Page 275 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

he put a new spin on tradition. The medieval genre of priests' journeys, particularly the illustrated
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Life o/Saigyô, seems to have provided Buson with the alternating text-image handscroll format. The
abbreviated figure style he devised to accompany works in the hokku vein also has roots in medieval
Yamatoe: witty figures in a similar cursory treatment adorn the anonymous sixteenth-century Scenes
In and Around Kyoto (fig. 5).
If Bashó was preoccupied with the impermanence of life, the "heroes" of Shank's Mare, Yaji and
Kita, former lovers and now companionable rakes, were absorbed with the twin impermanences of
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money and carnal love. Bashó suggests in his preface to Narrow Road to the Deep North that a journey is
a poetical and philosophical undertaking. But Ikku's preface to Shank's Mare warns, "You will find many
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274 bad jokes and much that is worthless in [this] book." If Bashó used his voyages to examine his own
subjectivity, Yaji and Kita travel precisely to sink theirs. On the road they impersonate others (including
samurai and even the author, Ikku), insult waitresses, bilk the blind, snitch food, lose their loincloths,
pun endlessly, write execrable poetry, and bounce back when they cheerfully hit bottom. Their prolonged
dilations on gustatory pleasures — Mariko's grated potato broth, Sayanonaka's rice cakes with syrup,
Arai's famous eels, Kuwana's baked clams — whet the reader's appetite, only to take it right away with
their Laurel-and-Hardy-esque dialogue. ("Waitress: 'Will you eat your rice with clams?' Yaji: 'No, we'll
eat it with chopsticks'"). 34
Ikku incorporated echoes of Bashó as affectionate parody. Bashó was kept awake at the inn at
Suematsuyama by the singing of the blind biwa player; at Akasaka the slumber of Yaji and Kita was
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similarly disturbed — by amorous goings-on in the next room. Bashó, honoring Saigyó, left a poem
about the Shirakawa Barrier ("After all, I could hardly pass that barrier without writing a single line"). 36
At the Sainokawara Barrier Ikku's characters compose a silly poem about blowing through the barrier
like papers in a spring wind — an example of what has wittily been described as the "dumbing-down"
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of Edo-period travel poetry. Bashó displays knowledge of places so deep as to be practically bottom-
less; Yaji, too, is complimented by one of his palanquin bearers because he knows so much about the
local area ("'You fool,' said the carrier behind. 'Of course he does. He's looking in the guidebook as he
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goes along. Ha-ha-ha!'"). There is an ocean of difference between Bashó's metaphysical musings
and Ikku's Alice-in-Wonderland riddles to while away the time on the road ("Kita: 'Can you tell me

where we come from?' Yaji: 'From the house of Yajirobei in Hatchóbori, Kanda.' Kita: 'Don't make bad
jokes. The answer is two pigs and ten puppies'"). 39
Yet the process of pictorialization acts as a leveler. Hiroshige and Buson, both keen observers
of the world around them, were bound by, and worked within, the heritage of Yamatoe. Although
there is a difference between their stylistic languages, they draw upon vast wellsprings of a lyrical cat. 167
Yosa Buson, Portrait o/Bashó,
narrative tradition. Indeed inspection of some of Hiroshige's figures — notably the malevolent waitress- third quarter of
innkeeper at Goyu — reveals the common debt he and Buson owe to the deft, cursory figure style found eighteenth century,
hanging scroll;
in Yamatoe handscrolls or screen paintings (see fig. 5). Able to manipulate a medium that makes use ink and light color on silk,
92.2 x 32 (sSVsx 12 Vs)
of images viewed in a temporal sequence, both artists knew well how to exploit the devices of juxtapo- Itsuo Art Museum, Osaka
sition and contrast.
Just in the six selections from Hiroshige's Fifty-six Stations of the Tókaidó (cats. 179 -184)
there exists a complex network of contrasts: between the moods of dawn (at Shinagawa) and dusk
(at Mariko); between high (samurai procession at Tsuchiyama) and low (prostitute-waitresses coercing
travelers at Goyu); between vast vistas (at Kanaya) and intimate ones (at Tsuchiyama); between