A database of Japanese ukiyo´e caricatures from 1855 to 1905

This project is a continuation of FWF project P16503-G06, Japanese ukiyo`e (Japanese woodblock prints) caricatures 1842 to 1905, which started on March 15, 2004 and ended on September 30, 2006. The results of this project can best be seen by going to http://www.univie.ac.at/Karikaturen. It aims at analyzing and describing app. 1000 ukiyo`e caricatures published between 1855 and 1905, add them continually to the existing 532 prints, and thus providing a trilingual internet database of approximately 1500 caricatures published between 1842 and 1905, open to the international research community and to everyone interested. The project is based on the basic idea that Japanese woodblock prints (ukiyo`e) are an important, but largely unexplored source for the study of history of the common people in Japan. Since woodblock prints were a strict commercial product for a market, on which many producers competed with each other, the producers had to orientate themselves on the likings and interests of the potential buyers. By carefully studying the success and the failure of certain prints, print designers and publishers, we should be able to get in an indirect way some insights into the thinking of the contemporary consumers of ukiyo`e from the 17th to the 19th century. The proposed project therefore is considered to make a contribution to the history of mentalities of the townspeople (chonin) of Edo. In the last stage of ukiyo`e production, from the 1840s onwards, following the Tenpo reforms and the limitations which they put on the world of ukiyo`e, a paradigmatic change occurred in picture motives: pictures of courtesans and of actors, which were the most frequently treated motives until they were forbidden in 1842, never recovered in popularity to the level which they had enjoyed before. On the other hand, the various legal limitations put on ukiyo`e by the bakufu government, because ukiyo`e were thought to be a part of and to even promote a luxurious lifestyle among the townspeople, furthered the production of satirical pictures. After bakufu policies changed and the strict measures were lifted in the 1850s and 1860s, satirical and comic pictures enjoyed prolonged popularity, which continued well into the Meiji period (1868-1912). During the Sino-Japanese War of 1894/95 and the Russo- Japanese Wars 1904/05 xenophobic woodblock prints, which also grew out from this tradition, were produced to denounce the Chinese and Russian enemies, but after 1905 the genre ceased to exist, since satiric pictures in the now well established newspapers and journals had taken over the function of ukiyo`e by that time. The database tries to cover all the satiric and comic pictures commercially published between 1842 and 1905 in order to give proof of this paradigmatic change. Erotic prints, which were sold underground and private prints (surimono) are beyond the scope of this project. One of the greatest methodological problems is the question what to include under the heading `caricatures`. We use a broad definition and would like to include all pictures from the period indicated that make fun of something, either in a hidden or in a direct way. The work and research involved in this project consists 1. of acquiring the pictures from public or private collections; 2. analysing the pictures according to the usual methods: dating the picture, reading the signature, the censor`s seals, and the logo of the publisher and reading the text; 3. interpreting the pictures; 4. translating the texts and the interpretations into German and English; 5. (with pictures that form a series) assembling all pictures which belong to the same series; 6. putting the results into the database for general use.

Japanese Ukiyoe, Pictures of the Floating World, the world of towns people, enjoy a long history of enthusiastic reception in the Western world since the first half of the nineteenth century. But this reception concentrated on colour woodblock prints (nishikie) of beauties, actors, warriors, and landscape, for which such artist names as Utamaro, Sharaku, Kuniyoshi and Hiroshige can said to be representative. Other genres of Ukiyoe, such as book illustrations with the exception of Hokusais Manga, and Ukiyoe-paintings never received such attention as the mentioned woodblock prints which had a great influence on French impressionism and artists such as Jawlensky or Klimt. In his thorough study of the game of ken, for which Ukiyoe prints were an important source, the project leader got aware that the Western reception of Ukiyoe was one-sided and did hardly ever include humorous pictures and caricatures, which especially after 1842, the year when the repressive Tenpo reforms started, flourished and even outdid the mentioned other genres. This project, which is a sequel-project to the one dealing with Ukiyoe-caricatures from 1842 to 1905, which was done between 2004 and 2007 (P 16503-G06), tries to document the spectacular change of interest of Ukiyoe woodblock prints consumers in the second half of the nineteenth century in Japan. It carefully described and analysed more than 1500 prints in three languages, German, English and Japanese. The often very rich texts on the prints in handwriting were transcribed and translated, and all pictures were interpreted as to their original intentions. The main results of the project can be summed up as follows: 1. There exist many thousand different caricatures and humorous pictures from the roughly sixty years period treated in this study, many more than the reviewers of this project and even the project leader thought. This means that from the 1840s onwards there seems to have existed a heightened interest among the commoners, the consumers of Ukiyoe-prints, in political matters, even though this class was always interpreted to express political apathy, its only interest being a hedonistic life. Thus, the results of this project call for a re- interpretation of the political consciousness of Japanese commoners in the years before and after the famous Meiji-Restoration. 2. Through the careful documentation, description, and analysis of more than 1500 woodblock printed caricatures the open accessible database provides researchers of Japanese history and arts and researchers of caricatures as well as Ukiyoe-collectors and dealers with relatively secure data on these prints, as have not existed until today for most of them.