The Meaning of Western Perspective in Edo Popular Culture

Author(s): Timon Screech

Source: Archives of Asian Art , 1994, Vol. 47 (1994), pp. 58-69
Published by: Duke University Press

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The Meaning of Western Perspective
in Edo Popular Culture

Timon Screech
SOAS, University of London

Vanishing-point perspective, which had evolved perspective, when it arrived in Japan, convinced few
through decades of trial and error in the West, arrived in with its pretensions to offer a uniquely compelling win
Japan all in a moment, as a fait accompli. When this oc dow onto the world.
curred is unclear. It is possible?indeed likely?that an Perspective in Japan was hailed as marvellous, but as
element of perspectival study had been carried out in the a marvellous invention, not a discovery. The distinction is
Jesuit painting school set up by Giovanni Niccolo (i 560 crucial: in it lies determination of whether perspective
1626) in 1601, but the evidence of pictures produced at pictures are deemed to be real or merely observing of
that time suggests that the technique was not systemati codes. The enormous number of conventions that had
cally applied. It remained for the second quarter of the to be followed by an artist who depicted in perspective
eighteenth century to witness the rise of a recognised militated against acceptance of the style as in any way
manner of depiction identified as Western perspective. It natural; and the viewer too was hedged about by numer
is the purpose of this essay to assess the meaning of this ous rules dictating how to view the image properly.
mode in the popular culture of Japan; a precise plotting Using a perspective picture was, in fact, a complex pro
of chronologies cannot, here, be essayed, nor can we cedure quite unlike viewing open, empirical space. Shiba
K?kand (1747-1818), an early experimenter in Western
offer more than one strand in the interpretation and de
ployment of perspective in Japan. styles, visited the Dutch East India Company's trading
station (or Factory) in Nagasaki with the object of find
THE ARRIVAL OF PERSPECTIVE
ing out more at first hand. He wrote in 1799 after his
return
Japanese terms for the new kind of representation were to Edo,
various. Uki-e* (floating pictures, but not to be confused
Western pictures operate on a highly theoretical level, and no-one
with ukiyo-eh) was a common designation; kubomi-ec should view them off-handedly. There is a correct way to look, and
(sunken pictures) was also used, though perhaps only in end, Western pictures are framed and hung up. When viewing
to this
them, even if you only intend a quick glance, stand full-square in
joking contrast.1 Both words stressed how the picture
front. The Western picture will always show a division between sky
interacted with its viewers, seeming either to fly up from
and ground [the horizon line]; be sure to position this exactly at
the page to envelop them, or plunge them down intoeye-level,
its which, generally speaking, will entail viewing from a dis
deep recesses. Only the former term is used in modern
tance of five or six shaku [ca. 180 cm]. If you observe these rules,
scholarly discourse. things shown near at hand and things shown far off?the foreground
and the rearground?will be clearly distinguished and the picture will
Western art has traditionally considered the "discov
appear no different from reality itself.2
ery" of perspective as one of its greatest feats. Ever since
Vasari, historians have extolled the line of heroes K?kan,
who a convert to the style, stresses the verisimilitude;
devised an accurate means of repeating "real" space
butin
intricate and convoluted, these pictures apparently
two dimensions. In Japan too, many ways of simulatingalso needed exegesis?even policing?to have much
the third dimension had been known since antiquity,value.
but
K?kan wrote two treatises on European art, the Essay
the calculation and rigid application of such techniques
on Western Pictures (Seiy? gadane) (from which the above
had never been thought the definition of good art, much
less the primary objective of representation. statement is taken) and the Laws of Western Pictures (Seiy?
Brunelleschi hung a net in the doorway of the Duomo
gah?{) of six years later.3 These were not the earliest such
theorisings. The first attempts to formulate the rules of
in Florence and drew the Baptistry through it; Northern
artists were said to have reproduced outside views by depiction had been made by Satake Yoshiatsug
Western
looking through the leaded squares of their casement
(1748-178 5), daimy? of Akita in the north of Japan, in
windows. But Japanese architecture has neither door anor
pair of short essays (one illustrated) completed in 1778.4
window in the Western sense, and the novel device of thirty at the time, was a man of considerable
Yoshiatsu,
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political weight, for his domain was one of the largest in tions and laws. Early perspective views suggest that trial
the land, and his family one of the oldest. The young and error was the prime didactic tool. Japanese architec
daimy? went on to learn the Western manner, achieved ture (as said) was radically different from that of Europe,
fame in it, and is nowadays best known by his artistic but in some ways ideally suited to essays in perspective:
sobriquet, Shozan.h most eighteenth-century buildings were of post and lin
Where Lord Satake derived his knowledge is debated. tel type, affording plentiful obliques and parallels that
Hiraga Germai1 (172 8-1779), a polymath of Westernist could be taken as ready guide lines; woven tatami mats
leanings who like K?kan had been to Nagasaki, visited (the usual floor covering) provided straight markers
Akita in 1773. This is likely to have provided the stim down which recessions could be easily plotted. Outside
ulus, although the daimy? had been interested in painting space remained more of a challenge, though, as can be
of other sorts since long before.5 seen from, for example, Masanobu's Taking the Evening
More circumstantially, a significant study on perspec Cool by Ry?goku Bridge0 (Fig. i).
tival drawing had been published in China in 1729 by Perhaps for this reason, indoor scenes predominate in
Nian Xiyaoj (d. 173 8), a high official and former provin the first uki-e, and sum? tournaments, kabuki plays, and
cial governor; this was entitled the Guide to the Study of brothels became frequent; their subject matter, note, is
Vision (Shixue jingyunk);6 the work was enlarged and re also slanted towards the world of popular urban enter
issued six years later. It is tempting to speculate whether tainment (a point to which we will return).
this work may have been known in Japan. Nian Xiyao's Statistical assessment would probably find kabuki
book was in fact the adaptation of a slightly earlier Latin scenes to be most numerous during the early period:
treatise, the Perspectiva Pictorum et Architectorum of Andrea there was already a huge market for actor prints
Pozzo (Putteus, decorator in 1691-1694 of the Jesuits' (yakusha-ep) and it was not unnatural that uki-e should
headquarter Church of the Ges? and teacher of the Italian have been partially subsumed into it. But other reasons
?migr?e to China Giuseppe Castiglione). The Perspectiva have been offered for the prevalence of stage depictions.
appeared in Rome only six years before Nian's first edi Edo theatres began to be roofed only in 1718; tiles were
tion. The Guide cannot be proven to have come to Japan, first used from 1724 and only by perspectival rendition
but it was circulating in China, and any Japanese of edu could the new ceilings be shown.9 At any rate, the ability
cation could read Chinese. to draw ceilings (from above or below) was much ap
Satake certainly owned a copy of one study of Western proved of by Lord Satake, who lamented their absence
art, and that in its original unexpurgated form. The book in most Japanese work; he felt uneasy that "foreigners
concerned, the Gro?te Schilderboek of 1707, was an intro seeing [our] pictures must certainly conclude that palaces
ductory manual to painting fantastically popular in Eu in this country are roofless, and wonder how, if they are
rope at the time.7 The author, G?rarde de Lairesse, had all like that, we ward off the rain and snow."10
been a pupil of Rembrandt, but by his time of writing Theatre prints are dated on the evidence of the actors
he had repudiated him to espouse a high and airy French appearing on stage or inscriptions on pillars, and assum
baroque. Lairesse's book was imported to Japan in sev ing this data to be accurate, the first extant example is
eral copies, and much studied. Satake, as a man of Masanobu's interior of the Nakamura-zaq showing a
wealth, was able to procure one, but even K?kan, a performance of 1745; the first uki-e may, of course, be
commoner and not of samurai status, obtained a copy considerably earlier than the first extant one.11 Interest
(he called it the Konsuto shikirudo b?ku), although quite ingly, Nian's Guide included lessons on how to depict
how it fell into his hands is unclear.8 Lairesse explained theatres, although from a different angle than that
in detail how to use lines of recession and vanishing adopted by Masanobu.12
points, as well as a host of other aspects of the Western THE PROBLEM OF THE MEDIUM
style, such as shading and the depiction of reflections in
water. Two initial conclusions ought now to be drawn. Firstly,
Yet Japanese experimentation with perspective can be early uki-e were overwhelmingly associated with the
world of townspeople's relaxation, particularly in Edo.
shown to have predated arrival of these formal treatises
by some four decades. Masanobu1 appears to have arro Secondly, perspective manifested itself less in painting
gated to himself the title of "Inventor" (kongenm) ofthan in prints?certainly, prints vastly outnumbered
uki-e, although Torii Kiyotada11 may in fact be morepaintings in the long run. The two issues are, in fact,
deserving of the name. In either case, the close of the
related: the sum?- and kabuki-going public was more
173 os would seem a plausible moment for the first innolikely to be in the print-buying than the painting-buying
vations to have occurred, possibly in several places atbracket.
once. It seems likely that artists worked on a strictly ad In Japan as elsewhere, prints were in essence images
hoc basis, copying and adapting imported pictures with for those who could not afford paintings. Lord Satake
out considering overmuch the mathematical implicaowned some Western etchings which he appears to have
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 Fig. i. Okumura Masanobu, Enjoying the Cool at Ryogoku (Ryogoku yusuzumi uki-e kotigen) (ca. 1745), woodblock
print, H. 30.1, L. 44.3 cm. Kobe City Museum.

