Page 378 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

genre screens showing panoramic views of the old capital, known as Scenes In and Around Kyoto
(rafeuchu-rakugaizu), gives way to a conspicuously more subjective, warmer representation of plebeian
activities. The Amusements artist maintained a documentary motivation but managed to convey more
effectively the energy of the entertainments — so much so that the screens seem ready to burst their
hinges. Town artists (machi eshi), though working outside the usual court, temple, or warrior-elite patronage
systems, held on to the traditional preoccupation of secular art, which emphasized narrative concerns
and landscapes with figures. With a few noteworthy exceptions, artists continued to represent the total
environment of townspeople at work or play, not individuals.
In the women's kabuki scene in the left screen of Amusements along the Riuerside at Shijô, a female
performer surrounded by a troupe of female dancers sits grandly on a large chair draped with a tiger 377

skin, holding a long-necked shamisen, the three-stringed instrument associated with kabuki and the
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pleasure quarters from about 1610 (see detail p. 373). We immediately perceive that we are in an exotic
realm of the senses. Japanese of this era did not sit in chairs; tigers never romped in Japan's forests;
proper women did not wear tasseled swords at the hip. The chair, tiger skin, and costume are signifiers of
a nonquotidian realm of pleasure and escape, where rules of decorum are breached. The painter trans-
mits the message that the dancers are there for the spectators' pleasure.
Yet if we telescope in on the faces of the courtesan-dancers, we must conclude that the depic-
tions are rather stereotyped. Belying the lively bustle of the overall scene, their bland faces — powdered
white, blemishless, and formalized — betray no individual allure. The artist was clearly capable of por-
traying a wide range of facial types, as we can judge by the variety of expressions seen among the bois-
terous male spectators, but the female performers are presented with redundant resemblance. Their
faces are no more distinctive or expressive than no masks for female roles, in contrast to the exaggerated
kyógen-like expressiveness of the male figures. We may speculate that the artist unconsciously con-
spired with the bordello owners who set up the stage. The dancers are in effect prostitutes whose bodies
are for sale to the highest bidder. Faces and bodies are thus commodified, predictably packaged, and
completely interchangeable. One dancer is as good as the next. Only the high-ranking courtesan (tayu)
seated on the tiger-skin seat is given an elevated position in the visual hierarchy, reflecting her status
in the bordello pecking order and a higher price to the male customer.
A central factor in the development of ukiyoe was the emergence of paintings of kabuki per-
formers from Shijô or of dancers who worked in the entertainment districts. In such images landscape
cat. 232 backgrounds and interior settings would often dissolve completely and allow the artist to seize on an
Dancers, late 16205-16303,
detail from a idealized image of feminine beauty. For example, each panel of one six-panel screen (cat. 232) shows a
six-panel screen; dancer delicately balancing a fan and posing against an unbroken golden ground. Arrayed in a colorful
ink, color, and gold on paper,
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63.3 X 240 (24 /8 X 94V2), kosode with eye-catching patterns, each woman has facial features that are attractive but not distinctive,
Kyoto City,
Important Cultural Property suggesting that much of the original appeal of the painting was in its snapshot of textile fashions of
the day. The eroticism of later ukiyoe painters and print designers, who were directly inspired by these
solitary images of beautiful women, is largely absent. The artist indicates his decorative intent in the
meticulously detailed robes and the highly formalized poses of the dancers, but he also sought a visual
equilibrium commensurate with the bodily balance of a dancer. The extended hands, slightly turned tor-
sos, and bent legs give the impression of the figures' shifting weight. Within the folds of the glamorous
robes we detect carefully examined figurai frameworks, though the outlines of the bodies themselves
are only hinted at by costume.