About this video
Melinda Takeuchi reads a summer print of a townsperson couple hunting fireflies, using clothing clues and a punning robe pattern to show the hidden jokes Edo viewers enjoyed. The video also explains how the artist Suzuki Harunobu pioneered color printing with many blocks, and how the government limited the number of blocks to seven to enforce frugality.
You'll be able to
- use clothing clues to work out who the people in the print are.
- explain the double meaning hidden in the man's robe pattern.
- explain why the government limited color printing to seven blocks.
Key words
- motif
- A theme or image that is repeated in art, like the seasons.
- townspeople
- Ordinary city dwellers, such as merchants and craftspeople, rather than samurai.
- patronage
- Support and money given to an artist by wealthy people.
- frugality
- Being careful not to spend money on luxuries.
- propriety
- Behaving in the proper, socially accepted way.
Transcript
in an agricultural society like Japan the seasons are crucially important to survival and so the motif of seasons and the pleasures of each season great attention is paid to this in this case it is Firefly season or summer time Malinda takuji this couple is probably a pair of townspeople they are not wearing his elaborate clothes as you find in the Yoshiwara she is unmarried because the sleeves on her robe are long I love her little subtle kimono with the young fern shoots if you look closely you'll see that it's a gauzy kimono his robe has a pattern on it called kuat soon oggi this means joint curved circles pakora was also slang for the brothel area to Nagi means joined so kuda Watsu Nagi can
either mean joined curved circles or it can mean joined in the pleasure quarter so that's just the kind of little in joke that would have been known to anybody at the period looking at the print the artist Suzuki Hara Nobu was an innovator in the use of color in prints hard and over under the patronage of these sophisticated wealthy and demanding samurai came up with luxury additions in which the number of blocks was theoretically unlimited as the number of blocks used steadily increased with reports of some prints using more than 100 different blocks the government deemed the process excessive limiting the number to seven so every aspect of these visual arts was regulated and subjected to scrutiny lest it transgress
against the social system that demanded that people deport themselves with frugality and propriety you
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