Page 379 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

Young women's kabuki was completely outlawed by the authorities in 1629 because of its link
to prostitution — and because samurai were fighting over favorite performers. Although kabuki perfor-
mance by women was officially banned, evidence from surviving paintings suggests that it persisted
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through the early i64os. The young women of the earliest period of kabuki were initially replaced by
teenage boys known as wakashu, who also offered sexual services to male clients to make a living.
Eventually the authorities clamped down on young boys' kabuki as well, and by the i66os adult male
performers had to rely on their acting skills rather than sexual innuendo to captivate their audiences.
Young actors still performed female roles but had to shave their forelocks (apparently a highly erogenous
feature). Actors responded by covering the exposed pate with a purple kerchief, which ironically was
378 transformed into a visual signal with as much if not more sexual suggestiveness than the one it was
meant to conceal.

E A R L Y E D O The realms of bordello culture and kabuki would remain intimately connected through their subsequent
E V O C A T I O N S O F development. During the 16205 many star performers of women's kabuki, such as those making their
F E M A L E appearance in Amusements along the Riverside at Shijô, did a double shift as courtesans of the Yanagimachi
B E A U T Y district in nearby Rokujó (Sixth Avenue). Since on stylistic grounds the Hikone Screen (cat. 233) can
be dated to this period or slightly later, the setting is assumed to be one of the Yanagimachi bordellos.
The screen's popular name refers to the Hikone fiefdom, where the li family, the former owners of the
screen, once held power. That this screen of bordello culture was long in possession of a daimyo family
shows that the earliest patrons of scenes of the pleasure quarters were wealthy samurai. By the late
seventeenth century members of the merchant class would become the primary patrons of paintings on
bordello themes.
Part of the allure of the Hikone Screen can be ascribed to its intriguing compositional arrangements
of figures and the accoutrements of leisure, or to its parodie allusion to the traditional theme of the
Four Accomplishments of music, board games, calligraphy, and painting (see detail p. 368), but the
screen somehow transcends these concerns. While enjoying its more accessible decorative aspects —
the tasteful coloring and textile designs of the garments, scrupulous brushwork, and narrative content
— we primarily notice the facial expressions of the figures. The work is meant to be a scene of figures
at play, but does anyone look as if he or she is having fun? As various critics have pointed out, the
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painting is suffused with a mysterious, somewhat melancholy, almost frigid quality. In this regard
the Hikone Screen is a radical artistic statement, cutting to the core of the aesthetics of Japanese figurai
representation. It anticipates the entire genre of ukiyoe, where images tease the viewer by evocations
of beauty, sensuality, and poetic mood while betraying little or no deeply felt individual emotion.
In the left section of the screen a strong visual contrast is established between the ethereal
realm of the monochrome landscape in a meticulously brushed Chinese style and the worldly ambiance
of the bordello pursuits in the foreground. The screen within the screen may be read as an abridged
version of the Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers, a classic theme in Chinese and then Japanese

painting, one commonly borrowed by Kano artists. The mountainous landscape, misty and nebulous,
represents a symbolic realm of intellectual escape for a samurai literatus. In this painting, created
at the dividing point between the late medieval and early modern stages of Japanese history, we see
the landscape suited to samurai taste being supplanted by the realm of human pleasures. The land-