Hokusai and Hiroshige:
Great Japanese Prints from
the James A. Michener Collection
at the Asian Art Museum.

From The UCSF Weekly, September 1999
published in Two Parts, one week apart.

by John Graham

This show provides a once-in-a lifetime opportunity to see the largest and best preserved collection of ukiyo-e woodblock prints outside Japan. The prints will be shown in two separate exhibits, one featuring Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), from Sept. 23 through Nov. 15, and the other featuring Utagawa Hiroshige (1786-1864), beginning Nov. 21 and running until Jan. 17, 1999.
  James Michener, known for his giant popular novels, wrote solidly on the subject of Japanese art in The Floating World (1954) and Japanese Prints (1959). During this time he picked up two well-kept collections for his archive--a Mrs. Georgia Forman actually willed her collection to Michener because she was so impressed with his interest in this peculiar Japanese craft. Michener, who died last year at 90, had gradually given the prints to the Honolulu Academy of Arts. It is there that the prints reside, essentially kept under lock and key. We are very fortunate to see the collection out in the open.
  With the commercial production of these prints during Japan’s Edo period (1615-1868), and the subsequent recognition of them in the West--including this very exhibit--you are witness to art history appreciation in the making
Katsushika Hokusai, whose work comprises the first wave of the exhibit, was a character of extremes. A master who changed the face of woodblock printing, Hokusai was reputed to have changed residences around 90 times in his life-sometimes twice a day--as well as changing his name constantly, because all of it would add up to his being a better artist. His most dazzling work is said to have been produced in the 1830s, when he was in his 70s. In his last days, he said he needed 10 more years to get it just right.
  The exhibit will show the entirety of Hokusai’s widely acclaimed "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji," created between 1829 and 1833. (The series is unnumbered and undated.) One of the "Thirty-six Views" features the ubiquitous "Great Wave," Hokusai’s most recognizable print. Also part of the exhibit is his interpretation of famed Japanese and Chinese poems--a tradition to be approached by all fine Japanese artists of the time--in two series, "One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse," and "Imagery of the Poets." The latter series, notes the catalog, is so rare that only the Michener collection is known to have all 10 images.
  The leaders of Japan during the Edo period attempted to protect the culture by cutting it off from the outside world. Only the Chinese and Dutch were allowed in for matters of trade. Yet the outside trade lines so in dispute were the very channels which changed the art of Japan (think now of Picasso in wartime Paris, creating some of his most innovative paintings while under the disapproving and limiting eyes of the Nazis). In this climate, Dutch copperplate engravings, censored for their Christian religious content, made it into Hokusai’s hands.
  What crossed borders easily were landscapes. Although they seemed innocuous, what they held in their four corners was a form of perspective between the foreground and background which was unprecedented in Japanese woodblock prints. This is not to diminish Hokusai or Japanese art’s unique vision. But it suggests that it is not as insular as one tends to believe.
  Politicians and rulers, those rational beings of straight society who end up creating irrational scenarios, have a tendency to be trumped when it comes to affairs cultural. It is the artist here, the supposed irrational being, who finds a judicious way to connect outside of the body politic. Remember that even the brilliant, rich blue found in ukiuyo-e prints is called "Prussian Blue" and was a synthetic ink imported from Berlin in the early 19th century. And to think that Admiral Perry needed a couple of cannons and boats to get his way.
  Towards the end of the 19th century, these Dutch copperplate-inspired prints, imprinted with German ink, made their way to Europe, influencing the continent which influenced them. Cargo lines again brought art to a culture which didn’t know what it was about to be hit with. One begins to think that "the floating world," which is the English translation of ukiyo-e, is the world of cargo ships passing style and craft between cultures.
  The French Impressionists openly appreciated the Japanese prints. Monet built a Japanese-style bridge in his famous garden at Giverny because he had seen one in a ukiyo-e print. Van Gogh literally copied two prints into his own paintings simply because he had been so impressed by them.
  The show at the museum is handsomely presented. But it is important to note that walking around looking at ukiye-o prints in Western-style frames and glass, hung on walls, is not how people have generally viewed these pieces.
  In Hokusai’s time, the people of prosperous Edo (now Tokyo) lived lives of literacy, leisure, and even novelty. It was the world’s largest city at 800,000 people. Hokusai and other popular artists of the time worked within the complex, industry tryst of publisher/artist/printer and woodcarver. The public readily bought these prints as the scenes were local, faces and bridges familiar.
  There were no photographs in the world yet. No Life magazine. This was the four-color process of its day. An average run would be around 200 prints, with modifications made if they were popular. It is said the prints sold for "the price of a bowl of noodles."
  Still, hanging them in frames on walls is the sleekest way to show these ethereal works on paper to the greatest number of people. Blonde, shellacked plywood boards hold much of the exhibit’s text and description. The tops and bottoms are painted with a mimicking Prussian blue border, but its use may not actually succeed in this context. Rather, it proves just how exquisite the ink’s manipulation must be to work within the realm of an actual ukiyo-e print.
  Modern design, animation, illustration, magazine, textiles and comic book forms owe a tremendous amount to the Japanese woodblock tradition. After a visit, take a look at what you’re wearing, or the design of the things in your home; ponder just which hues, compositions or lines came from the hold of a cargo ship, going one way or the other, from Katsushika Hokusai.
  In conjunction with the exhibits, the museum will be having related lectures and workshops. Phone 379-8895 or visit www.asianart.org to find out details.
  A highlight of the special events is the exhibit’s appearance on San Francisco’s own live radio show, West Coast Live, Saturday Oct. 24, from 10 a.m. to noon. Readers might consider going to this unusual broadcast, as it is a short walk from campus. The show will feature Taiko drumming, an interview with the exhibit’s curator, Yoko Woodson, and Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize finalists. Tickets are $12 in advance and $14 at the door. Call 664-9500 to order.

