Page 395 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

T H E P O L I T I C A L To conclude our discussion of the depiction of the human figure, we summon the work of Utagawa
B O D Y V E R S U S Kuniyoshi, who was active until just a few years before the Edo period ended. In addition to creating
T H E F A C E O F T H E numerous playful prints in which he replaced human figures with representations of animals, Kuniyoshi
I N D I V I D U A L brought pictorial play with the human form to its final extreme in the realm of figure prints. In a fasci-
nating series of four published prints of composite portraits (see cats. 277 - 279) he used small images
of the human body as malleable pictorial elements to fashion human faces. The technique can be
compared with the popular allegorical composite portraits by the sixteenth-century Italian mannerist
painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, which are made up of fruits and vegetable, fishes and animals, and
occasionally of miniature human figures, as in Kuniyoshi's prints. 31

394 But Kuniyoshi's images transcend the sheer playfulness of such works in other traditions. His
iconoclastic pictures spoof human personality types and subvert the whole tradition of representing
individual figures. Earlier in the essay we suggested that one could read the entire body of a subject as
a "face," but now we are confronted with a face composed of bodies. Kuniyoshi's fanciful constructions
of human faces may be viewed as a veiled response to political, social, and artistic restrictions imposed
by the Tenpó Reforms of the early 18405, which purportedly aimed at uplifting the country's moral stan-

dards. Sumptuary laws especially targeted those who profited from activities associated with the floating
world, including actors and prostitutes, popular writers, and ukiyoe artists. According to the new censor-
ship laws, artists were forbidden to create identifiable images of contemporary kabuki actors, courtesans,
and geisha. By creating images of men and women whose identities can never be completely disen-
tangled from a collective social identity, Kuniyoshi's composite portraits may be seen as poking fun at
the authorities who would deny artists the right to depict individuals. Earlier, in 1843, Kuniyoshi had
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a brush with the authorities over a print that was judged to be a satiric jab at the shogun, but as the
effects of the Tenpô Reforms later diminished, the artist no doubt felt more comfortable in testing the
limits of authority with satiric prints.
Kuniyoshi's playful images may also be read in a broader art historical context as a reaction to
a long tradition of depicting human figures in ukiyoe. In producing faces composed of bodies, he reminds
us of so many paintings of beautiful women whose faces are expressionless but who acquire a trace of
personality when the image is read in the context of the garment-covered body (cat. 279). Kuniyoshi
also seems to imply that superficial appearances are a social construction when he has the female sub-
ject of one print in the series state, "various people have come together to make up my face." The con-
struction of ideal beauty prints and paintings is no longer the mere reflection of the beauty of an indi-
vidual woman, nor is it solely the imaginative creation of idealized beauty by a single artist. On the
technical level Kuniyoshi may be suggesting that several people collaborated on the creation of a print,

and indeed the designer, carver, printer, calligrapher, and publisher each had a significant role in its
production. On another level Kuniyoshi may be asserting that it is the public, the people who bought
prints, who had an essential role in creating the representation of beauty. Finally, we, as modern viewers,
come to the prints and paintings with our own expectations and preconceptions of beauty, and recon-
struct the images yet again.
Edo artists experimented with remarkably varied means of depicting the human body and face:
the crafted perfection of masks for no drama or the extreme caricatures of those used for kyógen, the
expressionless but evocative faces of female dancers and courtesans of the early paintings, the bust
portraits of Utamaro's women or Sharaku's actors. Artists of the Edo period constantly explored new