The Last Tosa: Iwasa Katsumochi Matabei, Bridge to Ukiyo-e

10 The Chōnin Painter

10 The Chônin Painter B ecause Matabei had changed so much by the time of his death in Edo, the . question naturally arises as to whether, at the end of his life, he was the artist . to the machishu that he had once been. Matabei’s glowing successes in Echizen and Edo add to the doubts concerning his continued identity as such, for as Mizuo noted, it was the stable, prosperous new world of the pax Tokugawa that spelled an end to this group.1 Furthermore, as we shall now see, the style of Matabei differed signi¤cantly from that of Sôtatsu, a difference that stemmed from the very different reaction these two men had to the end of the age of the machishu. Machishu and Chônin In distinguishing between Matabei and Sôtatsu, it is useful to differentiate, ¤rst, between the people called the machishu and the chônin.2 The dictionary of the Japanese language Kojien de¤nes chônin as “merchants and artisans who live in cities, people living in the city, or one of the social classes in the modern period (kinsei) [emphasis added].”3 Chônin, then, are the same people as the machishu, but in the modern era (kinsei)—which Kojien equates with the Tokugawa period—as opposed to the medieval (chûsei)—which this dictionary de¤nes as extending from the late twelfth century to the early Tokugawa period. Time distinguishes machishu from chônin, but the difference between them is not just temporal. The period in which these two groups lived had a profound effect on their social status. As innumerable books on Ukiyo-e have stated, Tokugawa-period merchants and artisans, though often the richest people of their day, formed the bottom 241 ranks of the government social system, called shinôkôshô after its four levels of warrior (shi), farmer (nô), artisan (kô), and merchant (shô). It may be for this reason that Kojien de¤nes chônin as a social class, for such they were, the lowest in the shogunal hierarchy. Furthermore, as many writers on Ukiyo-e have also noted, the humble position of the chônin in the of¤cial society of Edo was emphasized by various sumptuary laws that forbade them from outwardly displaying their riches in their clothing, homes, or other possessions. Only in the brothel and theater districts of cities like Edo did the Tokugawa shogunate allow the chônin to rise to a social position appropriate to their wealth, these places serving as a kind of “safety valve.” There, the chônin created the chic Floating World, portrayed in Ukiyo-e. Within this realm of wine, women, and song—a fantasy world literally separated from the reality of Edo by a wall—they were the elite, dominating it with their money as surely as the shogunate dominated the world outside with its armies. If the chônin could rise to the top of their private little Floating World, however, that was the only place they could do so. Therein lay the difference between them and the machishu, who were free to advance themselves in the world at large as much as their talents or efforts allowed. From this difference, moreover, stemmed a second, more important one. The social acceptability of the elite machishu merchants must have given them a ¤rmer sense of their own worth than their chônin counterparts could have. Machishu pride thus must have been a very different thing from chônin. It was a pride that could support action, as Kôetsu’s move to Takagamine showed. It was a pride that made the machishu resist the shogunate, even when such resistance was useless. It was a pride worth dying for. No chônin would give up his life for his social position, but a machishu might. Indeed, Rikyû’s suicide and Oribe’s death could be interpreted in just that way. This pride was the machishu’s inheritance as the descendants of the independent, strong-willed children of Kyoto (kyôwarabe), a heritage that the chônin did not have. Moving to Edo And yet, the differences between the machishu and the chônin aside, it is to be noted that many chônin were former machishu. They were often lower-level machishu, especially merchants, who had moved to Edo—a move that had special signi¤cance in the early Tokugawa period. At the time, the shogunate needed merchants, artisans, and other commoners to help...