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Selections from “Ukiyo-e Landscapes and Edo Scenic Places”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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Introduction
Author Nagai Kafū (1879-1959; given name Nagai Sōkichi) is best known for his fictionalized personal travel accounts American Stories (Amerika monogatari, 1908) and French Stories (Furansu monogatari, 1915), short stories and novellas about Tokyo courtesans and low-ranking geisha, and an extensive illustrated diary, Dyspepsia House Diary (Danchōtei nichijō, 1917-59). Kafū was fascinated with Edo-period (1603-1868) culture, especially that of the chōnin, or urban commoners. He prided himself on his resemblance to Edo literati, such as poet Ōta Nanpo (also known as Shokusanjin, discussed in the selection below), who used kyōka (playful, often satirical, poetry) as an elegant form of veiled social commentary. Kafū challenged authority throughout his career, as evidenced in his professed dislike of Meiji-period (1868-1912) leaders, his opposition to the war and Japanese militarism in the 1930s and 1940s, and conflicts with censors and publishers.
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References
Notes
1 Nanga is late Edo period painting inspired by Chinese literati painting.
2 Founded by Kanō Masanobu in the mid-fifteenth century, the Kanō School was the dominant school of painting in the Edo period.
3 Literally “grass-style drawing,” sōga are simple ink paintings or light-colored drawings done with rough brush strokes.
4 More “serious” literary works in a lofty, ornate, rhetorically-controlled style were influenced by Chinese scholarship and targeted at urban intelligentsia, while gesaku, intended as popular fiction, employed freer, more vernacular expressions.
5 The preface to Fenollosa's Catalogue of the Exhibition of Ukiyoe Paintings and Prints is available online at Kindai Digital Library. Ernest Fenollosa was a historian of Japanese art and a professor of philosophy and other disciplines at the University of Tokyo. Kobayashi Bunshichi was a Tokyo art dealer and publisher of art books and reproductions.
6 Mount Atago, Shiba (no. 79) from the series Famous Places in the Eastern Capital, and Eitai Bridge, Tsukuda Island (no. 4) from One Hundred Famous Places of Edo both match the description.
7 Outamaro, le Peintre des Maisons Vertes (1891). Goncourt also wrote Hokusaï, l'art Japonais au XVII Siécle (1896). Kafū introduces these works in a separate essay on “Goncourt's Biographies of Utamaro and Hokusai.” Edmond de Goncourt (1822-96) was a French writer, art and literary critic, publisher, and founder of the Académie Goncourt.
8 The San'ya Moat is a canal drawn from the Sumida River that connected Imado and San'ya and was a route to the New Yoshiwara (Shin Yoshiwara). The Yoshiwara was a major Edo prostitution district sanctioned by the government. It was founded in 1617 near Nihonbashi. After fire destroyed the district in 1657, the New Yoshiwara was constructed on the Nihon embankment behind the Sensōji Temple. The older location was called Moto (original) Yoshiwara. Matsuchi Hill is located near Matsuchi Shōden Temple in Asakusa.
9 Around the 1670s, there were four licensed kabuki troupes in Edo. After one was disbanded in 1714, the Nakamura troupe of Sakai-chō, Ichimura troupe of Fukiya-chō, and Morita Kobiki-chō became the official Edo Three Troupes. The Nakamura troupe's theater burned down in 1841, and the following year the Nakamura, Ichimura, and Kawarazaki (or Morita) troupes were moved to an Asakusa area called Saruwaka-chō.
10 Fukiya-chō and Sakai-chō, along with Kobiki-chō, all in close proximity, formed a kabuki theater district before all theaters were moved to Saruwaka-chō.