treasured, but a samurai home could not properly be to prints. He finds them trivial. Devoid of brush work,
ornamented with such things. An urban commoner in East Asian terms they lack meaning, disqualifying
home, a restaurant, or a teashop, though, could. Modest them in a way which no amount of illusionistic space
townspeople pinned or pasted prints to their walls and creation could ever over-rule. Perspective was tarred
woodwork without sacrificing their aplomb. Since few with the perceived limitations of the medium of print.
European paintings ever arrived in Japan it was inevitable The association of the Western work of art in general
that the Western style (perspective included) was as with the print was almost total. Take the case of an entry
sociated almost exclusively with prints.13 This led to an in the Lexicon of the Primitive Language (Bango-senw), a
assessment of the foreign style as pertaining mostly to Japanese-Dutch pocket dictionary published in 1798: the
low-grade products. Had more paintings been imported book was the work of Morishima Ch?ry?x (1756
(Lairesses, Rembrandts, or anyone else's), perspective 1809), a high-ranking samurai who had thumbed
might have been taken more seriously. The fact is, it Lairesse thoroughly, associated with Gennai, and who
generally was not. Gennai told K?kan how "several knew more about the West than most. Yet Ch?ry? trans
hundred Dutch copperplate pictures" (certainly all exe lated gakuy (framed picture) aspurento (print), disregard
cuted in impeccable perspective) had been offered for ing the phenomenon of painting completely.
sale in Japan, but no-one showing the least interest in If an innate prejudice against prints worked to the
them, all had been shipped back.14 Such a fate would not detriment of perspective's status, there was also a prob
have befallen European easel works. lem of the kind of print imported. Copperplate repro
It was surely for this reason that Tani Bunch?r (1763 ductions of what in the West would have been regarded
1841), attendant (tsukes) to the Chief Minister of State as bona fide art were as rare in Japan as European paint
Matsudaira Sadanobu* (1758-1829), wrote, ings in oil. The majority of the imports were single-sheet
I used to have a large number of Western pictures in my collection, townscape views in the genre known as veduta prints
but I tend to find them . . . short on real meaning (imiu). When you (Fig. 2). In the home context too, these brightly coloured
try to appreciate a Western picture on a profound level you always and attractive pictures were essentially disposable pieces
feel there is something lacking.15 aimed at the ordinary citizen; they provided instant en
While Bunch? says "pictures" (gav) he must be referring joyment, but were not billed as great art.
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 Fig. 2. Vue d'optique, St Mary-le-Strand and Somerset House, London (ca. 1770), hand-coloured copperplate print,
H. 24.2, L. 39.8 cm. Private Collection.

