intended aspopular fiction, employed freer, more vernacular expressions.5 The preface to Fenollosa’s Catalogue of the Exhibition of Ukiyoe Paintings and Prints isavailable online at Kindai Digital Library. Ernest Fenollosa was a historian of Japanese art anda professor of philosophy and other disciplines at the University of Tokyo. KobayashiBunshichi was a Tokyo art dealer and publisher of art books and reproductions.6 Mount Atago, Shiba (no. 79) from the series Famous Places in the Eastern Capital, and EitaiBridge, Tsukuda Island (no. 4) from One Hundred Famous Places of Edo both match thedescription.7 Outamaro, le Peintre des Maisons Vertes (1891). Goncourt also wrote Hokusaï, l’art Japonaisau XVII Siécle (1896). Kafū introduces these works in a separate essay on “Goncourt’sBiographies of Utamaro and Hokusai.” Edmond de Goncourt (1822-96) was a French writer,art and literary critic, publisher, and founder of the Académie Goncourt.8 The San’ya Moat is a canal drawn from the Sumida River that connected Imado and San’yaand was a route to the New Yoshiwara (Shin Yoshiwara). The Yoshiwara was a major Edoprostitution district sanctioned by the government. It was founded in 1617 near Nihonbashi.After fire destroyed the district in 1657, the New Yoshiwara was constructed on the Nihonembankment behind the Sensōji Temple. The older location was called Moto (original)Yoshiwara. Matsuchi Hill is located near Matsuchi Shōden Temple in Asakusa.9 Around the 1670s, there were four licensed kabuki troupes in Edo. After one was disbandedin 1714, the Nakamura troupe of Sakai-chō, Ichimura troupe of Fukiya-chō, and MoritaKobiki-chō became the official Edo Three Troupes. The Nakamura troupe’s theater burneddown in 1841, and the following year the Nakamura, Ichimura, and Kawarazaki (or Morita)troupes were moved to an Asakusa area called Saruwaka-chō.10 Fukiya-chō and Sakai-chō, along with Kobiki-chō, all in close proximity, formed a kabuki

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theater district before all theaters were moved to Saruwaka-chō.