Page 156 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

The Scenes In and Around Kyoto screens were the first to display analytically the lives and
work of the townspeople, shown lining the streets of the city. For the first time the viewer can look into
shops and observe streets and bridges to witness the living conditions and working methods of a wide

array of artisans and itinerant workers (fig. 3). A study of these screens reveals that the role and status
of individuals within the community of urban workers were already defined in the Muromachi period.
Those whose work most benefited the samurai class — the armorers, bow makers, leather workers, fur-
riers, and swordsmiths — were allowed to live and work in elaborate buildings with tile roofs. Further
down the hierarchy of urban workers, the carpenters, plasterers, textile workers, lacquerers, and other
producers of luxury goods were still well situated, though in houses of simpler design. Street vendors
such as peddlers, entertainers, and bamboo vendors were distinctly disadvantaged. In these screens 155
representations of women are much reduced compared with earlier paintings of workers.
Role and status became more highly ramified in society and art during the early Edo period.
The artists' systematic approach to the Scenes In and Around Kyoto began a trend to depict accurately
and thoroughly the circumstances of the city and its inhabitants. This method of categorizing and
documenting the sights was part of another trend that gained momentum at the beginning of the Edo
period. The coexistence of the two themes of Poetic Contests Between Workers and Scenes In and
Around Kyoto led to the development of a new subject — found mostly in screen painting but also in
some scrolls — called Pictures of All the Workers (shokunin zukushie) (fig. 4). These screen paintings,
which portray shop masters plying their trades in their urban stores, show the circumstances of the
manual worker with much greater emphasis and detail than before.
The system of social organization devised in the Muromachi period following the Onin War
(1467 -1477) was based on hereditary occupations and household members working together. This sys-
tem is visible in the screens' representations of the workers' abodes: each member of a family performs
4
a specific role. Approximately half of the shops are angled to the right, the other half to the left, as if
facing off in a competition. Each panel of the screens features a shop and its inhabitants, shown in sep-
arate scenes pasted onto the screen panels. Gold clouds act as framing devices for each craftsman's

fig-3
Scenes In and Around Kyoto,
early seventeenth century,
detail from a pair
of six-panel screens; ink, color,
and gold on paper,
7
3
each 106 x 340 (4i /4X 133 /s),
Tokyo National Museum
fig-4
Attributed to Kano Yoshinobu,
Pictures of All the Workers,
detail from
a pair of six-panel screens;
ink and color on paper,
:
7
each 58 x 43.7 (22 /sx i7 /4),
Kita'in, Kawagoe City,
Saitama