Veduta themes represented, for the most part, cele perusupekuchifu (perspective), adding, to aid the user, the
brated parts of the cities of Europe, or those far-flung Japanese gloss uki-e.
places of empire to which the viewer would never go. The centrality of the veduta to Japanese interpretations
They offered an experience of travel to those who could of Western pictures must be stressed. The near equation
not themselves move. Veduta were at the banal end of of the two can be seen in the context of a comic illustrated
what Canaletto was providing for the wealthier classes story in the kiby?shiaa genre by Hirazawa Tsuneyoshiab
who actually made tours. Canaletto too, of course, was (1735-1813), a samurai and none other than Lord
pooh-poohed in most refined circles, and extolled to a Satake's official representative in Edo (rusui-yakuac).
high degree only in England, where visual taste was no Tsuneyoshi, using his penname H?seid? Kisanji,ad pub
toriously crude. His works were often made into prints lished the book in 1777, just as his daimy? must have
too (the subtler connoisseur would have thought that the been completing the two treatises on Western art. The
better genre for him anyway). story, Nandara the Monk and His Persimmon Stone (Nandara
Veduta prints of Jakarta, say, or Venice were consumed h?shi kani no tane*e), tells of the exploits of a certain Indian
casually in the drawing rooms of Europe from Berlin to cleric who begins the story by stealing a magical fruit
Dublin; now the same pictures were enjoyed in Japan stone that his master, a painter of religious icons, had
too. Extreme perspective was a hallmark of the eigh miraculously received from the Buddha. When ground
teenth-century veduta style. They exaggerated the mag up and mixed with pigment a little at a time, the stone
nificence of the vista, the more to excite the viewer, even creates an ink that allows the user to paint with peerless
if at the cost of truth. To see an actual place after becom skill. Nandara, possessed of the stone, determines to take
ing acquainted with it from a perspective print is often advantage of his new-found facility to become adept at
to witness a sad reduction. Many Japanese assumed these foreign styles. He goes at once to Holland to study the
slight pictures to be the sum of landscape art as under elements of Western art. Kisanji's illustrator, Koikawa
stood in the West, and perspective townscapes were held Harumachiaf (another samurai, known in his workaday
to define much of what art meant to Europeans. In his life as Kurahashiag) depicts Nandara at this point in a
Lexicon Ch?ry? translated seiy?-keiz (Western view) as European setting receiving instruction from a (rather
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 Fig. 4. Pierre Edouard Fr?re (i 819-1886), Girls Looking at Prints
(nineteenth century), oil on canvas, size unknown. The girls arc
Fig. 3. Koikawa Harumachi (ill.), Nandara the Monk and His Persim using a zograscope. The Brooklyn Museum, 21.123.19. Bequest
mon Stone (Nandara h?shi kaki no ta?e) (1777), p. 3 verso, h. 18.0, of William H. Harriman.
L. 13.0 cm. National Diet Library, Tokyo.

