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The trouble with Hideyoshi: censoring ukiyo-e and the Ehon Taikōki incident of 1804

2007; Routledge; Volume: 19; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09555800701579933

1469-932X

Julie Nelson Davis,

Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics

Abstract This article offers a new interpretation for one of the most famous censorship events in the history of ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world). In the early summer of 1804, artists Kitagawa Utamaro (1753?–1806), Kitagawa Tsukimaro (act. 1794–1836), Utagawa Toyokuni (1769–1825), Katsukawa Shuntei (1770–1820) and Katsukawa Shun'ei (1762–1819), the writer Jippensha Ikku (1765–1831) and their publishers were punished for representing sixteenth-century warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi in commercial prints. Their sheet prints and illustrated books were capitalizing upon the popularity of the Ehon Taikōki (The Illustrated Chronicles of the Regent) published from 1797 to 1802 and its theatrical representations on jōruri and kabuki stages from 1799 to 1804. This article reviews the period evidence and analyzes the remaining sheet prints and illustrated books to offer a new interpretation of the censorship incident. It proposes that the central problem with the ukiyo-e materials was not that they flouted censorship restrictions but that in making Hideyoshi into a popular spectacle of the floating world they were also appropriating the right to write Tokugawa history. Keywords: Ukiyo-e Ehon Taikōki UtamaroToyokuniIkku Acknowledgements Research for this project was supported in part by a Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellowship at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures and a Center for East Asian Studies Research Grant from the University of Pennsylvania. The author would like to thank Mary Elizabeth Berry, Fujisawa Murasaki, C. Andrew Gerstle, Hanyū Noriko, Rachael Hutchinson, Kobayashi Tadashi, Lawrence Marceau, Matsumura Masako, Ozawa Hiromu, Amy Reigle Newland, Satō Satoru, Timon Screech, Henry D. Smith, Sayumi Takahashi, Ellis Tinios and Raymond Davis, among others, for their valuable comments and insights; all errors are, of course, my own. Julie Nelson Davis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania. Davis was a Monbushō fellow at Gakushūin University, completed her PhD at the University of Washington, and held the Sainsbury Fellowship at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures. She has published numerous articles on ukiyo-e, the ‘pictures of the floating world’, and her book, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty, is forthcoming from Reaktion Books and the University of Hawai'i Press (autumn 2007). She may be contacted at jndavis@sas.upenn.edu Notes Notes 1. Summaries are included in CitationMiyatake (1911), CitationThompson and Harootunian (1991), CitationMinami (1997), CitationSasaki and Takizawa (2003), CitationDavis (2005), among others. For studies of the context, see CitationSuwa (1978), CitationMitchell (1983), CitationKornicki (1998), Asano and Clark (2005), CitationDavis (2006) and CitationSmith (1998) on the history of the Japanese book; CitationKōzato (1969), CitationKornicki (1998) and CitationGroemer (1994), among others, on the circulation of news; and CitationSteenstrup (1991), CitationMcClain (1994) and CitationBotsman (2005) on negotiation, law and discipline (several of these also provide overviews of the 1804 incident). For detailed examinations of the documentary record for the 1804, see CitationSuzuki (1979) on Utamaro, CitationMinami (1981) on Toyokuni, Koike et al. (Citation1980–3) on Ikku, CitationNakamura (1982) on the Ehon Taikōki, and CitationUwabo (1978) on edicts issued in the years prior to 1804, among others. For case studies of other censorship actions taken on ukiyo-e, see CitationThompson and Harutoonian (1991), CitationKornicki (1977), CitationTakeuchi (1987), CitationMarkus (1992), and on the parallel case in the dramatization of history as the Chūshingura (The Storehouse of the Loyal Retainers), see CitationSmith (2003) and CitationYamamoto (2002). 2. Tokugawa law was in force for its own territories, and while most daimyo simply replicated those laws in their own domains, they retained ultimate regional authority. The power of the shogunate was thus produced through a coordinated, bureaucratized and veiled system of control and never wholly held (CitationSteenstrup 1991: 121). For the shogunate, protecting its past and future position remained of vital concern. 3. The text of the relevant prohibitions reads: (1) All texts, including illustrated books and the like, must follow the orders of the magistrate's office at the time that they are being put into production; (2) The publication of written works on ‘matters of the present day’ and the like is forbidden; (3) Writing and publishing stories of vulgar and offensive matters and the like is forbidden; (4) All types of erotic books are prohibited; (5) The real names of the publisher and of the writer must be recorded within the written material; (6) The inclusion of useless matters and the production of high-priced and lavish publications is forbidden; (7) Illustrated books and the like about affairs of incompetence that have the past as a pretext are not to be produced; (8) The lending of manuscripts written in kana and based on rumors is forbidden; (9) There will be no sale of anonymous works; (10) Book guilds must carry out internal examination (CitationUwabo 1978: 76)All translations are by the author unless otherwise specified. 