E-hon: Picture Books Beyond the Confines of the Floating World

E-hon, ca. 1800

by Shunchosai Matsumoto

Those Neglected Japanese Picture Books

Of all the neglected, underrated fields in Japanese printmaking, the picture book is surely the area with the most depths of artistic excellence to recommend it, and its continued oversight the most glaring and difficult to comprehend. While the great classic prints have fled the field in ukiyo-e, found now only in museums, elite collections and high priced auction houses, an incredible number of the great books - not just single images, but full and complete sets of them - remain available to collectors at low to moderate prices.

Moreover, for the collector jaded with the familiar styles and subjects of ukiyo-e, the picture book opens up a vast world of artistry beyond the bounds of the floating world. Picture books include essentially all of the major art movements in Japan, and a variety of amateur work in addition, with a curious charm all of its own. The flavors of the woodblock printed book are so varied, so rich and heady in many cases, that it is simply a wonder that it does not have many more ardent devotees.

Reasons for the Neglect

E-hon

by Gekko Ogata, 1898

This wonder has led me in the past to question a number of fellow collectors about their resistance to the picture book. The source, it seems to me, lies with their unquestioned acceptance of the Western convention that pictorial art belongs on a flat, two-dimensional plane, or as they so bluntly put it "it can't be framed." The need to hang a work of art on the wall, for display to others or as their own means of approaching and appreciating it, had kept these collectors from ever understanding the charms of the picture book. The other complaints about the picture book involved its size, generally smaller than the ukiyo-e print, and the lack of multiple color printing in most examples, as well as the text, which some found distracting, others frustrating as they could not read it.

Can Books be Art?

A related comment was that the book was not art, but well, book, made for some other purpose and merely illustrated for utilitarian or decorative purposes. Even a number of the books which are all illustration, without any text but the titles, were after all, simply art books in their day, with reproductions of paintings by famous artists, often without their input, sometimes even posthumously. Finally, I was surprised to hear from one collector that she felt a resistance to handling the old Japanese books, partly for the knowledge that touching prints was not good for preservation of the paper, but mostly for the dusty, musty, often moth-eaten pages, the moldy, dirt-smeared covers, and her somewhat irrational fear of an egg-infested binding.

E-hon: the Different Animal

E-hon

by Kuniyoshi, 1840s

There can be no doubt that the Japanese picture book is a fundamentally different sort of object than the single sheet print, requiring a different means of looking and of appreciation. Personally, I greatly enjoy that requirement of the picture book to take it into one's hands, bringing it to a comfortable distance from the eyes to view it, and I appreciate the strength of the book that makes this possible, in a way it would not be with single sheet prints.

Made for Touching and Reading

These books were made to be touched, leafed through, held in the hands and viewed from that natural distance from the eye to the lap. Gloves are recommended for preservation (and to reduce fears of two hundred year-old viruses!) but in no way alter the joy of handling the antique Japanese book. And surely this joy, the natural feeling of looking at a Japanese picture book, is in part a meeting of the representational method with the physiology of the body.

From a Close Distance

Japanese artists viewed their designs as they made them from virtually the same distance as that from the eye to the hand that holds the book, sitting on the floor and utilizing low tables. So when we pick these books up and look through them, the distance is a perfect one for appreciation, creating a sense of intimacy with the image. Nothing could be more painful to me than a book in a glass display case at an exhibition, its covers pinned down like the wings of a dead butterfly, and people trying to view it from a respectful distance. No wonder, I think at such times, collectors resist the picture book.

Styles of Japanese Woodblock Printing

But what they are missing is an entire world of artistry and interest not found in single sheet prints. Until I discovered the picture book, for example, I had naively assumed that traditional Japanese woodblock printing was synonymous with ukiyo-e. After, I realized that ukiyo-e is but one style among many - Tosa, Kano, Nanga, Ranga, Bunjin, Shijo, Zen, independent and amateur - none of which make it very far into commercial single sheet prints, but all of which are readily available in woodblock printed form in books. Nor are the subjects in books limited to the usual actors, courtesans, landscapes and historical figures. Rather, the entire gamut of life and intellectual inquiry in the Tokugawa Period receives representation, with a heavy emphasis on scenes of everyday life, not touched up by ukiyo fantasy, and areas of special expertise, such as plants, animals, customs, history, maps of Japan and the world.

The opening up of the Japanese book is an opening of the mind to the full variety of life in the Tokugawa Period, both in and beyond the "floating world" and its manifestations in Edo and Osaka. The variety is as complete, and perhaps even more complete, as in a modern bookstore, touching every aspect of life, mental and physical, and moreover, in a pictorial form pleasing to the eye, with lustrous black lines on soft natural paper. Finally, due to this sheer variety, the woodblock book has not been "mapped out" as thoroughly as other areas of woodblock print collecting.

There are still manifold discoveries waiting to be made, in books overlooked by those, like Hillier, with an eye on pure artistry. Indeed, even the cheap gokan or kusazoshi books illustrated by ukiyo-e artists invariably have a few sheets within each set of wonderful imagination and artistry, which, were they in single sheet form, would be all but unavailable to the collector with the modest budget.

Ehon and Sashi-e Iri Hon

In the realm of Japanese books, picture books and albums (ehon or gafu) are distinguished from illustrated books (sashi-e iri hon), the first consisting almost completely of images, the latter of text with some illustrations.

Although the first category is of course of primary interest for Western collectors, and has received much attention in critical writings in the last half-century, the latter category offers untrodden ground for some fascinating discoveries. Great designers not only produced picture books, but also illustrated books that were primarily to be read, and many excitements await the collector who turns these pages to find the nuggets buried within.

A Personal Favorite

A personal favorite in my collection is not a picture book, but a series of biographies of eccentric figures, with an illustration for each, and the artistry and humor of these anonymous pieces is not to be matched by most signed ehon. I do understand there are those who find it annoying to preserve an entire book for the sake of the handful of illustrations buried within its pages, but once the beauties of the calligraphy and patterned, embossed, colored covers of Japanese books are appreciated, this point of view would surely be altered. The beauty of the Japanese book, after all, for those with open eyes, goes beyond the illustrations.

The Destruction of Japanese Books

One of the greatest (and bitterest) ironies in the Japanese print market at present is the fact that because Westerners assume that their pictorial art must be in two dimensions - that books are merely practical and flat pictorial surfaces "art" - the picture book is relatively ignored while plates from picture books sell easily. At $10 for matching sheets of a gokan, the price of a paired gokan (40 sheets) would be $200, and that is without the full color woodblock print covers. Few would pay so much for a complete gokan, even with the covers, sequence of images and original binding. Why then do they pay this (and more) for pages torn from the book? The result of this ignorance has been the destruction of one book after another, and by the time the general market wakens to the value of complete books, it may be too late to find many of them still whole.

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 introduction to Ehon