Chikanobu's Neo-Traditionalism

New Year's Day Procession

to the Tokugawa Shogun

Looking at the complete oeuvre of Chikanobu, one might have the suspicion that there were two Japanese printmakers using this name, or that the artist suffered from a severe split personality disorder.

Two Artists in One

On the one hand, we have Chikanobu's gaudy kabuki triptychs, red and purple blotchy disasters in the typical manner of mid-late Kunichika, with utterly typical Utagawa style figures and little originality to recommend them. On the other, we have his historical genre works of the late 1880s and 1890s, the "Chiyoda Palace" triptychs, "Jidai Bijin Kagami" and "Shin Bijin" series, as well as his marvelous second set of "Snow, Moon and Flowers" (Setsugekka).

These works are subtly colored and designed, original in approach and material, and point the way quite clearly towards the coloring and design of bijin prints in the early twentieth century. How are we to understand Chikanobu's split personality? What does it tell us about ukiyo-e printmakers in the nineteenth century?

The lesson we can learn from the case of Chikanobu is that in this commercial medium not every work that bears an artist's signature necessarily bears his spirit, intent or sense of style. There is no record of Chikanobu chaffing against the limitations of his discipleship in the school of Kunichika, or against the commissions for kabuki hackwork - indeed, he was likely pleased to get this bill-paying work, for he made enough of it.

The True Chikanobu

Outside Chiyoda Palace

Boat Excursion on Sumida River

But I would argue that the true Chikanobu is the historically minded man who designed the triptychs of palace ladies and festivals, the set of "large head" beauties from different periods, and the man who put the word "true" on his late set of bijin, as though questioning the veracity of the works made before him.

These are pieces clearly driven by inspiration, a deep sense of Japanese beauty and tradition and a desire to capture it in all of its aspects, even as the world around was rapidly changing. For Chikanobu stands at a curious moment in the development of "Japan", caught between the old and the new, at a time when Japanese traditions were being defined as such, even as they were being lost. The "split personality" in Chikanobu's work, in fact, can be read as reflecting this complex divide.

Setting aside the "retro" Chikanobu, designing dutifully in the style of his master, and singling out the progressive Chikanobu, helping to forge the new idiom for ukiyo-e in the late 1880s and 90s, we can see an artist of unexpected depths. But the contrast between the old and the new is more complex than this simplistic division of style. It could be said that rather than repeating the old "kabuki"-style stereotype, Chikanobu strikes out into the new, producing prints with previously unexplored subject matter and/or approach, a delicate sense of coloring, a dreamlike use of mist, and a highly personal style of representation.

Renewal and Tradition

from Meisho Bijin Awase

Take, for example, Chikanobu's handling of mist, neither the trailing pink wisps nor fluffy, colored clouds of earlier ukiyo-e, but rather uncolored areas without lines, surrounded by bokashi fading from which the subject emerges. The style is new, but the subjects of these prints are so frequently chosen with careful historical consciousness at the forefront, as Chikanobu records the styles, dress, behavior, rituals, games, festivals and interests of the "Japanese" past, sometimes as it still exists in the present moment. This combination of the new, arguably Western-influenced style of the late nineteenth century, the soft (Victorian?) coloring and descriptive, sketch-like line, with such classical, backwards-looking subject matter, is what I refer to as Chikanobu's "neo-traditionalism".

Of course it must be said that Chikanobu was not the only innovator of the period working along these lines, parallels to his historical awareness, sense of coloring and design found in works by Toshikata and Gekko, not to mention Yoshitoshi. But Chikanobu, while part of this general movement, is no mere follower of the trends set by these other artists. In series like the Chiyoda Palace triptychs, he reveals a knowledge and awareness of the fine points of Japanese historical traditions deeper - dare it be said? - than even Yoshitoshi's.

While in the second Setsugekka series, among others, he shows a new realism and a dynamic sense of design that points the way toward the twentieth century. But what interests me about Chikanobu is the nature of this "neo-traditionalism", his apparent awareness of himself as a Japanese artist, defining a Japanese sensibility, in relation to a Japanese past.

Chiyoda Palace and Bijin Series

His Jidai Kagami, for example, with portraits of beautiful woman as defined at various moments of Japanese history, has a historical awareness and an obsessive desire to record the details of clothing and hairstyles quite unlike that of any other artist. Toshikata's 36 Selected Beauties is quite close, but concentrates on accurately rendered genre scenes from the past, rather than the pure relativity of beauty. The same drive to detail, capture and record propels the many triptychs of the Chiyoda Palace series, each focused on an elegant event or pastime of the courtly tradition, with a desire to render the full variety of the beautiful Japanese life of old.

It is no coincidence, of course, that Chikanobu's "neo-traditionalism" occurs alongside movements to define the nature of Japan and its traditions, even as these traditions were largely falling by the wayside with the rise of industrialism and Western-style capitalism. Thus Chikanobu is a curiously "national" artist, helping to define just what it means to be Japanese, to create the myth of a continuous Japanese essence receding into the mists of pre-history, but driven into doing so by an awareness that this past must be captured and related to the present if it is to survive.

Perhaps then the triptychs of the Chiyoda series should be seen as laments, or elegies to the past, rather than celebrations of the glory that was.

Dan McKee

The author, Dan McKee is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Japanese literature program at Cornell University, NY.  He has a Master of the Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University, as well as an M.A. from Cornell.

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artelino biography: Chikanobu