Comments on: The Floating World of Ukiyo-e: Shadows, Dreams, and Substance

The Floating World of Ukiyo-e: Shadows, Dreams, and Substance

y2karl — Sun, 02 Feb 2003 16:37:01 -0800

After Hours Backstage at the Puppet Theater, A Japanese Abominable Snowman, The Famous Samurai: Miyamoto Musashi, Incomparable Woman Warrior and Gingerly Avoiding A Fishy Mess--images from from The Library of Congress's The Floating World of Ukiyo-e: Shadows, Dreams, and Substance . Also, may I present UKIYO-E - The Pictures of the Floating World.

Floating World, you ask?

By: clavdivs

clavdivs — Sun, 02 Feb 2003 17:28:44 -0800

but Karl, that link is perfect, contextual...headline like with the terrorist, mafia secret world stuff....Tokagawa was like this...like smoking a joint when your mom is in the yard and your in the garage...out in the open...in the closed "world"...floating as to mean how these worlds overlap in that period. the two rarely, if ever, mix...so to say. perhaps this is why actors where so popular and in some ways powerful.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sun, 02 Feb 2003 17:50:00 -0800

Great link(s), Karl... and I like clavdivs' vision of Tokugawa!

By: y2karl

y2karl — Sun, 02 Feb 2003 20:29:08 -0800

Oh, Matt--thank you, thank you, thank you! Screwed up my post and the owner benevolently fixed it. All is right with the world. Ah...

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Sun, 02 Feb 2003 20:37:20 -0800

This is a wonderful post, y2karl, thanks so much. I particularly liked the section on beauties on this page. I am just scratching the surface tonight tho - this is good stuff. These works had a profound influence on western art also - The Impact of Japanese Woodblock Prints On Impressionism During the Mid-Nineteenth to Late-Nineteenth Century is a decent article on this topic. In the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, there's a striking work by Monet, La Japonaise - but I always found the grimacing figure on her kimono disconcerting. It was intrusting to me to see that this Yoshiwara courtesan has similar faces and figures on her kimono (plus would you look at those platforms shoes!)

By: y2karl

y2karl — Sun, 02 Feb 2003 21:57:17 -0800

I am just scratching the surface tonight tho - this is good stuff. Me, too. But you're ahead of me, madamejujujive--I hadn't even gotten to that Beauties section. We're lucky here in Seattle--the beautiful Art Deco Seattle Asian Art Museum , is just loaded with Asian art of every sort. Formerly the Seattle Art Museum, it was founded by Eugene Fuller, brother of Buckminster. Fuller, and his mother were an obsessive Asian art collectors and the Asian Art Museum is packed with the results: Hindu and Buddhist--monumental Gandharan bodhisattvas from Afghanistan even!--sculpture, Chinese and Korean pottery, Japanese woodblock prints and monumental screens--like this one: Flocking Crows, ink, gold leaf and a black lacquer frame and the size of a wall, too--oh, it is just a treasure trove. The Seattle Art Museum is kind of provincial compared to the East Coast, but the Asian Art Museum kicks ass, especially the Japanese collection. And it's set in Volunteer Park, part of the Olmsted Brothers--the sons of Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park in NYC and the U.S. Capitol grounds--plan for Seattle. Oh, the park system here totally rocks, we are swimming in green and grand boulevard views. We are so blessed here in some ways.

By: planetkyoto

planetkyoto — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 02:14:07 -0800

We don't go in for any of that newfangled 17th Century stuff in Kyoto, having jumped the shark in the 12th Century. Today is a festival day in Japan, by the way, called Setsubun(info). It marks the end of the coldest period of the year, and thus, confusingly, the beginning of spring (I write this lying flat out on my electric "hot carpet," snow falling gently outside.)Some pictures. Open your door and join me in a shout of: "Oni wa soto!! Fuku wa uchi!!" (Demons out!! Good luck in!!) Toss some roasted soybeans around to be really authentic, and then pick up and eat the same number of beans as your age. At Shinto shrines, priests chant, incant, and invoke in their special way, and burn sticks upon which visitors have written wishes (for a small donation). Some pics of this ceremony atop my revived weblog, which has little else due to recent recovery from fried host server

By: apostasy

apostasy — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 02:28:55 -0800

These works had a profound influence on western art also Toulouse-Lautrec was especially influenced by woodblock art, particularly his poster work.

By: apostasy

apostasy — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 02:31:04 -0800

wonderful link, btw.

By: y2karl

y2karl — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 02:36:04 -0800

ah, planetkyoto writes from the land of the heated toilet seat... or so my passes for nihongo on the telephone brother says.

By: Joey Michaels

Joey Michaels — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 02:58:45 -0800

This is great. Thanks so much for the link!

By: asok

asok — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 03:23:22 -0800

i wondered where they got the name from. now i know, thanks y2karl.

By: planetkyoto

planetkyoto — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 07:30:13 -0800

Yes, we have one, but not the full Star Trek model, which I still find intimidating. My mother-in-law's 140-year-old house, downtown in a special historic district, was retrofitted with plumbing and electricity about four score and seven years ago. They put the toilet in an outbuilding in the garden, where it stands today, so that you literally have to walk the plank, and by the door is a dropoff down onto the rocks and moss if you misstep. A new western-style toilet went in this summer, though.

By: dgaicun

dgaicun — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 08:14:24 -0800

[all links NSFW] Ukiyo-E was also connected with the efflorescence of Shunga, or Japanese erotica. All the important artists of the Ukiyo-E school created erotic wood-cuts, mostly purchased by the aristocratic classes. Hokusai, the greatest of Ukiyo-E artists, and, arguably, the most important artist in Japanese history, also set a new standard in Japanese libertine aesthetic when he produced an infamous piece entitled Awabi Fisher and Octopus. Toshio Saeki, the most inspired and influential erotic artist in Japan of this generation, continues to pay homage to and out-do* his much appreciated Edo predecessors. *click on the blue arrow circles (see if you can spot the wink to hokusai)

By: taz

taz — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 14:01:27 -0800

Awabi Fisher and Octopus: *** insert calamari joke here *** Thanks, y2karl, I've always been intrigued by the idea of ukiyo-e. Interestingly, floating above the art of the floating world was "Surimono", or what this article calls "Ukiyo-e Refined"; exquisite, privately commissioned works that reflected the personal tastes of the patrons and the finest skills of the artists.

By: madamjujujive

madamjujujive — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 15:37:13 -0800

wow, I just gotta say I love a thread like this where we have some quality links on an interesting topic, and then we are fortunate enough to get a local perspective. The original links serve as a springboard for others to contribute more great pointers on related things they have expertise about or have discovered on the web - festivals, culture, art, eroticism - great stuff... Oni wa soto!! Fuku wa uchi!!

By: y2karl

y2karl — Mon, 03 Feb 2003 16:07:26 -0800

It's synergy, baby! *snaps fingers, swivels hips* Everybody's talking 'bout A brand new dance now C'mon Baby, Do the Locomotion... da capo