It's Showtime: Japanese Prints of Kabuki Theater from the Collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art

REVIEW VISUAL ART

Kabuki

Detail from Toyohara Kunichika's Rough Wooden Statue of Minister Kiyomasa: Nakamura Shikan IV as Warrior Satō Kiyomasa, Meiji era (1868-1912), 1873, color woodblock print on paper.

There are only a handful of art exhibits of such sophisticated complexity that they can absorb the viewer’s attention for an indefinite amount of time. Japanese Prints of Kabuki Theater from the Collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art is one of those treasures.

This display, mounted in the UMMA’s spacious second-story A. Alfred Taubman Gallery, represents a level of sophistication that could only truly be appreciated by two audiences: Those for whom these colorful prints were originally intended and subsequent experts who can identify the identity of the portraiture as well as the work’s iconography. The rest of us will have to take what we can get.

It doesn’t mean that one has to be an expert in Japanese theater or have an advanced degree in the history of that country’s culture to appreciate Japanese Prints of Kabuki Theater -- although it sure doesn't hurt. Rather, appreciating this imaginative display requires a unique kind of patience that will allow the show to open up to the viewer at its own pace and in its own way. But that seems to be the intent of kabuki all along.

Kabuki

Detail from Katsukawa Shunshō's Iwai Hanshirō IV as an Onnadate, Edo period (1615-1867), second half of the 18th century, color woodblock print on paper.

For in an odd sort of historic recurrence, these kabuki prints are just like our own print celebrations of celebrity. Indeed, these prints are essentially Japan’s 18th- and 19th-century version of Tiger Beat magazine or the earlier Hollywood Photoplay -- only a lot more accomplished. And good luck identifying any plots and/or characters (Tiger Beat, Photoplay, or kabuki prints) if you don’t fit the appropriate generational demographic.

Expertly curated by Mariko Okada, associate professor at Faculty of Humanities, J. F. Oberlin University, Tokyo, Japan, and Natsu Oyobe, the UMMA’s curator for Asian Art, Japanese Prints of Kabuki Theater is an imaginative resetting of the traditional Japanese theater that reached massive popularity during the Edo (Tokyo) period (1615-1867) and Meiji Restoration (1868-1912) when Japanese society was under the rule of their Tokugawa shogunate through 300 regional daimyō (large landholdings analogous to the Western world manor) with masses moving into cities.

These historical Japanese periods were characterized by an isolationist economic growth with a strict social order that created a stable society through popular arts and culture carefully controlled through politics and economic tension. These prints -- being a cross between contemporary movie posters and oversized trading cards -- reflected the cultural, economic, and social tensions between the Japanese individual and society.

Kabuki

Torii Kiyotsune, Perspective Print of the Interior of the Nakamura-za Featuring the Amakawa Scene of The Treasury of Loyal Retainers, Edo period (1615-1867), ca. 1760, color wood- block print on paper.

Yet first things, first: Kabuki is a classical, highly stylized Japanese artform. Its combination of drama, dance, and song depicts a variety of folkloric and mythic narratives that had its origins in the 17th century -- and it is still performed to this day. These performances are so specific to Japanese culture -- and they are so stylized and unique to this culture -- they require an incredulous suspension of patient disbelief to ease into the performance.

Even more interestingly, just as contemporary motion picture actors are often associated with specific film genres, these, kabuki actors historically formed schools and have been associated with a particular theater. Every actor has a stage name (differing from his birth name) with stage names being passed down generations of actors’ lineages. These names hold both honor and importance; many names being associated with certain roles or acting styles with each possessor of the name living up to these demands and embodying the spirit, style, or skill of their previous namesakes.

As such -- and as Japanese Prints of Kabuki Theater heartily illustrates -- there’s an astounding complexity attached to this theater where detail and dress refer to intimate stories drawn from the country’s culture as interpreted by specific actors (women having been banned in 1629 from performing by the ever vigilant patriarchal shogunate authorities).

It’s for this reason that a sumptuous kimono -- “Costume for a Prince's robe” from the Meiji period -- has been mounted in a glass case in the heart of the Taubman Gallery. This luxurious body-sized wool weave garment embroidered with metallic thread and applied cotton weave shows by example the care taken to craft kabuki costume. Its splayed phoenix with gold thread plumes surrounded by thigh-height flowers was the conventional dress for the Princess Toki character from The Chronicle of Three Generations in Kamakura, a late 18th-century play about a hapless if not also good-hearted princess caught in shogunate intrigue.

