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Overview
The Meiji era artists Yoshitoshi, Toshikata, and Shuntei, all represented in Te Papa's collection, maintained an ethos of pictorial and technical excellence in their syntheses of ukiyo-e stylistic conventions with virtuoso techniques and subject matter. Their achievement fostered the revival of standards of design and technical accomplishment through which both the sōsaku-hanga and shin-hanga ('modern print') movements were to develop in the early 20th century from late Meiji, through the Taishō and Shōwa eras.
Shin-hanga adopted yogā ‘Western-style’ representational modes, but also maintained traditional subjects and sensibilities. This dual character is not surprising. By 1900, many Japanese were concerned at a diminishing sense of national identity, and loss of "the most valuable aspects of Japanese culture". Ukiyo-e history pictures, bijin-ga and genre scenes all belonged to that cultural heritage, as did the enduring subjects of kabuki, landscape and nature. The shin-hanga segue into Western style naturalism was evident no more clearly than in fūkei-ga landscape pictures and meisho-e pictures of famous places.
Both genres are represented in Te Papa's collection: the print here is an excellent example of meisho-e. The synthesis of Western perspective devices, international trends in women's fashions and naturalistic tonal effects can be seen in the works of Shirō Kasamatsu, and here his elder contemporary Narazaki Eishō’s (1864-1936) representation of the half-lit interior of Sensō-ji (Asakusa Kannon Temple), a Tokyo landmark. Where Kasamatsu’s work had focused on the great lantern so celebrated in Hiroshige’s famous view of the temple entrance, Eishō has contrived a more atmospheric view of the busy human presence inside the shrine "where the hum of voices, clink of coins thrown into the offering box, and flutter of pigeons in the rafters reverberate off the dusty wooden floor. This cacophony is paralleled by the visual confusion of colorful kimonos, flying birds, huge lanterns, and votive paintings, all competing for space in the half-lit interior" (Brown and Goodall-Cristante, p. 83).
Sources:
David Bell, 'A new vision: modern Japanese prints from the Heriot collection', Tuhinga, 31 (2020), forthcoming.
K. Brown and H. Goodall-Cristante, Shin-hanga: new prints in modern Japan (Los Angeles, 1996).
Dr Mark Stocker Curator, Historical International Art May 2019