Paper short abstract:

Through comparison of antiquarian costume studies texts with illustrated kimono pattern books, this paper will show how scholars and poets forged multiple meanings with apparently trivial images and words that circulated within the literary world of the late seventeenth century.

Paper long abstract:

In the late seventeenth century, two kinds of text on clothing circulated: one offered studies of costume in antiquity, the other models for kosode robes to be ordered and worn in the present. We may think them quite distinct, with antiquarian texts looking backward and pattern books aimed at the latest in fashion, yet these text types intersect in their links to literature, which inspired both. They are also similar in having didactic goals and incorporating images. A comparison of their multimodal word and image environments illuminates important features of meaning-making in both.

Tsuboi Yoshitomo (or Yoshichika, 1657-1735), one of the pioneer commoner scholars of yūsoku kojitsu (manners and practices of noble and warrior houses), published such commentaries as the expanded Genji nannyo shōzokushō (1696, Gleanings on male and female costume from [the Tale of] Genji, originally authored by Gessonsai Sōseki) and Makura no sōshi shōzokushō (Selections on costume from the Pillow Book). Tsuboi maintains a focus on text, providing illustrations only rarely; he assumes that his audience knows the classics. Tachiba Fukaku (1662-1753), a haikai poet with over a thousand followers, provided an elaborate preface with multiple literary allusions for Hiinagata matsu no tsuki (Pattern book of the moon through pines, 1688). Illustrations by Take Hiratsugi (or Bu Heiji) in the style of Sugimura Jihei have no text except for the occasional Chinese character embedded near the shoulder or hem of a robe. Still, such illustrations strongly invoke classical poetic sources, since the designs of kosode that a draper might copy pictorialize (kaigaka suru, to borrow the terminology of Joshua Mostow) famous waka poems for viewers to recognize. Hinagatabon model books are not considered literary works, nor art works, yet they were expected to do things that both do—to allude to literature, and to be aesthetically pleasing. Why did such active poets and scholars pursue these "trivial" aspects of clothing and decoration? This paper brings these apparently practical texts into conversation with the broader literary field, arguing that they were a vital part of it.

Paper short abstract:

The overwhelming majority Edo editions of Kobun kōkyō are not illustrated. Why did publishers go to the trouble and expense of adding illustrating to a text always in demand? Exploring this questions will enrich our understanding of Edo publishing.

Paper long abstract:

From the fourteenth century monasteries in Japan were printing Chinese philosophical and moral texts. The first publication ordered by Emperor Go-yōzei (r.1586-1611) using moveable type and printers brought to Japan as booty from Korea was the Kōkyō 孝経. Confucian texts also dominated the list of Tokugawa Ieyasu's nine moveable type publications, which appeared between 1599 and 1616. All of these editions presented the Chinese texts without reading aids (白文 hakubun) and without illustrations.

The rapid expansion of commercial publishing in the first half of the seventeenth century was based entirely on the use of cut woodblocks. This technology allowed for the publication of Chinese and Japanese language texts with complex annotations (furigana 振り仮名, kunten 訓点, okurigana 送り仮名, etc.). The ease with which such annotation could be added to texts expanded significantly the market for all categories of Chinese and Japanese printed texts.

One of the most popular non-fiction Chinese texts in early modern Japan was Kobun kōkyō 古文孝経. By the nineteenth century, individual publishers carried it in numerous distinct editions. They offered it with and without commentaries, with and without a translation, and with varying levels of annotation. The overwhelming majority of these editions were without illustrations.

The very small number of illustrated editions of Kobun kōkyō raise a number of questions. What prompted publishers to go to the extra expense of providing illustrations for a text that was always in demand? What did publishers expect of the artists they commissioned to illustrate the text? Did they want replicas of imported Chinese models or did they require fresh images geared to the expectations and taste of a contemporary Japanese audience? The number and format of the illustrations were other matters that had to be determined by the publishers. What factors influenced their choices?

A close study of illustrated editions of Kobun kōkyō to reveal the approaches to the illustration of this non-narrative texts that were adopted by commercial publishers should enrich our understanding of the publishing industry in the Edo period.

Paper short abstract:

By examining two under-researched picture-books published by the Edo-based Urokogataya in the second half of the eighteenth-century, this paper studies how _Ise monogatari_ and the seventeenth-century _Ikkyū banashi_ acquired new meanings thanks to their re-packaging in different visual layouts.

Paper long abstract:

Commercial publishing throughout the Edo period fostered the production of illustrated books, with the flexible medium of the woodblock allowing an array of verbal-visual combinations on the printed page. Scholarship evaluating the relationship between text and image in early-modern Japan is grounded in the division between _eiri hanpon_ (illustrated books) and _ehon_ (picture-books). The former is conceptualized as a type of book in which illustrations are interpreted as 'decorative' accents, whilst the latter is believed to offer a complementary relation between words and pictures. This paper challenges the received view by examining two early-modern books whose story-line was first packaged in _eiri hanpon_ and subsequently repackaged in _ehon_ format (namely _kusazōshi_) by the prolific publisher Urokogataya.

After centuries of illustrated manuscripts, _Ise monogatari_ was printed at the beginning of the seventeenth century in an elegant movable-type edition that embedded woodblock illustrations. Amidst the complex textual lineage of subsequent editions and rewritings, the majority of which were illustrated, the picture-book _Ise fūryū Utagaruta no hajimari_ (Edo: Urokogataya, 1766) offered a version of the Heian-period tale deemed suitable for children. Similarly, the publication of _Ikkyū banashi_ in 1668 inspired the production of innumerable texts that kept the figure of the monk Ikkyū alive, up until modern-times Japanese _ehon_ and anime. Urokogataya yet again used the illustrated edition of 1668 to publish in 1775 a picture-book version entitled _Ikkyū oshō Satori no kunenbō_ (Edo: Urokogataya, 1775). In both cases the challenge for the illustrators of the Torii artists' studio, was not to 'invent' images for these stories but rather to 're-imagine' established iconography. How did this process of re-imagining work in these two texts? How does the choice of discrete (ancillary) pictures kept separate from the verbal text versus that of pictures that visually melt with the verbal text (substantive images) affect our engagement with the text? What role do images play in the overall economy of the text (following the theoretical stance of Nikolajeva and Scott 2001)? This paper address these questions with a view to discuss to what extend pictures play active role in the creation of a narrative.