The merchants of Japan
Today I went to an exhibit and docent tour of Japanese art from the Edo period (1600 - 1850). The fascinating part was that it didn't focus on the Tokugawa ruling clan or the honorable samurai class. Oh, no-- it was about the merchants.
This is significant because the merchants were the bottom of the totem pole, behind the samurai, the farmers, and the artisans. (Rather a change from the capitalist culture of today, ne?)
The exhibit featured textiles, woodblock prints, and tansu. The textiles were mainly indigo dyed. The merchants wanted to have a distict "look," but needed not to use bright colors lest they look like they were usurping the honorable reds, oranges, and purples of the ruling classes. All the three lower strata wore indigo, but the merchants-- always a saucy bunch-- tended to include a red undergarment (for women) or some red artwork on the inside of the kimono (for men). Sometimes the women's red piece would flash as she walked, in that ever-tantalizing, subtle Japanese way.
The indigo work is amazing. Apparently indigo is grown in China, imported to Japan, then bundled into cubes and allowed to ferment underground (like Korean kimchee? my mind wonders...). Then it is mixed with water and various chemicals in a big vat to serve as dye. The interesting thing is that the dye is green-- cloth dipped in it turns blue only after it dries out in the air, due to oxidation. The strength of the dye and the length of the dip allow colors ranging from pale aqua to nearly black.
Next we saw woodcuts that were made to celebrate various occasions, like a birthday, Children's Day, New Year, etc. They were some kind of a picture or scene with a poem written on it. The paper was the classic washi paper, and the printing was the coolest part. The woodblocks were carved with what needed to be printed, spread with paste-like ink, and pressed to the paper.
But the thing is, these were color images. Each color had to be applied separately-- say, red, green, blue, and yellow (sometimes fewer, sometimes more). The trick was that each application of color had to be aligned to the others. Remember how awful color pictures in newspapers looked until they figured out how to get the separate parts aligned? Japan figured it out a few centuries ago.
To get purple, red might be overlaid with blue on that section. Imagine how tricky it was to figure out what shape to carve in the woodblocks for each separate color when they were going to be combined like this. Furthermore, some of the prints had color that faded, say from blue to white continously. Apparently this was done by careful application of the ink to the block so that it was thick on the blue part, then got thinner so the printed color came out paler. Wow.
I also smiled to myself seeing these because I work in the display analysis business. It's common in displays to construct color the using red, green, and blue portions of the image. It seems the Japanese have a long tradition of it-- no wonder they're good at making LCDs!
The tansu were totally cool also. Tansu means "dresser," which in this case refers to a wooden chest in which the merchant kept his goods. It typically was lacquered wood, and had drawers like a familiar dresser. We saw large tansu with wheels so that urban merchants could get them out of the house quickly in the event of a fire. Fires were really common in the wood-and-paper Japanese architecture of the Edo period (recall, no electric lights...). But eventually these rolling ones were banned because in big fires, there would be so many jamming the streets that people were dying, unable to escape the fire.
Then there were the sea tansu for merchant seaman. They were built with many hidden drawers that were left empty so the thing would actually float! Then the important goods could be recovered in the event of a shipwreck.
But the neatest were a couple of "backpack tansu." These were wooden chests with two straps so they could be carried by a person on foot. Perhaps he was selling haircuts, or medicines, or something else small. These, like all the tansu, featured gorgeously carved ironwork around the wood.
So even a few hundred years ago, the Japanese were designing clever little containers that somehow combined perfect functionality with intricate beauty. Truly an amazing exhibit.
This is significant because the merchants were the bottom of the totem pole, behind the samurai, the farmers, and the artisans. (Rather a change from the capitalist culture of today, ne?)
The exhibit featured textiles, woodblock prints, and tansu. The textiles were mainly indigo dyed. The merchants wanted to have a distict "look," but needed not to use bright colors lest they look like they were usurping the honorable reds, oranges, and purples of the ruling classes. All the three lower strata wore indigo, but the merchants-- always a saucy bunch-- tended to include a red undergarment (for women) or some red artwork on the inside of the kimono (for men). Sometimes the women's red piece would flash as she walked, in that ever-tantalizing, subtle Japanese way.
The indigo work is amazing. Apparently indigo is grown in China, imported to Japan, then bundled into cubes and allowed to ferment underground (like Korean kimchee? my mind wonders...). Then it is mixed with water and various chemicals in a big vat to serve as dye. The interesting thing is that the dye is green-- cloth dipped in it turns blue only after it dries out in the air, due to oxidation. The strength of the dye and the length of the dip allow colors ranging from pale aqua to nearly black.
Next we saw woodcuts that were made to celebrate various occasions, like a birthday, Children's Day, New Year, etc. They were some kind of a picture or scene with a poem written on it. The paper was the classic washi paper, and the printing was the coolest part. The woodblocks were carved with what needed to be printed, spread with paste-like ink, and pressed to the paper.
But the thing is, these were color images. Each color had to be applied separately-- say, red, green, blue, and yellow (sometimes fewer, sometimes more). The trick was that each application of color had to be aligned to the others. Remember how awful color pictures in newspapers looked until they figured out how to get the separate parts aligned? Japan figured it out a few centuries ago.
To get purple, red might be overlaid with blue on that section. Imagine how tricky it was to figure out what shape to carve in the woodblocks for each separate color when they were going to be combined like this. Furthermore, some of the prints had color that faded, say from blue to white continously. Apparently this was done by careful application of the ink to the block so that it was thick on the blue part, then got thinner so the printed color came out paler. Wow.
I also smiled to myself seeing these because I work in the display analysis business. It's common in displays to construct color the using red, green, and blue portions of the image. It seems the Japanese have a long tradition of it-- no wonder they're good at making LCDs!
The tansu were totally cool also. Tansu means "dresser," which in this case refers to a wooden chest in which the merchant kept his goods. It typically was lacquered wood, and had drawers like a familiar dresser. We saw large tansu with wheels so that urban merchants could get them out of the house quickly in the event of a fire. Fires were really common in the wood-and-paper Japanese architecture of the Edo period (recall, no electric lights...). But eventually these rolling ones were banned because in big fires, there would be so many jamming the streets that people were dying, unable to escape the fire.
Then there were the sea tansu for merchant seaman. They were built with many hidden drawers that were left empty so the thing would actually float! Then the important goods could be recovered in the event of a shipwreck.
But the neatest were a couple of "backpack tansu." These were wooden chests with two straps so they could be carried by a person on foot. Perhaps he was selling haircuts, or medicines, or something else small. These, like all the tansu, featured gorgeously carved ironwork around the wood.
So even a few hundred years ago, the Japanese were designing clever little containers that somehow combined perfect functionality with intricate beauty. Truly an amazing exhibit.
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