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Paper short abstract

Analysis of dolls and three‑dimensional portraits in early modern Japan as ontologically active images that extend the visual culture of the ‘floating world’ beyond two-dimensionality through the application of embodied, performative theories of image‑agency.

Paper long abstract

This paper foregrounds three‑dimensional portraits and dolls as primary sources for a more complete understanding of seventeenth‑century Japanese images of urban entertainment which takes into account their ontological potential. Existing scholarship isolates ukiyo‑e as a predominantly visual, two‑dimensional genre; however, contemporaneous narratives and artefacts show that viewers engaged images as volumetric presences capable of activation. The doll-like reproduction of the courtesan Yoshino in Saikaku’s Koshoku ichidai onna (1688)—described as moving its mouth, limbs, and eyes “ningen no gotoshi”—and the carved wooden lover in the preface to Chikamatsu’s Naniwa miyage (1738) demonstrate that sculptural likenesses were not decorative supplements but effective substitutes for living bodies.

Such artefacts operated within the same ontological field as intrusive painted images such as the portrait that steps out of its painted outline in Aoki Rosui’s Otogi hyaku monogatari (1706), or the actor Nakamura Shichisaburō materializing from his hanging scroll portrait in Furyū kagami ga ike (1709). Three‑dimensional figures intensified this continuum by occupying real space. Their bodies matched the narrative logic that also governed aspirational hanging portraits—such as the painted likeness of the courtesan Moshio commissioned in Ejima Kiseki’s Keisei kintanki (1711)—which acted as surrogates sustaining presence in the sitter’s absence.

The paper argues that these works expose a performative ontology grounded in activation rather than mimesis. Ritualized interaction—offering sake to a portrait, chanting a sitter’s name before an image, or engaging through touch—constituted the mechanism through which viewers animated representations. This model aligns with broader early modern accounts of utsushi as the transfer of presence, and with contemporaneous discussions of ki and katachi that described numinous forms as condensations of life‑energy.

By situating dolls, puppets, and sculptural portraits at the center of the visual culture of the ‘floating world’, this study dismantles the assumed hierarchy privileging two‑dimensional formats. The result is an expanded corpus in which materiality, volume, and bodily encounter define image agency. These artefacts demonstrate an “aesthetics of animation” of the floating world as a cross‑media phenomenon, and that early modern Japanese image‑theory relied on deliberate permeability between living bodies and their representations.