4. The three bureaucratic divisions established under the Tokugawa shogunate to govern its domain included: the Office of the Finance Magistrate, staffed by a vassal of hatamoto rank, supervising the treasury and taxation; the Office of Shrines and Temples, overseen by fudai daimyo, regulating family registrations at Buddhist temples, the landholding operations and other matters of the shrines and temples; and the Office of the City Magistrate, by two hatamoto rank vassals serving on alternating months in alternating locales, and with a staff of police magistrates (ōmetsuke) that implemented law, produced reports on daimyo and their administrations and administered publishing restrictions, among others (CitationSteenstrup 1991). 5. The many Taikōki-related manuscripts are outside the scope of this study; for more on jitsuroku, see CitationKornicki (2006), and on the variations of the Taikōki, see CitationHinotani (1996) and CitationNakamura (1982). 6. Initially, Hideyoshi bestowed the Kanpaku title upon his nephew, adopted son and then heir, Hidetsugu (1568–95); he later transferred inheritance to his infant son, Hideyori (1593–1615). Hideyoshi maintained the use of the title of Taikō through the end of his life. References to Hideyoshi's biography are based upon CitationBerry (1982). 7. For example, Katsukawa Shunkō's print, Nakamura Nakazō I (1736–1790) and Matsumoto Kōshirō IV (1737–1802) as Naniwa no Jirōsaku and Azuma no Yoshirō in the Kabuki play, The Returning Palanquin (Modori Kago), shows the theatrical presentation in the eleventh month of 1788 at the Nakamuraza in Edo (CitationDavis 2004). 8. Ikku's and Utamaro's celebrity was such that publisher Kazusaya Chūsuke brought them together to produce the Yoshiwara Picture Book: Annual Events (Seirō ehon nenjū gyōji) published at the New Year of 1804 (dated Kyōwa 4). 9. It continued through 1822 (Bunsei 5). 10. The four reviewers (gyōji) on duty in Osaka were publishers Akitaya Ichibei, Yotaya Uemon, Fujiya Kyūbei and Otsuya Jiroemon (Osaka Furitsu Nakanoshima Toshokan 1983: 180–1). 11. According to temple records, Utamaro passed away in the tenth month of 1806 (see Hoshino 1917–18: 27–37). 12. These included the Zōtei Ukiyo-e ruikō; the Ukiyo-e jinden (1890) and the Honchō Ukiyo-e meika hyōden (1890), compiled by Sekine Kinjirō; see Minami (1981: 5–8) and CitationSuzuki (1979). 13. Although the Extra Large Taiheiki may no longer be extant, my research in rare book collections has turned up two volumes, published with the title The Taikōki Sheaves of the Brush, that may be those cited by Ishizuka. One version, illustrated by Shuntei and written by Shōko Sōei, was published in 1799, while the second, illustrated by Katsukawa Shundō, with text by Kyojitsu Sanjin, was issued under a slightly different title and is undated. As Shuntei was one of those mentioned in the report by Bakin, while Shundō was not (although it may be possible he was one of the ‘et al.’ Bakin included at the end of the list of names), it seems more likely that the 1799 title was the one cited by Ishizuka. Shuntei's Taikōki Sheaves of the Brush shows the high points of the Ehon Taikōki, imitating iconic moments in the source material. For example, his summary illustration of Hideyoshi's grandfather returning from monastic to secular life after he is informed by a deity that his descendant will become a great leader is little more than a close-up, reversed and crudely drawn version of Gyokuzan's picture for the Ehon Taikōki. The rest of the volume similarly samples from the Ehon Taikōki in what is clearly a cheaper, shorter version made quickly to profit from the fad. 14. The era change was required due to a symbolic confluence of astrological and numerical calculations in the sexagenary cycle. Kyōwa 4 was the first year of a new sexagenary cycle, an elder wood-rat year (kinoe ne), considered in Chinese astrological conventions as a year of possible social upheaval, and on each occurrence of elder wood-rat year in the sixty-year cycle, the era name was changed. Other kinoe ne years became the Kan'ei (1624), Jōkyō (1684), Enkyō (1744), Bunka (1804) and Genji (1864). 15. The previous year's bestseller was Ikku's kibyōshi, The Jewels of the First Dream (of the New Year) with Monsters (Bakemono takara no hatsuyume). 16. I would like to thank Hanyū Noriko, Lecturer of Japanese Literature, Mukogawa Women's University, for her help in translating the Bakemono Taiheiki. 17. Among the most popular and influential sources for Ikku's monsters were the volumes illustrated by Toriyama Sekien; see Takada (1992). 18. The bird referred to in the text is of the kite variety. 19. Kappa were said to consume children by sucking these gems out of their bodies. In Ikku's kibyōshi, The Kappa's Jewel of the Nether Regions (Kappa no shirigodama), published by Iwatoya in 1798, a young man has his shirigo no tama (or shirigodama, in an alternative rendition) stolen and spends the rest of the book trying to get it back from the kappa. On the possible fetishization of the shirigo no tama, see Kabat (Citation2000: 23–25, 151–82, 183–92). 20. Although the most notorious case was likely that of the ‘dog shogun’ Tsunayoshi (1646–1709) (CitationShively 1955), others were also the subject of gossip; Ieharu (1737–86), Ienari's immediate predecessor, was also renowned for his laziness and profligacy (CitationScreech 2000: 93). 21. Various problems associated with the dramatic treatment of the Akō vendetta as the Kanadehon Chūshingura seem similarly to have been related to the right to represent history; see Yamamoto (Citation2002: 36–7) and Smith (2003: 23).