11.04.2024The first Zurich Lectures in East Asian History: Double Lecture

Speakers

Prof. Sharalyn Orbaugh (University of British Columbia): Ecce homo: the Japanese Male Body in Pain in WWII Visual Propaganda

Prof. Joshua Mostow (University of British Columbia): Embodied Poems and Samurai Love: Poems for Screen-Paintings (Byōbu-e) and Imaginary Portraits (Kasen-e)

Date and Time

April 11, 2024, 6:15 pm - 8 pm

Venue

Rämistrasse 59, CH-8001 Zürich, Room RAA-G-15

Abstracts

Ecce homo: the Japanese Male Body in Pain in WWII Visual Propaganda (Prof. Sharalyn Orbaugh)

Graphic depictions of the painful injuries and deaths of soldiers are common in one of the most widely disseminated and widely viewed forms of Japanese mobilization propaganda in World War II: kamishibai (literally, paper plays). The realistic style and vivid colors of the illustrations of kamishibai plays make the sufferings of Japanese soldiers and munitions factory workers painfully clear, raising
questions: how could such depictions be intended to encourage soldiers to enlist, or to encourage those on the home front to continue their backbreaking labor to support the war effort? How did these depictions in kamishibai compare with images of the male body in fine art of the same period? This presentation will explore the strategies of persuasion that relied on depictions of male bodies in pain for the purposes of mobilizing the Japanese people to support the war effort.

Embodied Poems and Samurai Love: Poems for Screen-Paintings (Byōbu-e) and Imaginary Portraits (Kasen-e) (Prof. Joshua Mostow)

Premodern Japanese visual culture had a surprising number of genres that involved the embodiment of waka in human form. Byōbu-uta, or “screen poems,” were a very important genre in the development of what is known as the Kokinshū-style in the late 8 th century and beyond. Here, poets would assume the persona or personae of human figures depicted on a folding screen and compose poems from their   perspective. Some have argued that the practice of byōbu-uta contributed to the development of kyokō 虚構, or “fictionality,” and the literary court romance (monogatari), which we will explore in relation to illustrated scrolls (monogatari-e). At the other end of the spectrum is the genre of kasen-e 歌仙絵, or imaginary portraits of exemplary poets. Again, groupings of notable poets start with the Kana Preface of the Kokinshū and the Six Poetic Immortals (Rokkasen). The Thirty-Six Poetic Immortals (Sanjūrokkasen) were selected by Fujiwara no Kintō around 1007-1009 and the poets were depicted in the Satake-bon Sanjūrokkasen emaki attributed to Fujiwara no Nobuzane (1177?-1266?). In the Edo period, this led to depictions of the One Hundred Poets of Fujiwara no Teika’s Hyakunin isshu. Here, however, the inclusion of depictions of the poets encouraged all the poems to be understood as in the voice of the poet him- or herself, despite the fact that a number of the included verses were on set topics, such as the “waiting woman” (matsu onna) where the male poet would compose in a feminine persona. In other words, unlike byōbu-e, kasen-e discouraged the idea of fictional personae. This presentation will explore the results of such understanding in printed illustrated editions of the original One Hundred Poets as well as the Warrior One Hundred Poets in the Edo period.

Further information is available here.

Organization

Art History - East Asian Art History