Sessue Hayakawa

Sessue Hayakawa, originally uploaded by punalippu.

The Japanese-born Hollywood star in the silent film His Birthright from 1918.

Even more Japanese doggies

A TOT WITH TOYS in OLD JAPAN, originally uploaded by Okinawa Soba.

All black and white, of course. I'm beginning to think that the colour combination has a deeper meaning. Some of the doggies look like inuhariko (lucky papier mache dogs). Please click the picture for more information.

More Japanese Puppies

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As a fan of black-and-white Japanese dogs, I was thrilled to find these images.

Cover of the Legend of the Eight Dog Warriors (Nansou Satomi Hakkenden), epic Japanese novel written in the period 1814-1842. (Image source)

The dog theme derives from the origin myth of the eight warriors; besieged by his enemies, warlord Satomi promises his daughter Fuse-hime in marriage to the warrior who can break the siege and bring him the head of his enemy. His faithful dog Yatsufusa obeys. In the strange marriage, Fuse-hime remains a virgin but becomes miraculously pregnant. Mortally ashamed, she kills herself, but her eight sons' (puppies?) spirits fill the jewel beads of her rosary and disappear. Eventually, the sons of Fuse-hime are born of human parents around the country, and the novel tells the story of their exploits and final reunion.

Yatsufusa and Fuse-hime. (Source)

Edit. The dog's name, Yatsufusa (八房), means literally "eight spots". According to the novel, he was reared by a tanuki (raccoon dog, a badger-like canine with a reputation for supernatural mischief) in the village of Inugake in the Minamiboso area. Tourists can visit important locations of the novel as if it were historical fact; there is even a memorial for Yatsufusa and the tanuki (read about the Hakkenden tour in English and Japanese).

Ukiyo-e Puppies

One of Goldenbird's most popular characters (if not THE most popular ever) is Mochi, a little (though she seems to be growing at an alarming speed) puppy of shady Japanese origin.

Mochi is a 10-week-old Akita-ken (秋田犬), precocious and cheerful but also very sensitive. The Akita breed has a complicated history; back in the 1910-20's, it didn't exist in the shape as we know it today. Mochi's black-and-white colouring is evidence of that. Today, the Japanese breed standards exclude white dogs with black markings (pinto). This was not the case 100 years ago. There was no breed standard - but there was a growing notion of the Akita dog as an uniquely Japanese breed that deserved to be preserved. In 1931, the Akita-ken was declared a natural monument. The first official breed standard wasn't published until 1934.



The large hunting dogs of the Akita prefecture had attracted the attention of the Meiji emperor. In a famous and widely spread photograph, two Akita dogs are presented to the emperor. Both are black with white markings or vice-versa. This colouring was later judged to be un-Japanese, as a result of interbreeding with large, imported dogs from Europe and probably also China and Korea. Interestingly, recent studies on the dog genome have shown that the Akita, in spite of being a modern "reconstruction", retains ancient genetic material which makes it unique among breeds.

The group of 14 "ancient" breeds defined by this study includes mainly East Asian dogs such as the Shiba, the Chow, the Shar-Pei and the Siberian husky, which makes me believe that the "foreign" heritage in the Akita could be East Asian rather than European. Indeed, Tatsuo Kimura mentions in his "History of the Akita Dog" that as early as "A.D. 358, black pinto dogs resembling Japanese dogs of today are said to have come from Korea". "Ancient breeds" are human constructions - the natural state of dogs is to have puppies with any available and fit mate. The back-breeding of the 20th century Akita to an idealized primitive state is an impossible project. The result is certainly an attractive dog, but it is not any more authentic than the discarded bloodlines.

Old woodcuts from the Edo period and the Meiji era show that Japanese artists found pinto dogs attractive and worthy of depiction. These puppies are not necessarily Akitas; there are several smaller spitz-type breeds in more southern parts of Japan, such as the Shiba-ken and the Shikoku-ken, which might have been available as models.


Puppies by Hokusai Katsushika


A Winter Scene by Chikanobu (1890)


Playful Puppies by Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-1889)


Two Puppies Playing by Koga Iijima (1900)


Yoshioka Ichimisai’s daughter Sono (from the series Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety of Our Country) by Kuniyoshi (1842-1843) (See the Kuniyoshi Project)


Mother, Child and Pups by Utamaro (1753-1806)


Puppy Playing With Geta (EDIT: at closer inspection it appears to be a zori) by Seiho Takeuchi (1906)


Puppies and Snail by Sekka Kamisaka (1909)

These last puppies represent two of the standard colours for Akita-ken today. The third permitted colour is the impressive brindle. The pinto pattern is permitted in the American Akita standard. This breed descends from dogs that were imported to North America (and Europe) before the implementation of the modern Japanese standards.

For most people in Japan today, a pinto Akita looks unfamiliar. The black-and-white Akita lives on as a small lucky papier mache figurine: Inuhariko (犬張り子), a gift for expectant mothers and newborn babies. I like to think of Mochi as Mayann's own live inuhariko.

Sources:

Northland Akitas: Akita Learning Center (Lots and lots of interesting information)
The New York Times - Science
Kyototraditions.com
The Daily Yomiuri/Yomiuri Shimbun

Art galleries:

Arts and Designs of Japan
Japan Print Gallery
The Kuniyoshi Project

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The Waitress

Cover of the magazine Ukiyo (うきよ), 11/1921. (Found here)

The word ukiyo is probably familiar to many in the compound ukiyo-e, "images of the floating world". Ukiyo means thus floating world, but the cover reveals through subtle hints that this is a new world - the old-time bijin (美人 - "beautiful person", the female subject-object of countless ukiyo-e woodcuts) has changed into a modern girl (モダンガール), a waitress at a Western-style café.



