In 1568, Oda Nobunaga (1534–82) entered Kyoto. The warring daimyō of a small domain of Owari was about to begin the occupation of the capital with a great army rumored to be fifty or sixty thousand strong.

As compared with earlier times the emergence of period style in any sense of a unified concept during the Edo period is obscured for the historian by unprecedented factors: the new multiplication of figural and narrative subjects in painting, the predominance of new class interests and patronage, the dissemination of printed pattern books, the suddenly expanded commerce and industry of decorative art in its many branches. Viewed from outside ofjapan the scene has not been clarified by the recent Japanese official emphasis on the art of the Momoyama period as the proper historical perspective for restored imperial rule, nor by an obsession in the west with the special qualified and genre interest of the prints and paintings of the Ukiyo-e school. The work of the latter, in a well-established conventional wording, was ‘patronised by comparatively uncultured people, aimed at a simple and unsophisticated expression, mostly beautiful and sometimes even sensuous rather than deeply spiritual and scholarly’. This approach to the so richly varied art of Edo, and to the original dimension within it created by the new relation of decorative to expressive art, reinforced by the fragmentation of schools, has militated against the definition of pervasive structures in composition which endow the whole art of the period with its distinctive character. The present paper looks to textile decoration as epitomizing a universal trend in design and as an index to stylistic change with some claim to general validity.

These are two very different assessments of Japanese art and artists both published in London during the 1860s. We may argue that both comments are ill-conceived and prejudiced; yet both in their own way are characteristic Western reactions of the time. In this paper I should like to explore the Western image of Japanese art during the period from 1853 to 1867.

The opening up of Japan to the west and the consequent influences of the west and of Japan upon each other are remarkable for many reasons, not least of which is the interchange of styles and techniques of the arts and crafts one to the other. The export of Japanese works of art, and the influence upon European artistic production during the Meiji period (though often of works produced during the Edo period) have all but obscured the remarkable effects Japanese export art had upon the west during the period of self-imposed semi-isolation. Of course Japan was also greatly influenced by western art; that is not the subject of this paper, but it is a subject of great interest, worthy of considerable attention.

Hiiki is the word commonly used for support given to a Kabuki actor, or for the supporter or fan himself. It can be applied to other sorts of ‘fan’, such as one who follows a particular sumō wrestler. The derivation of the word is not certain, but it is generally taken as a lengthened form of hiki, with a meaning of ‘pulling’ or ‘pulling together’. The clubs themselves were known as hiiki renchū, the last element having the alternative pronunciation renjū. Throughout this paper, ‘hiiki’, ‘supporter’ and ‘fan’ have been used indiscriminately with the same meaning.

The more spectacular incidents in the career of Utaemon III (1778–1838) took place in Osaka. They include a fierce rivalry with the Arashi family, especially Rikan I (1769–1821), and a later career characterized by a marked reluctance to retire. In this account of his life, much use will be made of the documentary evidence of Osaka actor prints, and also of banzuke, which are the programmes of performances at a particular theatre. Banzuke come in various forms, including the illustrated ones called e-banzuke, more or less abbreviated ones such as those used apparently rather like fly-posters for circuses in England (tsuji-banzuke, put up at street-corners), and the standard form which lists the roles and those who performed them, names of musicians, name of zamoto or manager, theatre, date, and so on. Many libraries have collections of these available for inspection, but I should like to mention here another source. In the Waseda University Theatre Museum there survives a sort of theatrical scrap-book, consisting of boxes of made-up books with materials from the 1620s to 1827, but in fuller detail for the period of the life of Utaemon III, which was of great interest to the compiler, who is thought to have been a wealthy Osaka ginseng merchant and kabuki fan called Yoshida Goun, who employed Hamamatsu Utakuni, a well-known theatrical critic, to collect the material, order illustrations from artists, write explanatory pieces, arrange and catalogue it.

Mayama Seika was born in Sendai in 1878 and came to Tokyo, after an unsuccessful start to a medical career, to try his hand at writing in 1903. A young writer needed a patron and literary mentor, if he was to have any hope of rising in the bundan, and Mayama set about finding one. He was rebuffed by Tokutomi Kenjirō, attached himself to Satō Kōroku for about one year and finally became a monkasei of Oguri Fūyō in 1905. Under Fūyō's tutelage, although the small difference in their ages and Mayama's strong character precluded a normal sensei/deshi relationship, Mayama Seika became a Naturalist writer of some note at the time. In six years, between 1905 and 1911, he published nearly one hundred short stories, most in prestigious literary magazines. Frank description of life in the raw was a requirement of Naturalist authors and many of Mayama's works were strong in this quality. In particular his accounts of life in poverty-stricken agricultural communities of the Tōhoku area, observed with a doctor's eye, and his accurate reproduction of the dialects of that region have been singled out as distinctive contributions to this genre of literature.