Japanised) Dutchman (Fig. 3). A large perspectival work at once remove, reflected in a mirror mounted obliquely.
rests on an easel, while Nandara copies a miniature por These combined to enhance the clarity of the image and
trait roundel. Those are apparently paintings, but the give a sense of really "being there, " but it meant the scene
teacher instructs Nandara in the true hierarchies of West
had to be printed in reverse.17 Optiques were on sale
right up to the middle of the nineteenth century in
ern art: he stipulates that only after nozoki-eah have been
mastered can painting be attempted.16 Europe and the United States, and were common house
PEEPING-PICTURES hold furnishings, eventually marketed under the name
of zograscopes (Fig. 4).
Nozoki-e, literally "peeping-pictures," are largely iden
The optique arrived in Japan with the perspective
tical with uki-e. They are crucial to understanding the though no doubt in smaller numbers. The records
print,
popular gloss put on perspective in Japan. Nozoki-e of are
the Dutch Factory in Nagasaki mention the import of
what in the West were called vues d'optique. These awere
perspectieff cas in the winter of 1646. Quite what this
wasofis unclear, but that it was some sort of peeping
a sub-set of veduta prints relying for the full effect
apparatus is obvious.18 K?kan commented on the preva
their perspectival scheme on a piece of apparatus known
as an optique. The device was a kind of table-top peep
lence of optiques in Japan in his day, and Harunobu (d.
box into which the print was put. A lensed viewing 1770) showed one in use by a boy and a young girl in a
male
aperture permitted the viewer to see the image inside inbrothel (Fig. 5).19 Harunobu's device appears to be
isolation, all familiar surroundings cut away and theFrench,
en for an identical one made in Paris is still extant
in Japan;20 the print being used with the optique is
tire field of vision taken over by the printed scene. Vues
d'optique were not viewed directly through the lens,domestically
but produced, and represents part of Mt K?ya.
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 Imported optiques were set up at fairs and amusement
areas, and people flocked to use them at so much a look.
Kodera Gyokuch?31 (active 1818-1837), an indefatigable
recorder of popular exhibits in his native city of Nagoya,
noted that "peeping glasses brought over from Holland"
were on display at the Temple of Daisu-zanaj in the 1820s;
these could be used for sixteen mon a time. In 1788,
K?kan had charged exactly double to look through an
optique he had devised himself, although whether he
was extorting, or the price dropped over time (or
whether he offered more pictures to go inside his
machine) is hard to tell.21
Many Japanese writers on Western art in the latter part
of the eighteenth century took it for granted that not
only were imported pictures generally veduta scenes,
but they were actually mirror-image vues d'optique.
K?kan, by no means ill informed on the subject, held the
crowning success of his attempts to master Western
styles was his ability to replicate copperplate etching and
thereby to simulate absolutely a European vue d'optique.
By contrast, the simulation of oil paint occupied for him
a position of less prestige. K?kan 's first etching was an
Edo view (Mimeguriak in the east of the city), but prob
ably the next year, 1784, saw him making pictures of the
Serpentine Lake in the English stately home of Stowe
(Fig. 6), and of a Dutch hospital. These views were not
just replications of the medium of etching (as has long
been acknowledged), but were surrogates of the totality
of a Western vue d'optique, for they consciously showed Fig. 5. Suzuki Harunobu, Optique in Use, from the series
precisely the sort of view then being created for use in Mutamagawa (before 1770), multi-coloured woodblock print,
optiques all across Europe. Indeed, so close is each of H. 27.6, L. 20.6 cm. Kobe City Museum.
K?kan's images to the original scene depicted that pure

Fig. 6. Shiba K?kan, The Serpentine,

Stowe (1785), copperplate print,
h. 25.5, L. 37.1 cm. Kobe City
Museum.

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 imagination is precluded, and he must have copied the
two plates from imported images (although only the
former has been traced to a convincing source).22
In the same year that K?kan broke the European
monopoly on vues d'optique, he explained himself: he
stated of his perspective copperplate efforts that, "the
principles governing my pictures (garial) are identical
with those of the West." This was a statement of
triumph, made, note, with exclusive reference to his
ability to fabricate pictures for use in optiques. K?kan
was pleased to have cracked the difficult task of etching
on metal, but his comment is directed only to the re
versed peeping-picture genre. K?kan's remark in fact
appears on a single-sheet copperplate print illustrating
the three types of optique most current. He went on,
[Europeans] represent human figures, landscapes, and everything
else in the form of uki-e. Pictures are positioned under the optique
back to front [as in Harunobu's illustration] . . . and you view them
reflected in a mirror.

