Above: “Shadows on the Shoji,” Kikukawa Eizan, 1815
The two fashionably dressed courtesans in the foreground appear to have just stepped away from a lively party and are chatting on a veranda. The drinking and flirting figures inside cast shadows against the shoji (lattice-and-paper screen doors) of the brothel behind them.”
Curatorial notes for “Shadows on the Shoji,” Blanton Museum of Art
1815. The date surprised me, due to my lack of understanding the accepted restrictive roles assigned courtesans and geishas in Japanese culture. The witty social commentary and humor contained in Edo-era (1603-1868) woodblock prints in “The Floating World: Masterpieces from the Edo Period” on display at the Blanton Museum of Art prove captivating.
After centuries of conflict and war, Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868) was a time of peace, stability, and economic growth. Members of the ruling class patronized artists, merchants, entertainers, and courtesans in major cities…. Sharing a visual culture and appreciation for the transient pleasures of life, such diverse groups comingled in a metropolitan melting pot known as ukiyo, or ‘floating world.’ There, a new art genre emerged: Ukiyo-e. These pictures… depict the lifestyle, pleasures, and interests of the urban population— from samurais, geishas, and kabuki actors to boat parties, palaces, and lush landscapes.”
For example, in the one below top right, glamorous white-powder-faced geishas, confined within their compound by law, peer out with envy at the freedom of unhappy-looking housewives outside. All appear longing for a better lot in life.
In 1765, new technology made it possible to produce single-sheet prints in a whole range of colors…. A woodblock print image is first designed by the artist on paper and then transferred to a thin, partly transparent paper. Following the lines on the paper, now pasted to a wooden block usually of cherry wood, the carver chisels and cuts to create the original in negative—with the lines and areas to be colored raised in relief. Ink is applied to the surface of the woodblock. Rubbing a round pad over the back of a piece of paper laid over the top of the inked board makes a print. Polychrome prints were made using a separate carved block for each color, which could number up to twenty.”
2024 is the Year of the Dragon, which some consider the only imaginary creature in the Japanese zodiac. Maybe dragons were believed to exist at the time the calendar was adopted. Are dragons the stuff of fairy tales and legends or were they real? One would hate to pull the rug out from under England’s patron, Saint George, cherished as a slayer of dragons.
Japanese dragons do not always breathe fire. Festivals center on the dragon as a rain god capable of spouting water to end droughts. Or perhaps to put out fires other dragons started. Over-activity by the rain god/dragon is when those platform geta shoes come in handy to keep kimonos from dragging in the muck and mire.
The woodblock print depicting a standoff of a live rooster with a print within the print is estimated to date from the Year of the Rooster in 1824. The three poems below are translated in the Blanton’s curatorial notes.
"Friend or foe?" he cries
bravely facing the
painting scented with the
fragrance of the brush;
the first transaction
at cockcrow, of the Year of the Bird
by Yomo no Magao
The disappointment
of the cock who
attacks the painting by mistake;
the first laugh of a
humourous spring
by Yayoian Hinamaru
The stone door of heaven
is opened as the
rooster raises its cockscomb
at the start of spring of
the Year of the Bird
by Sanzenkan Momozane
The influence of the flat blocks of color of the Ukiyo-e printing process still echoes in stand-alone art and manga comic books. Below are photos of two contemporary works featured in an exhibition mounted at the Japan House in London last fall, “Wave: Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts” (more about that exhibit later).
On April 28 at the Blanton, Goldthwaite Professor of Rhetoric and Japanese at Tufts University, Susan Napier, and Los Angeles-based artist Gajin Fajita will discuss the impact of this traditional art on current pop culture. For tickets, click here.
Postcards from Barton Springs 
such an interesting post
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