(Waitresses at Café Printemps, 1922; source)

That is my guess; the little clues consist of her laced apron combined with a fresh blush, a matching comb and a coquettish gesture. She resembles the Taisho era popular image of the café waitress, which still lives on in Japanese pop culture. For a basic introduction to the café boom in 1910's and 1920's Japan, see Elise K. Tipton's article "Pink Collar Work" in the excellent journal Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context.


(Two Taisho era waitresses; more images here)

In some ways, the café waitresses carried on the geisha tradition of providing inspiring company, selling a romantic fantasy over a cup of coffee or tea. Because they were associated with modernity and Westernization, but perhaps even more because their customers were poor students and aspiring intellectuals, the waitresses were often ridiculed and depicted as prostitutes (and some of them doubtlessly had to be; their salaries were extremely low, and Tipton has some interesting stories about waitresses trying to organize themselves and join the labour movement). (Some examples of cartoons here.) Today, the "maid café" fad plays on similar strings - it is the fleeting dream that is desirable, not the fulfillment of desires. In this case, nostalgia enhances the value of the fantasy. Because the 21st century waitress is no longer a threat to the social order, the early 20th century waitress is seen as an innocent and plucky character in a historical romance. She is even desirable (and marketable) as a costume, like other characters from bygone times: the samurai, the ninja, the courtier.


A Taisho waitress costume from a contemporary costume rental service.

Gekkan Manga-Man

月刊 マンガ・マン
("Monthly Manga-Man")
Published in 7/1930, Tokyo.
I would love to know more about this publication. (Found here)

Parisian Hat

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Just had to add this portrait to the series of Yosano Akiko posts. Yosano bought the hat in Paris in 1912.

Utsusemi

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Utsusemi is a beautiful manga serial by Visual Kei artist Nheira, inspired by Yosano Akiko's tanka collection Midaregami (1901).

Yosano Akiko was a feminist poet, daring to ascribe passionate emotions to women, spurring them to act in matters of love and politics. While the modern comic is very beautiful, it switches the woman's position from subject to object - the stepsister seems unaware of her older brother's feelings. I doubt that this was Yosano's intention. Her accompanying poems sound, to me, written from a specifically female perspective, daring to approach the lover (of indeterminate gender) fully aware of hope and danger.

Hot blood flows underneath my soft skin.
But you only talk of morality and do not touch my flames of passion.
Are not you lonely?

Translation from the Utsusemi site.

Incidentally, I wonder if it isn't the same poem as this one, from Mike Lidgley's blog.

やは肌のあつき血汐にふれも見でさびしからずや道を説く君

Having never felt
the hot tide of blood that throbs
beneath this soft skin
even you who seek the Way
must know what you are missing.

It is interesting to compare the translations, and both make me think of Falco, of course. But the poem ends with the pronoun "kimi" - a form of honorific "you" that is mostly used by young men. This would seem to undermine my theory of an active female voice! Perhaps Yosano felt that a change of grammar was necessary to empower a new female voice - perhaps an "anata" was too deferential. "Kimi" is used by young men to men and women alike, if they are of the same status. "Anata" refers to a husband or a lover. But I don't know enough about early 20th century Japanese to argue this.

Yosano Akiko

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与謝野 晶子
(1868-1942)

The day the mountains move has come.
I speak, but no one believes me.
For a time the mountains have been asleep.
But long ago they all danced with fire.
It doesn't matter if you don't believe this,
my friends, as long as you believe:
All the sleeping women
are now awake and moving.

Published in the women's magazine Seitô, 1911

Takiji Kobayashi

"1920s proletarian novel strikes chord with young underemployed" - The Japan Times, Friday, July 18, 2008



I first read about Takiji Kobayashi (小林 多喜二 1903-1933) in the Finnish socialist literary magazine Kirjallisuuslehti (1934, p. 290). He was a politically conscious writer and dissident in imperial Japan, tortured to death by the police. His rediscovered novel, Kanikosen ("Crab-Canning Boat", 1929), deals with the difficult working conditions and labourers' collective struggle 80 years ago, and the modern-day part-time proletariat has discovered its relevance.

Shinchosha Publishing Co. said that in a normal year around 5,000 copies of the book would be reprinted. But this year, it has already printed nearly 380,000 copies.

The Japanarchy blog has a big post on Kobayashi, including many images of the manga based on Kanikosen. The comments include valuable discussions, too (how often do you see that?!). A must-read if you are interested in radical labour activism and Japan in the 1920's and 30's. Warning: The post includes some difficult photos of the deceased Kobayashi.
Here is a 10-minute clip from the 1953 movie by Sô Yamamura.

And here's an article by a guy who worked at fish-processing ships himself, and what he felt when he read the manga versions.

(Crossposted at Chirayliq)

Yumeji

Trailer for the movie Yumeji by Seijun Suzuki (1991).
Takehisa Yumeji (竹久夢二, 1884–1934) was an artist of the Taisho era (大正時代, 1912-1926) in Japan. His paintings are very popular today; they are easy to find as prints and on postcards, stationery and apparel in almost any well-stocked department store or book shop. The last time I was in Japan, I bought several little sets of postcards and pens decorated with his melancholy, slender lady portraits.
There are at least four museums devoted to his works, in Okayama (his hometown), Tokyo (which also exhibits other artists such as Kasho Takabatake), Gunma (link goes to gallery) and Kanazawa.