Then he added the hoary summary, "[thanks to this] the

landscape and vegetation look just as they do in real life. "
The Japanese term for the optique, "peep-glasses"
(nozoki-meganeam) was soon substituted for the more
memorable "Dutch glasses" (Oranda meganean). Uki-e
themselves could be called "glasses-pictures" (megane-e)
? "glasses" meaning not spectacles but optiques.23
TECHNIQUES OF VIEWING
Large numbers of such megane were made in Japan for
use with European prints, or with their Japanese deriva
tives. The many kinds replicated pretty much the variety Fig. 7. Santo Ky?den, Goods You Know All About (Gozonji no
to be seen in Europe. The emphasis, though, was differ sh?baimono) (1782), p. 7 recto, h. 18.0, l. 13.0 cm. Department of
ent for the most common sort in Japan was not the Literature, Kyushu University, Fukuoka.
zograscope but a larger device known in English as a
raree-show, and in Japanese as a peeping-karakuri
(nozoki-karakuriao); karakuri means something like a be procured. All this meant a swift (and sanitary) cus
contraption.24 (Below, I use "peeping-karakuri" inter tomer turn-around had to be maintained. As a senryuar
changeably with "peep-box.") verse had it,
Scrolls showing the funfairs of Edo and elsewhere "Give your nose
routinely depict a peeping-karakuri in action, with A proper wipe!"
crowds gathered to see the views inside. The machine They say, staring in.
Hana o yoku kami-nasai yo to nozoki ii.25
was appropriate for group settings, since unlike the zog
rascope it was suitable for use in the open air and by Santo Ky?den,as a best-selling writer in the same comic
several people at once. The box was fully enclosed, with genre as Kisanji, and a person much given to satirising
a row of apertures pierced along the front allowing mul contemporary fads, referred to the peeping-karakuri as
tiple access into the interior. A showman, called the something, "otherwise known as the 'do-please-pass
saiku-ninap (clever-device operator) ran the box, and had along-at-the-front-there!'"26 If people were inclined to
a reputation for being somewhat bullying with the pun linger over perspective pictures the showman shooed
ters: no longer a private affair, these Dutch-glasses were them on.
money- making concerns, and economic viability had to One peep-box is conveniently illustrated in a story by
be considered; the peeping-karakuri must have cost Ky?den entitled Goods You All Know About (Gozonji no
something to set up. The Takeda Omiaq company of sh?baimono*1), published in 1782 (Fig. 7). One of the
automaton makers in Osaka fabricated machines, al "goods" was the peep-box. Up to six customers can
though many must also have been jerry-built by their view the scene together, and a child is seen crouching
individual operators. But there were still the pictures to down to look. This was the normal posture, which, in
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 the words of an indelicate senry? writer, meant, "look Fearful of being spotted or hiding their blushing cheeks,
ing as if you're trying to fart" (heppiri-goshi).27 The the women nevertheless cannot forbear to take a scurri
images are lit through paper screens set horizontally over lous look.32
the top. The drum-beating saiku-nin sounds the roll-up A single box contained large numbers of images
as a jack-in-the-box pops from behind a candle-shade to stacked up and viewed in sequence either to construct a
announce the commencement of the show. The opera story, or else just as a random pot-luck of exotica. The
tor, who will probably narrate the scenes, is perched on pictures (we might call them scenes or sets in English),
a case labelled "uki-e. " This box (even down to the jack) were known as tei?y in Japanese. The selection was sus
seems entirely typical of the sort to be seen in urban pended out of sight behind the advertising board on top
centres in late eighteenth-century Japan. But the foreign of the box, which in fact doubled as a baffle or a mini-fly
derivation of the booth is stressed, for the advertising tower; the showman dropped the sets down one in front
board shows a Dutch-like scene of a waterfront with of the other, as appropriate, by pulling cords emerging
Western figures and a dog (probably it was after seeing from the the side of the booth.
such boards that Harumachi made up the easel painting Towards the end of the eighteenth century an addi
illustrated in Nandara).28 The wings of Ky?den's sign tional feature was incorporated; this had great bearing on
reiterate the imported nature of the vision, reading, the popularity of uki-e. I refer to the adoption of a light
"Great Dutch Karakuri" (Oranda ?-karakuri). ing trick allowing sets to be alternately front-lit (the nor
The peep-box became so popular that the sesquipeda mal way) or back-lit. Hidden slats were fitted beneath
lian "nozoki-karakuri" was abbreviated, in Kyoto to the paper roof and swivelled to direct light either before
nozoki and in Edo to karakuri;29 the peep-box, then, or behind the picture?a technique common in European
became quintessential of both the "peep" and the "con raree-shows. When used with cut-out pictures whose
traption, " with perspective implicated under either term. depicted windows and lamps were snipped away, a day
It is a vexed question what exactly was to be seen in time scene could turn suddenly into night, with light
these Japanese perspective boxes. The totality of Euro seeming to shine from inside the buildings. Ky?den
pean vues d'optique would probably not have made it to mentioned this feature in his Goods: "the set shows people
Japan, but then, domestic uki-e added a host of new enjoying the cool of the day at Shij?-Kawara, but in a
indigenous subjects. Extant uki-e show a bewildering flash it will change, and night-time lanterns burn. "
range. It is interesting to recall that perspective prints Lighting tricks brought sites of nighttime revelry into
were being made in China at this time too, especially in the domain of uki-e. The pleasure districts of Kyoto
the Suzhouau area, and although they were not normally (such as Shij?-Kawara) or Edo (the Yoshiwara) were
of dimensions suitable for use in a peep-box, they may often shown in perspective, and even when cut-outs
have been emulated locally in smaller formats.30 were not actually used, the scene could be plunged into
Literary sources suggest more varieties of imagery crepuscular conditions with breath-taking effect. Events
still. Shikitei Sanbaav (1776-1822), a rival of Ky?den for from history and literature which had taken place at night
the accolade of Edo's favourite novelist, transcribed a entered the repertory. Ky?den's protege, the novelist
peep-box showman's cry in his Barber's Shop of the Float Takizawa Bakinaz (1767-1848), told excitedly of having
ing World (Ukiyo-doko ), a long-ish work published in seen in a peep-box in Nagoya an illustration of the Night
instalments over eighteen months from 1813 : Attack from the famous play the Treasury of Loyal Retain
Now then everyone, come and have a look! Here's the Factory of the ers (Ch?shingura.ba)33 This event was in fact depicted
[Dutch East India] Company in Jakarta! There's its look-out post with in perspective by many, including Kitao Masayoshibb
two pine trees, and you can see right back to those three girls over (1764-1824) and Maruyama Okyobc (1733-1795). Jip
there. All this contrived inside a little box. And there's more! A
pensha Ikkubd (1765-1831), another much-read comic
