Page 32 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

personal dependency and loyalty that ought to have cemented the ties between superiors and
inferiors. 28 Sorai lamented the appearance of what we would call today (early) modern social traits,
although he could not understand — as no one did at the time — that the transformation he had
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witnessed during his lifetime, which he called a crisis, was irreversible. Merchants had become
indispensable to the survival of society, and the new urban mentality would not disappear but
continue to flourish.
Three generations later, in the early nineteenth century, Kaiho Seiryô understood better the
dynamics of Tokugawa society, where, in his opinion, everything had a price, everything had become a
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commodity, and commodities were everywhere. This, he concluded, was an expanding economy in
which consumption drove production: 3i

The soil, by its very nature, produces things of the soil. There is no principle that would say that these products
will decrease when you take them. [On the contrary], the more one takes, the more comes forth. It is like hairs falling
out when one does up one's hair. Left undone, no hairs will fall out, but they will wither and grow thin. [On the
other hand] if combed frequently, lots of hairs will fall out, but the hair will grow luxuriant. It is in the nature of the
head to have hair sprout on it. This is not different from the soil producing things They abound in volume where
the taking is greatest. 31

The basic principle at work in society, Seiryo concluded, was an expanding commodity circulation,
which he accorded the status of a "natural" principle: "That commodities (shiromono) bring forth more
commodities is the principle." 32
% 3
Some of the The variety of artifacts, the sophistication of design, and the extraordinary quality of skill and
"150 Decorative Patterns for production constitute the most outstanding features of this commodity circulation in the realm of art.
Combs and Pipe Stems"
by Katsushika Hokusai (1823). For instance, two hundred works by the famous painter Ogata Kôrin (1658 -1716) were reproduced in
Illustration from woodblock format in two volumes, published a century after his death. These books and others, such as
Jack Hillier.The Art of Hokusai
in Book Illustration a volume of 150 designs for combs and metal pipe stems by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) (fig. 3),
(London, 1980)
served, as the scholar Nishiyama Matsunosuke points out, as "catalogs that showed the public what was
available... .From these volumes, the public selected designs to be executed by highly skilled artisans,
most of whom are not known to us by name today." People could "order such illustrations transferred
onto combs and pipes, fans, screens, and sliding doors." 33
Such finely decorated artifacts were meant to be seen, and they were displayed increasingly

as status symbols, in the modern sense rather than in the Tokugawa legal sense. They were meant to
elicit admiration, and some of them do indeed look like conversation pieces (cats. 15, 88,139). In pre-
Tokugawa times, only the nobility, the religious and military elites, and a limited number of merchants
had mansions with reception rooms, tokonoma alcoves, and staggered shelves where artifacts could
be placed in full view. In the seventeenth century, however, interior space for this kind of display
became increasingly available in commoner houses, made possible on a wider scale by considerable
improvements in housing styles among commoners and samurai.
Commoner houses were made sturdier with supporting posts on foundation stones rather than
on the ground (where they would easily rot). They had plastered walls and were more symmetrical and
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larger than earlier dwellings. Increasingly, they had wooden rather than dirt floors, and tatami mats
became more usual, at least in the main rooms. Interior storage cupboards (oshiire) to store bedding and
quilts came gradually into general use only during the Tokugawa period and became a standard fixture