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Paper short abstract

This paper examines visual tricks in texts rooted in gesaku literature, issued at the turn of the 19th century, to argue that they pose a puzzle solvable only when seeing, reading and playing converge and to reclaim the "aesthetic of the inconsequential" as lying at the heart of these materials.

Paper long abstract

Are you smart enough to see what you are supposed to? This might sound like an odd question. Yet, it is precisely the question that many early modern Japanese texts, normally associated with gesaku literature, ask. We are in the realm of what Sakakibara Satoru calls “visual tricks” (shikaku no torikku). But are we actually dealing with deceptive images that mobilize the sense of sight alone? Or is there more than meets the eye (pun intended!)?

This paper addresses these questions by investigating materials issued at the turn of the nineteenth century. Our journey starts with collections of puzzling shapes (Komon gawa 1790; Kimyō zui 1803; Gekai zue 1811) and concludes with passages from graphic narratives (Shiba zenkō ga chie no hodo 1787; Chikusai rō takara no yamabuki iro 1794; Kaietari niwako meichō zue 1802). The printed surface gifts the reader with images that, upon careful looking, are not quite right. These images are normally surrounded by text, which contribute to heightening the sense of puzzlement. What is going on here? Image and text, in tandem, confront us with a conundrum. Our task, as viewer-cum-reader, is to solve the puzzle. Playing with the gaze is just one activity required for a solution. A wealth of literary knowledge and daily-life experience is activated to untangle the knotty proposition, with cognitive play and linguistic play joining in. In the process the act of seeing, combined with that of reading, morphs into that of playing games. The solution, if and when secured, leads to what psychology views as a eureka moment, different from laughter.

Engagement with these materials allows us to question any straightforward definition of the act of seeing and to reassess early modern Japanese literature beyond humour, blurring the boundaries normally established between seeing, reading, and playing. Ultimately it enables us to reclaim what I wish to call the “aesthetic of the inconsequential” at the heart of much of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century gesaku literature.