Chinaman stands to greet someone from his window; there's a maple
tree and a big thick pine. Well? How is it?31
writer, recorded some peep-box scenes in a compilation
of Edo showmen's cries published in 1818. He begins
It was wonderful, of course. with the saiku-nin in full tilt; the first scene mentioned
Western, Imperial, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean is the same that Bakin had viewed,
scenic views were all to be seen. But given the swift and
Well now, well now! Next comes the Eleventh Act of the Treasury of
semi-secret nature of the karakuri peep (those who had
Loyal Retainers, after that it's the suicide of O-shichi the greengrocer's
not paid up and squatted down would never know what girl, and the tragic journey after the Battle of Ichi-no-tani. In the
was within), it was perhaps inevitable that more illicit distance you will see Asukayama and nearby there's Itsukushima in
sights were shown too. Pornography may have been Aki. Then it will change to night-time scenes with lanterns, flaming
a staple. As early as 1730, Hasegawa Mitsunobuax re torches and stars; there'll be the ring-hunt held on Mt Fuji, and the
firework displays of the Tama-ya and the Kagi-ya.34
marked of the state of affairs in Osaka that, "although
children are said to be the likely clients, viewers are in The show moves apace from Ch?shingura to the famous
fact apt to be young ladies hiding their faces behind hats. " love-suicide of O-shichi, to an episode from the Tales of
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the Heike (Heike monogataribe), to a view in Edo, to the applied, or not applied at all. But the rationale for K?
floating shrine of Miyajima near Hiroshima (one of the kan's objection was that Western art (in his words) "cap
Three Most Beautiful Places?sankeibf?in Japan), to tures reality" (shaseibh) or "copies truth" (shashinbl), and
Yoritomo's famous battue (makigaribg) of 1193 at which perspective alone will not be equal to that unless sup
the Brothers Soga took their extravagant revenge, until ported by other stylistic conventions. Perspective was
finally the show closes with night-time depictions of the just one gun in a well-stocked arsenal. K?kan feared that
pyrotechnic extravaganzas hosted annually by two res the epistemology of shashin might be compromised by
taurants at Ryogoku in Edo.35 the over-popularity of uki-e as they galloped far ahead
The sets replaced each other in the box with proverbial of the rest of the Western technical cannonade. Uki-e
rapidity, as the saiku-nin tugged away at his cords. The were fun, but Western representation was not to be seen,
speed and frequency of the change-overs in fact was the as K?kan put it, as "toys" (ganry?bj).
stuff of legend. Ky?den used the peeping-karakuri as a Perspective as practised in Japan was indelibly asso
metaphor for all changeability, and he warned his readers ciated with flippant subject matter, and with the chaotic
that the human heart (particularly, he says, woman's) is conditions of viewing of the peep-box. Sanba's Barber's
just like a booth in its protean fickleness, Shop referred to perspective as creating a "ten-league
Just when you think you see Pusan Harbour [in Korea], there it goes, European gaze,"41 that is, the pictures even if not of the
and it's changed to a view of Miyajima in Aki. "Now it's a picture West, entailed looking in a Western way. This was a con
of Paradise!" you say to yourself, but then it shifts to Hell.36 voluted, anti-empirical gaze, often found to show a to
The vue-d'optique is a flibberty-jibbett that offers no vi tally spurious expansiveness that was precisely counter
sion of any substance. Ky?den sums up: "People's hearts factual. Uki-e tended to represent precisely what was not
change as fast as autumn skies. Let each be on his guard. " true or not real. Perspective can exaggerate a small space
Five years later, K?kan appealed again to this metaphys into a large one, and all too often uki-e were found to be
ical peep-box, in cahoots with boastfulness and swell. Many is the illus
trated story that runs comfortably on using traditional
If you were to pull the cords of the human heart, you would see
Japanese spatial configurations only to switch to Western
changes swifter even than those of [sets in] a karakuri. This is the
wages of fortune. Let no-one lower his guard!37 perspective when a flashy or insolent interior is in
voked.42
This anthropomorphic booth occludes real distinc Far from replicating life, perspective might establish
tions, whether between right and wrong or heaven and an inflated sense of space that life might then foolishly
hell, and by jumbling all together in an unstable slew, it learn to aspire to. "Reality" might seek to match itself
erodes the authority of difference.38 The Western per up to the false majesty of uki-e. The Mitsuibk shop in
spective print has been turned into a spokesperson for Suruga in Edo was built on a street specially constructed
vanity and flux, and for precisely, appearances over real to align with Mt. Fuji, so that anyone walking down
ity; the optique has become a means for viewing the would see the shop receding into the distance with the
vapid hearts of Edo. sacred mountain rising above; this looked so much like
PERSPECTIVE AND REALITY an uki-e that the scene was routinely depicted as one.43
Turning the fabric of the shogunal city into a mechanism
That perspective was thought to be the principal feature
for one's own aggrandisement was arrogant.
of the Western style will, I hope, now be accepted. Lord
Sukeroku,bl the swashbuckling hero of kabuki legend
Satake regarded the prime brilliance of Western represen
(and role-model for all of overweening pride), high
tation that "the place at which the power of the human
lighted the propensity of uki-e to pander to hubricious
eye gives out is captured," that is, a vanishing point is
mortals. In a play performed in 1779, the eponymous
shown.39 But other commentators were worried by this
hero turns his body into a notional peeping-karakuri,
too-close equation of Western pictures and uki-e. As the
making all the world his uki-e: calling upon his cronies
association became all but complete, some cavilled. The
to look through the curl of his cue as if it were the
uki-e being things of the piccaresque world of the fair
viewing hole of a peeping-karakuri, Sukeroku rants,
ground, some felt them liable to bring Western art in toto
into disrepute. K?kan himself, despite having done so
A head-band of Edo purple winds about my hair and when you look
through my cue you see Awa in Kazusa appearing like an uki-e.44
much to bring the vue d'optique into the Japanese arena,
was ambivalent,
Bluster and uki-e go hand in hand.
People tend to think that Western pictures are only uki-e, but Hokusai's
the view of Fuji from Nihon-bashi from the
opinion deserves to be laughed to scorn.40
series Thirty-Six Views ofMt Fuji (Fugaku sanj?rokkeibm)
represents an antithesis to this proud and over-blown
Of course not all Western pictures in Japan were done
uki-e
in perspective, and those who looked could find exam (Fig. 8). The print shows the world as it should be,
ples in plenty where the technique was haphazardlynot as the rough and boisterous would have it. The hub
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 Fig. 8. Katsushika Hokusai, Nihon-bashi in Edo (ca. 1832), from the series F?gaku sanju-rokkei, multi
coloured woodblock print, h. 24.4, l. 36.5 cm. British Museum.

