Ukiyo-e Caricatures. Noriko Brandl and Sepp Linhart, eds. Beiträge zur Japanologie, 41. Vienna: Abteilung für Japanologie des Instituts für Ostasienwissenschaften, Universität Wien, 2011. ISBN 9783900362249. 30 € (original) (raw)

2013, East Asian Publishing and Society

Ukiyoe Caricatures-online database. Department of East Asian Studies-Japanese Studies, University of Vienna. http://kenkyuu.eas.univie.ac.at/karikaturen/ Ukiyo-e Caricatures brings together the papers presented at a symposium held in May 2006 on 'Comic Pictures and Caricatures in the Late Edo and Meiji Periods'. The symposium and this volume are part of a project underway at the University of Vienna since 2004 to catalogue and interpret satirical and topical woodblock prints published in Japan between the Tenpō reforms (1842) and the Russo-Japanese War (1905). As the editors state in the Introduction, this is 'the first collection of essays not only in English but also in Japanese that devotes itself solely to ukiyo-e caricatures' (p. 10). In this respect alone it is a valuable contribution to the field, though the publication suffers from a number of problems. The volume is divided into three sections. 'Genres of Ukiyo-e Caricatures' covers early examples of satire in kibyōshi of the 1780s, humour in death portraits (shini-e), the perennial Chūshingura, battle prints, and graffiti. In 'Caricatures at the End of the Edo Period,' works by Utagawa Kuniyoshi receive much attention (as is to be expected from this master of the comic medium), as well as perceptions of riddle pictures and Hirokage's Fish and Vegetable Battle. 'Caricatures from the Meiji Period' covers Boshin War prints, works by Kawanabe Kyōsai and Kobayashi Kiyochika, and reactions to foreign residents and their customs. As expressed in the Introduction, 'the culture of play dominating Edo society made everything a possible object of humor' (p. 10). Comic, satirical, and topical prints form an incredibly rich vein of visual culture, but they require the teasing out of numerous puns and allusions. As the editors explain on the project's website, scholarly attention has long privileged the aesthetic qualities of woodblock prints, driven by both exhibition and art market demands. Topical prints, by contrast, have drawn far less notice, often due to problems of availability, textual complexity, or interpretation. Several essays in the volume stand out as coherent, well-argued pieces. Simon-Oikawa's is a clear summary of the phenomenon of moji-e, graffiti pictures formed from kanji to be found primarily within book illustrations, which 'tell us a lot about both visual subculture and the relationship between text and image in pre-modern Japan' (p. 84). Satirical designs succeed by their very ambivalence, allowing viewers to supply the necessary information and arrive at their own interpretation. Yuasa's essay is particularly instructive in this respect, illustrating the perils of over-interpretation,