Part II
"Hokusai and Hiroshige: Great Japanese Prints from the James A. Michener Collection" continues in its second phase at Golden Gate Park’s Asian Art Museum. If you missed the first installment, featuring the great Katsushika Hokusai (best known for his ubiquitous "Great Wave"), now is your chance to make it to the show the second time around featuring Hokusai’s junior at the time, Utagawa Hiroshige. Although Hokusai was considered to be the more "powerful" and influential printmaker, it is Hiroshige who is perhaps the more complex visual artist.

Brief History
Known as ukiyo-e or "floating world" prints, these elaborately designed and produced artworks on paper were produced by 10 to 20 separate color runs, which would be virtually unaffordable from a commercial standpoint today. Enjoyed by average citizens in 18th and 19th century Japan, and costing "the price of a bowl of noodles," ukiyo-e featured thousands of images of familiar bridges, mountains, people and birds.
  Part of a Japanese cultural industry, linked to Chinese painting traditions and later influenced by Dutch copperplate engravings, the prints themselves made it back to Europe in the late 19th century as simple wrapping paper. It was at this time, when Japan began to open up both culturally and commercially, that the likes of Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet found their own artistic inspiration in ukiyo-e. Arguably, the graphic design of woodblock prints was so far ahead of its time that we can consider the lines and color of modern animation, comic book design, and high fashion textile as descendants of ukiyo-e prints. Even popular trends in contemporary tattooing reflect woodblock’s graphic sensibility.

The Artist
At the age of 10, Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) inherited his father’s samurai position as fire brigade warden in Edo (now Tokyo). He apprenticed himself to an older ukiyo-e artist around 1811. By 1822, at the age of 25, Hiroshige had retired from his position on the fire brigade to pursue art full-time. His main interest would be landscapes, which at the time occupied a very small niche in the woodblock genre. Within 10 years, though, Hiroshige would master and develop the depiction of river, mountain and tree--and the people living with them--as an important genre in the woodblock tradition.