bub of the city is seen on the bridge in the foreground, ment, delineated in the mocking sea-logic of imported
rigidly confined and pinned into its proper subordinate Western perspective.
scale; the lowly are arranged transversely so as to be
unsusceptible to perspectival treatment. Beyond, the
pompous warehouses of the city's merchant ?lite extend
into the distance bearing their identifying markings;
these are in perspective, which is not amiss for over
blowing is the merchants' nature, and, importantly, the
Notes
exaggeration of serried godowns of supply heralds
author's note: The material presented here was gathered while
plenty, attesting, in fact, to authority's smooth running on a Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Japan Foundation in
of the land that has ensured such generous provision. At 1990-1991. I wish to express my thanks to that body, as well as to
the rear of the print, though, the turrets of the shogunal my supervisors, John M. Rosenfield and Kobayashi Tadashi. Henry
castle and the peak of Fuji, the two great symbols of the Smith provided a detailed and extremely useful commentary on an
earlier draft of this article.
realm, are discerned; not things of pride or vanity but
the noble hubs of the Japanese state and of ancestral 1. Kubomi-e is attested only once, in Ishino Hiromichi, Esoragoto
(1802).
culture, these elements remain precisely not included in
2. Shibo K?kan, Seiy?gadan, in Nihon shis?taikei vol. 64(Iwanami,
the perspective scheme: Castle and peak, creatures of an J976), p. 494. This essay is also translated in full in Calvin French,
altogether grander dispensation, are shown as inaccessi Shiba K?kan (Weatherhill: New York and Tokyo, 1974), Appendix
ble by way of any of the parallels that unite what dwells III. All locations of publication are Tokyo, unless otherwise stated.
beneath. The populace is crushed below, the Nation and 3. Seiy? gah? constitutes a section within K?kan's lengthy Oranda
ts?haku.
its monuments spread out above; Western perspective is
4. Satake Yoshiatsu, Gah? k?ry? and Gazu rikai, in Sakazaki Tan
what governs the middle echelons. [Shizuka], Nihongaron taikan, vol. 1 (Arusu, 1929), pp. 97-103 (illus
As Hiraga Germai put it in 1763, "when seeing an trations not included).
uki-e, you think of the Jar Sage."45 He was referring to 5. Satake, like many of the group who became the "Akita Western
the sage who was said to have found a huge paradise ists, " was already working in the Nagasaki style.
6. Where no reference is made to a modern publication, works are
inside a little bottle, and to have taken that, not reality,
available only in their original editions. Julian Lee, The Origin and
as his dwelling. Peeping into the karakuri box one might Development of Japanese Landscape Prints, unpublished Ph.D. thesis
find a Heaven, but more likely one would see only an (Washington, 1977), has argued for Shiyuejingyuns being known in
illusionary picture, a nothing of dreaming and displace Japan, pp. 224fr.

