Paper short abstract:

Kitagawa Utamaro and Jippensha Ikku collaborated on the illustrated book, Annual Events of the 'Azure Towers,' Illustrated (Seirō ehon nenjū gyōji) in 1804. The material form and the afterlife of this book will be investigated a case study for the power of print to define its subject.

Paper long abstract:

In 1804 artist Kitagawa Utamaro and writer Jippensha Ikku offered a review of the annual events of the licensed pleasure district, the Yoshiwara, to the readers in Edo, in pictures and text. Their publisher, Kazusaya Chūsuke, bargained on this being a best-seller and issued the book in two printings—one in full color and one in monochrome—at two price points. In the intervening years the book has become one of the most famous in the history of the illustrated book in Japan. It also became one of the most influential sources for understanding the licensed quarter and it cemented the writer and artist's reputations as expert in the Yoshiwara's exclusive and elusive customs.

In this presentation, I will begin by addressing the materiality of the book, its structure, format, and production, and consider how its representational strategies served the quarter at the same time that they clad it in a veneer of glamour. This discussion will turn to an analysis of the afterlife of this text, by looking at how it was interpreted by later critics, in Japan and abroad, as though documentary in intent. In these narratives, Utamaro, as Edmond de Goncourt wrote, was posited as the "official painter" of the quarter, due to the persuasive power of the images, while Ikku's calligraphy text was largely overlooked (due in no small part to the difficulty it presented to readers unfamiliar with Edo kuzushiji). Through a close reading of this title, of both text and image, this talk will engage issues of the materiality, mobility and afterlife of this title, offering a new methodological approach to the early modern illustrated book both in Japan and beyond.