The Series
Just as Hokusai became known for his series "Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji," which included his famous "Great Wave," Hiroshige is most famous for the series "Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road" and "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo."
  The Tokaido Road ("eastern sea road") was the main road between Edo and Kyoto and traversed in its day by many travelers of different social classes. So its route was well known. In fact, the Tokaido Road has remained an integral part of Japanese travel. Today the journey is made by bullet train, a brisk two-and-a-half hours of travel versus the fourteen days it took for the average 18th- or 19th-century Japanese commoner on foot.
  What is immediately intimate about Hiroshige’s views of the Tokaido Road is the local, colloquial value of the imagery which any traveler of the Pacific Coast Highway might identify with. In "The Famous Teahouse at Mariko, Station 21," a sign in the teahouse advertises its "famous yam soup," evoking, perhaps, for the modern viewer an advertisement for "Pearl’s Famous Cheesemelt" found only in some small lodge in Nepenthe along the Big Sur coast. This motif of popular foods plays a part in many of the Tokaido Road prints and would likely interest anyone studying the day-to-day culture of Japan at the time.

The Social Order
So much is made of the landscape and its icons in Hiroshige’s work that the theme of social order may be overlooked. The manner of dress worn by the inhabitants of the prints and their literal social position to one another--e.g., whose feet actually touch the ground--is so meticulously recorded that Hiroshige the artist inadvertantly becomes Hiroshige the anthropologist. Indeed, class division is inseparable from Hiroshige’s representation of people. While the Japanese woodblock print may represent a "floating world," its inhabitants are anything but floating, attuned as they are to a fixed, social path. But tracking the hierarchies becomes part of the game.
  The museum should be commended for its highly informative wall boards denoting the monetary values related to the day’s travel. For example, the guide to compute a porter’s worth for crossing a waterway--with the princess and her things on his back, of course (now that’s literal social position)--is both remarkable and practical (water up to the shoulder costing more than water up to the ankles, and points in between). One gets the sense of a functioning society’s socioeconomic parlance just slightly different from our own--but just slightly.

The Visual Order
With all due respect to Mr. Hokusai, the first master presented in the series, I am compelled to nominate Hiroshige as his better with regards to composition. Look at "Processional Standard-bearers at Nihon Bridge." One could take a whole month copying the piece line for line without capturing its subtleties. This demonstrates a superior skill level on the part of the artist, as well as his carver and printer. While Hokusai emphasized color and innovation-and Hiroshige owes a great debt to him for this-Hokusai simply did not render such an intricate and enjoyable ensemble of people and things.
  Now take a look at "The Lake at Hakone." With its sweeping, tall cliff and short, cursive, back-peddling trees, the left to right lines are a stroke pattern evoking their own syntax. Peopleless, "The Lake at Hakone," like many woodblock landscapes, provides a fine argument for a common Pacific Rim stroke and line which is currently emerging in contemporary West Coast artists. These could be California cliffs, populated with chaparral, manzanita and coastal live oak.
  All of this is not to be received with simple, constant awe. The viewer may have questions and doubts. If an artist should be noted for their line, for the "shorthand" they have developed for reality (an artist is not a camera!), then Hiroshige’s nearly mnemonic values for what is a cliff, a mountain, or a tree should be commended. What is odd is his choice for the representation of smoke (see "Karuizuwa Station"). Where are the evolved cursive lines that are Hiroshige’s voice? Would reiterating these lines-already used for other icons in his work-create graphic conflict? It leaves one wondering. But how can I say that Hiroshige’s depiction of smoke is beneath his talent-after all, who am I to question a Master?

Hiroshige will be at the Asian Art Museum through January 17. The museum is located in the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate park -a short walk from campus. Tickets for the show are $9.50, which is $2.50 more than the regular admission price. Phone 379-8895 or visit www.asianart.org to find out details.