Partners in Print: Artistic Collaboration and the Ukiyo-e Market by Julie Nelson Davis (review)

In the past decade or so, the privileging of the singular (predominantly male) artistic creator within Japanese print history has received some much needed corrective, and there has also been acknowledgment of the thoroughly commercial motivations of the various actors in the publishing industry. The first two substantial works in English both appeared in 2004—Melinda Takeuchi, ed., The Artist as Professional in Japan, (Stanford University Press), to which Julie Nelson Davis contributed a chapter, and Amy Reigle Newland, ed., The Commercial and Cultural Climate of Japanese Printmaking (Hotei)—and Davis lists further related publications (p. 199, note 51). The current book, however, is the first monograph-length consideration of the question of artistic collaboration and thus offers a healthy reinforcement of the view that all cultural products involve multiple agents to bring them to fruition.

Davis's book is structured around case studies of four types of print material within the "floating world" (ukiyo-e) genre and thereby four types of partnership: a privately published print (teacher and students), an image-rich book (two painter-designers), a set of erotic prints (designer and publisher), and a popular illustrated novel (writer and illustrator). The chosen works range in date from 1776 to 1790, a period which "presents a particularly vibrant set of social and aesthetic networks that supported these partnerships in print" (p. 2). This selection indeed provides a tightly focused period for examination, but it does preclude consideration of other types of collaboration that emerged later.¹

The introduction provides the necessary background on the locality (Edo), the social context of strictly controlled ranks, the contemporary "art world" (employing Howard Becker's concept) comprising a network of those who contributed publishing content (text or image, or sometimes both), the production processes for paintings (unique works) versus published matter (multiples), the roles taken by the various players in ukiyo-e production (in particular the publisher as coordinator), and the status of "floating world" products.

Chapter 1 takes the multi-artist artwork (here, a surimono, or privately printed design) as the departure point for a consideration of teaching as a collaborative exchange, the role of printing in the transmission of style from teacher to pupil (or artist to audience), and the interface of elite Kano modes with popular, "floating world" culture. Davis excavates the artistic contribution of Toriyama Sekien (1712–88), who has received little attention in his own time or in modern scholarship. He did not found a lineage but was "a key point of transfer of traditional painting style for the floating world" (p. 23), making available the Kano house style to the commercial print industry. Printed books were a medium for disseminating individual and school styles, and Toriyama biko was "a catalogue of printed paintings" (p. 36; emphasis in original). There is an extended description of Kaiji hiken (Painting comparisons, 1778) and Sekien's four books on supernatural themes, but their relevance to the question of artistic collaboration is not readily apparent. Davis then takes up the professional entrées provided by teachers to their students: contributing to the haikai anthologies published by Toryūsō Enshi from 1770 to the early 1780s, and, for Utamaro specifically, both participation in poetry circles and work for the up-and-coming publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō. Davis asserts that for Utamaro and his teacher the "connection to Tsutaya transformed both their careers" (p. 53), but how can this be true of Sekien when he was already in his seventies and had enjoyed a long publishing connection with Enshūya Yashichi? Utamaro's debt to his teacher is brought out in the trio of superlative works put out by Tsutaya. Davis asserts that "the relationship between master and student … is predicated upon an active exchange" (p. 23), but she does not explore what the latter offered, such as creative stimulation to the master. It seems somewhat risky to base this particular investigation on a...