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 7- Translations of the Gro?te Schilderboek into numerous Western would no doubt often have been put in optiques too and the terms
languages were made: German (1729), English (1738), and French conflated as much then as now. Interestingly, K?kan produced a
(1787). copperplate of Ryogoku Bridge both reversed and right way around.
8. Kokan was himself responsible for sowing the seeds of confu In English, vue d'optique was sometimes translated as "perspective
sion, for he claimed that the Gro?te Schilderboek had been a gift to him view" and optique as "diagonal viewing machine," but I retain the
personally from the Dutchman, Isaac Titsingh, when the two had French.
met in Nagasaki in 1789; see Seiy?gadan, p. 492. However, Titsingh 24. A painting in the collection of the Kobe City Museum by the
was not in Japan at that time. K?kan (an inveterate self-mythologiser) otherwise unknown Nagasaki artist Nishi Kuraku depicts a Dutch
had probably gained access to the book earlier. raree-show in action, attesting to the fact that the nozoki-karakuri
9. Lee, Origin and Development, pp. 65-67. was known to come from the West.
10. Satake, Gah? k?ry?, p. 101. 25. Yanagi dam (Ky?iku Bunko, 1988), vol. 10, no. 152.
11. Kishi Fumikazu, "Enp? ni-nen no p?supekuteibu," in Bijut 26. Santo Ky?den, Komon gawa, in Tani Minez? (ed.), Asobi no
sushi 132(1992);228ff discusses the dating for these other early images, dezainu (Iwasaki Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1984), p. 16.
and mentions another Masanobu theatre print of 1743. 27. Quoted in Furukawa Miki, Sh?mingein? (Y?zan-kaku, 1983),
12. As Pozzo's original put it, the scene showed, "a theatre repre p. 247.
senting the Marriage in Cana of Galilee, erected in the Jesuits Church 28. An example is in Ky?den's Ko wa mezurashiki misemono-gatari
in Rome in the year 1685, for the solemn exposition of the Holy (1801), illustrated by Kitao Shigemasa.
Sacrament. " Pozzo notes that Italian and German theatres differ in 29. Kitagawa Morisada, Klnsei f?zoku shi, quoted in Ono Tada
construction; see text to plate 70. shige, Garasu-e to doro-e, 2nd ed. (Kawade Shob? Shinsha, 1990),
13. Two Western oil paintings by the Dutch artist Willem van p. 66.
Royen were to be seen in the Gohyaku Rakan-ji in Edo; see Timon 30. Suzhou prints are mostly in the large hanging-scroll format.
Screech, "The Strangest Place in Edo: the Temple of the Five Hundred More likely, Chinese scenes are to be accounted for by the import to
Arhats," in Monumenta Nipponica 48(1993); one supposed Rembrandt Japan of Western vues d'optique representing China (of which there
was also in Japan (authenticated by K?kan and certainly a late seven were many). Peep-shows were known in China, however, and were
teenth-century piece, but since rejected as by Rembrandt himself); called la yangpian, "Western-piece stretchers."
see Michigami Toshii, "Watashi no Renburanto: Mangetsu no zu," in 31. Shikitei Sanba, Ukiyo-doko, in Share-bon, kokei-bon, ninj?-bon,
Geijutsu shincho i8i(i965):i02-i09. For details of the de-attribution Nihon koten bungaku zensh?, vol. 47 (Shogakkan, 1971), p. 289. I
see Calvin French, Shiba K?kan, p. 185, n. 59. Reverse-glass painting differ from the editors of that volume, who believe that the last part
(garasu-e) was quite abundantly imported from the West; see below of this passage does not refer to the showman's cry but to that of a
note 16. rental telescope salesman. The racist term "Chinaman" is used to
14. Shiba K?kan, Seiy? gadan; see above note 2. capture the flavour of the original t?jin.
15. Bunch?gadan, in Nihon shogaen, vol. 2 (Kokusho Kaigy?-kai, 32. Hasegawa Mitsunobu, Ehon otogishina kagami; this is quoted in
1916), p. 189. most sources relating to uki-e; see, inter alia, Oka, Megane-e, p. 96.
16. The teacher specifies oils and glass painting. The latter, a rococo I follow Julian Lee in understanding this to imply pornographic pic
infatuation (biidoro-e in the text) was extensively emulated in Asia, tures were in the box (Origin and Development, p. 54). Erotica, though,
including in Japan by (among others) K?kan. was probably not shown in perspective.
17. The reversing of prints was common practice; compare, for 3 3. Takezawa Bakin, Kiry? manroku, quoted in Fukamoto Kazuo,
example, Fig. 2 above with fig. 93 in Megane-e to T?kaid? goj?-san Karakurigeijutsu shiwa, 2nd ed. (Fuji Shuppan, 1982), p. 136.
tsugi (Kobe City Museum, 1988); in that case, the Kobe illustration 34. Jippensha Ikku, Kane m?ke hana no sakariba, p. 5.
is a veduta but not a vue d'optique since it shows the scene the correct 35. Uki-e are not extant for all these places and events, but for the
way around. fireworks at least, see the version of Masayoshi in Timothy Clark,
18. Nagasaki Orandash?kan nikki, vol. 22 (Iwanami, 1956), p. 133; "The Rise and Fall of the Island of Nakazu, " Archives of Asian Art
modern Japanese critics refer to this instrument as a t?shi-bako. XLV (i992):Fig. 6.
19. Male prostitutes (kagema) dressed as girls, sometimes (though 36. Ky?den, Hitogokoro kagami no utsushi-e (1796), p. 12 recto.
not necessarily) with the addition of tassels on their sleeves. This 37. K?kan, Ko wa mezukashiki misemonogatari, ed. Fujisawa
picture is filled with covert references to the ninth-century prelate Yoshihiko (KokinKisho Kangy?-kai, 1935), pp. 26-27.
K?b? Daishi, founder of Mt K?ya and patron saint of man-boy love 38. For more on this theme, see Tanemura Hidehiro, "Nozoki
(nanshoku). karakuri no toposu, " in his Hako-nuke karakuri kidan (Kawade Shob?
20. One of several optiques preserved in the Kobe City Museum Shinsha, 1991).
was made in Paris. 39. Satake, Gazu rikai, p. 103.
21. For Gyokuch? see his Misemono zasshi, in Zoku zuihitsu bungaku 40. K?kan, Seiy? gadan, p. 492.
sensh? (Hakubunkan, 1928), pp. 355-356; for K?kan see his Saiy? 41. See above, note 28.
nikki, which mentions many demonstrations. The fee is recorded 42. This switch from traditional to Western is often seen in the
under 29th of 4th month 1788; see K?kan Saiy? nikki (T?y? Bunko, context of illustrated popular stories, for example, Koikawa Haru
1986), p. 35. machi, Kinkin sensei eiga no yume (1775), illustrated by the author, pp.
22. The scene of the Serpentine Lake at Stow has recently been 3 verso-4 recto.
traced to the series A New Display of the Beauties of England, vol. 1, 43. Several examples of the scene of the Mitsui shop are preserved
published in 1776. This scene had previously been assumed to repre in the Eisei Bunko, Tokyo.
sent the Serpentine Pond in Hyde Park in London. 44. James Brandon, "Sugeroku: the Flower of Edo," in his Kabuki:
23. The exact connexion between uki-e and megane-e is prob Five Classic Plays (Harvard, 1975), p. 61; I have amended the transla
lematic. The terms seem essentially impossible to disentangle, and tion in line with Kishi Fumikazu, "A View Through the Peep-hole:
this essay uses the former throughout. Recently, Oka Yasumasu has A Semiotic Consideration of Uki-e," in Kyoto daigaku kenky? seika
argued emphatically for the division of the terms, Megane-e shink? h?kokusho (March 1993): 15.
(Chikuma, 1992), p. 65 and passim, and while Oka is right technically 45. Hiraga Gennai, Nenashi-gusa (1763), in F?rai Sanjinsh?, Nihon
speaking (by strict definition megane-e ought to be printed in mirror koten bungaku taikei, vol. 55 (Iwanami, 1961), p. 77.
image to compensate for the reflection) in practice unreversed uki-e
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