Kabuki

Utagawa Kunisada, Praying for Hits in the Waterfall of Answered Prayers, Edo period (1615-1867), 1863, triptych, color woodblock print on paper.

To give the viewer a sense of Kabuki theater itself as an artform, a video monitor set in a far corner of the Taubman Gallery, cycles through four scenes drawn from the theater: the 19th century “Five Bandits” taken from “The Scene of Hamamatsuya to the Scene of Namerigawa Dobashi”; the early 18th century “The Treasury of Royal Retainers”; the mid-18th century “Sugawara and the Secrets of Calligraphy”; and the earlier Heian period (784-1185) Noh dance “Girl performer of the Dōjōji Temple.” These presentations have the unique advantage of showing us what kabuki theater is in practice.

But the real treasure here is the ukiyo-e prints by major Japanese artists such as Torii Kiyotsune (mid-18th century), Utagawa Toyokuni (1769-1825), Utagawa Kunisada (1786-1865), Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), and Toyohara Kunichika (1835-1900).

Their woodblock prints, inexpensive in price at the time and totally handsome in appearance, were popular with ordinary townspeople in metropolitan Edo where the performances were held in carefully controlled outlying districts. These prints were, of course, the movie posters of their day featuring kabuki superstars in the 17th-19th centuries. And the prints’ popularity -- less expensive than actual theater tickets -- created a cottage industry and mass-produced for fans of all economic means.

Kabuki

Kitagawa Utamaro, Complete Illustrations of Yoshiwara Parodies of Kabuki: Courtesans of the Matsubaya, Edo period (1615-1867), 1798, color woodblock print on paper.

Ukiyo-e prints depicted landscapes, myths, and historic tales as well as courtesans, geisha, and other aspects of everyday city life. They were, as mentioned, mass-produced to be circulated widely among the public, and ukiyo-e developed into a popular art form in its own right. Kabuki merely fostered the impetus of combining all these elements into theatric production.

Just as the actors had their specific lineage, so did the artists specialize in specific themes and compositional textures. As Okada and Oyobe tell us in their gallery statement of these artists’ historic and artistic continuities:

The most sought after print artists were from Utagawa school, which was founded by Utagawa Toyoharu (1735-1814) and flourished under Utagawa Toyokuni I (1769-1825), Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III, 1786-1865), and Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861).

Utagawa school artists used the technique of nigao (meaning "facial likenesses"), developed by Toyokuni I, to make individual faces recognizable through a visual language that relied on the shape and spacing of the nose, eyes, and eyebrows. Depictions of famous actors’ faces became standardized across and even outside of the Utagawa School allowing eager fans to easily recognize them in prints by different artists.

Kabuki

Detail from Utagawa Toyokuni III (Kunisada)'s Ichikawa Ichizō III as Kinryū Kumokichi, Edo period (1615-1867), 1857, color woodblock print on paper.

Given the many differing schools on display, Japanese Prints of Kabuki Theater features no less than 60 examples of these extraordinarily vivid prints. For example, Utagawa Toyokuni III (Kunisada)’s 1857 color woodblock print on paper depicting “Ichikawa Ichizō III as Kinryū Kumokichi” (Edo period), depicts this actor in an action pose wearing a memorable black and silver robe as he aggressively thrusts toward the viewer. While Toyohara Kunichika's 1877 color woodblock print on paper “Twelve Hours of Magic, Hour of the Sheep: Iwai Hanshirō VIII as Shōden” from The Heroic Tales of Jiraiya (Meiji era), shows this actor with enough facial nuance as to have made him readily identifiable to those who would have wished to purchase his likeness.

Kabuki

Detail from Toyohara Kunichika's Twelve Hours of Magic, Hour of the Sheep: Iwai Hanshirō VIII as Shōden from The Heroic Tales of Jiraiya, Meiji era (1868-1912), 1877, color woodblock print on paper.

What Japanese Prints of Kabuki Theater best shows us is the enthusiasm these artworks held for their possessors during the time of their creation. From a clutch of illustrated instruction books allowing amateur artists to create their own favorite actors and characters likenesses to the seemingly endless variations of these personages and themes, the exhibit timelessly straddles the intersection of popular and fine art.

Showtime has never been done better.


John Carlos Cantú has written on our community's visual arts in a number of different periodicals.


University of Michigan Museum of Art: “Japanese Prints of Kabuki Theater from the Collection of the University of Michigan Museum of Art” runs through January 29, 2017. The UMMA is located at 525 S. State Street. The Museum is open Tuesday-Saturday 11 am-5 pm; and Sunday 12-5 pm. For information, call 734-764-0395.