Paper short abstract:

A sumptuous album of shoga (calligraphy and painted images) from the 1850s, languishing for decades in a library collection, yields insights into contemporary practices of cultural networking and the shifting meanings of the "artwork" dependent on context and viewer.

Paper long abstract:

In bakumatsu Japan, the multi-artist album was an established medium within shoga, a rich field of creativity before art history split asunder painting and calligraphy. For the album's owner, it could stand as testament to his network and the cultural capital he commanded. For the artists, their contributions might be paid work, tokens of friendship or thanks, or a means to advertise their status or ambitions. Edinburgh Central Library holds a deluxe example of such an album, containing 106 works by an impressive array of notable figures. The images are by men of the literati persuasion, the official Kano, Itaya and Sumiyoshi schools, the Rinpa lineage, and the Maruyama-Shijō group; the calligraphies include waka, kanshi and prose passages, by Chinese-style practitioners, kokugaku and Confucian scholars, popular writers, one Chinese individual, and members (both male and female) of the courtier class. In terms of age, the participants range from neophytes to esteemed octogenarians.

Understanding the contributors requires enlarging the scope beyond conventional art historical resources, extending into literary, government and intellectual history, and imperial court records. Once these are understood, is it possible to work backwards from the contributing artists to discover a unifying figure at the centre, in the gap where the first owner stands? Also, there is the intriguing question of why a fifth of the pages remain empty.

In the late 19th century the album entered the possession of one of the foreign specialists hired by the Meiji government. For him, it delivered a very different kind of symbolic capital, as evidence of the alien culture he had experienced. Later, within the municipal collections, the album's role shifted once again, to stand as evidence of the global reach of local figures and as symbol of international exchange. Having lain dormant for seventy years, the album will soon go on public display for the first time, repurposed as a representative example of Japanese art history in the 19th century. This paper will examine the polyvalent quality of the album, with meanings that enter and recede according to the position and context of the observing individual.