From Optical Prints to Ukie to Ukiyoe - The Adoption and Adaptation of Western Linear Perspective in Japan

In the 9th month of 1783, Shiba Kōkan (司馬江漢, 1747-1818) proudly launched a print depicting Edo’s main river, the Sumidagawa, with people walking on its bank; the entrance and precincts of the Mimeguri shrine are seen in the distance. This was the first etching made in Japan in some one hundred years. The technique, first introduced into Japan by Portuguese Jesuit priests, had been totally forgotten after the expulsion of the Christians in 1612. Kōkan informs us in the following terms about the origins of his innovation: 1 - Dutch books contain illustrations so realistic that we can easily understand the contents just by looking at the pictures. This fact alone proves the brilliance and superiority of Western art.

By employing shading, Western artists can represent convex and concave surfaces, sun and shade, distance, depth and shallowness. Their pictures are models of reality and thus can serve the same function as the written word, often more effectively.

2 - And he continues:No one in Japan knew the proper method of making a copperplate. I therefore turned to the formula given in a book by a Hollander named Boisu. I consulted with Ōtsuki Gentaku [1757-1827], who assisted me in translating the text, so that I could make copperplate pictures in Japan. In 1783, I made the first etching.

3 - Thus, we know that Kōkan found the key to the reinvention of copperplate engraving in Egbert Buys’s Nieuw en volkomen woordenboek van konsten en weetenschappen (1769-1778), which indeed contains a good and detailed description of the technique of etching. 4 - Despite Kōkan’s brave efforts, the view of Mimeguri must – quite understandably – be regarded as only a poor first trial.

He continued his experiments in the medium with varying success, but only some twenty years later can we speak of true mastery of etching in Japan. This was achieved not by Kōkan but by his older contemporary Aōdō Denzen (亜欧堂田善, 1745-1822). Denzen’s etched night scene of two palanquin bearers on the Nihon Dike, leading to Edo’s pleasure district of the Yoshiwara, Yoshiwara dote no kei, displays a command of etching, with a suggestion of mezzotint, comparable to that of Piranesi in his Carceriseries of 1750.

The difference is that Piranesi was drawing on two centuries of European experience in the art of etching, while the Japanese artists had been at it for a mere twenty years.

For the complete text see Mediating Netherlandish Art and Material Culture in Asia, Chapter 11, by Matti Forrer.

<