Namazu-e: The Art Genre That Challenged the Tokugawa Shogunate

A Namazu-e print titled "Shin Yoshiwara ōnamazu yurai". In this print, Namazu has devastated the "pleasure district" of Shin Yoshiwara in Edo. The ladies of the night (and others) attempt to take their revenge, but Namazu gets a thrill from having them come into contact with him and threatens to thrash around and cause some aftershocks. (Wikimedia Commons) 

In 1855, a massive earthquake struck Edo (modern-day Tokyo) and killed over 10,000 people. At the time, the earthquake was widely blamed on Namazu, the monster catfish and water deity that, according to legend, lives in the waters underneath Japan. Out of the rubble of Edo arose a short-lived art genre that ridiculed the Tokugawa government and the upper strata of Japanese society and challenged the Tokugawa government's censorship laws. This art genre was known as Namazu-e.

"What/who is Namazu," you ask?  Namazu is one of the many monsters (or 'yōkai') of ancient Japanese legends. According to the legend, Namazu is restrained by the Shinto god Kashima, who keeps a stone on top of him. However, when Kashima is not looking, Namazu will roll around or wiggle his tail, causing the nation's violent earthquakes. The legend of Namazu is believed to have its origins in the ancient Chinese and Japanese belief that earthquakes were caused by dragons or dragon-snakes living underground. Dragons were also worshipped as a water deity by the Chinese and Japanese people and they associated it with flooding and heavy rains.

Namazu-e prints were a genre of woodcut prints, or ukiyo-e (浮世絵) that were popular for two months in 1855-56 after the earthquake. The first prints went into publication a mere two days after the earthquake. During the period of November 1855-January 1856, over 400 namazu-e prints were published and distributed around Edo. Namazu-e prints satirized the people who profited from the Ansei Edo Earthquake, and offered a little bit of entertainment and humor to the quake-stricken city. They also depicted traditional Shinto beliefs about the disaster, promised protection from future earthquakes, and even have a connection with a major event in both Japanese and American histories. Nearly all of these paintings were painted anonymously and could be found throughout Edo during this disaster.

First and foremost, many Namazu-e prints showed all the citizens of Edo coming together to defeat Namazu and chase him out of their city. Usually these prints showed Kashima subduing Namazu or in pursuit of the giant catfish. These prints were meant to inspire the people to keep moving and rebuild the great city of Edo.

Namazu-e also satirized the profiteers who made a fortune from the disaster, such as the construction workers, lumber merchants, blacksmiths, newspaper editors, celebrities, and so on. These people are shown standing around watching and cheering Namazu on while the ordinary people suffer and die. Many people blamed the quake on the greed of the profiteers of Edo, and the Tokugawa bureaucracy in particular.  They believed it was punishment for their excessive greed. Even before the quake, corruption had been rampant. Prices of everyday items were getting higher and merchants were deliberately hoarding items from store shelves to induce an artificial shortage of goods. When the quake struck Edo, they saw the perfect opportunity to make a fortune knocking. After the quake, a great number of these people quickly rebuilt their homes and re-opened their businesses with their inexhaustible supply of money.

Apart from Namazu himself, another deity who was blamed for the quake was Ebisu, the Shinto god of fishing and commerce. According to legend, Namazu is restrained by the Shinto god Kashima, who keeps a stone on top of him. However, when Kashima is not looking, Namazu will roll around or wiggle his tail, causing the nation's violent earthquakes. Ebisu was said to have temporarily taken over the job of guarding Namazu while Kashima was away and fell asleep on the job. While he was asleep, Namazu got away and caused massive destruction. The theme of a sleeping Ebisu recurs throughout many of these prints.

Another underlying theme in Namazu-e was the arrivial of U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry and his fleet of black steamships two years earlier to negotiate a trade treaty on behalf of President Millard Fillmore. These trade negotiations began the opening up of Japan. The fleet of black steamships terrified the people of Japan greatly, both literally and emotionally. Most Japanese had never seen a steamship before and a whole fleet of them in Japan's harbors was terrifying to see. The threat of war shook up the Tokugawa shogunate and the samurai, whose weaponry and tactics were outdated at this point in time and were no match against the advanced weapons of Perry's fleet. Also, pressure and the threat of possible military action caused uncertainty in Japan and gave the merchants an excuse to keep upping their prices.

Many prints and illustrations of Perry's ships from this time depicted the ships as bearing a strong resemblance to Namazu, and when the Edo earthquake struck in 1855, Commodore Perry was still fresh on the minds of the people of Edo. In many namazu-e prints, Namazu bears a resemblance to Perry's steamships. The underlying message was very clear: Perry and his fleet were Namazus who were "rectifying" Japan and ushering in an era of change.

Daikoku, the Japanese God of Fortune, showers coins down on the quake-stricken people of Edo while a grinning Namazu rides on. Kashima stands on Namazu with his sword drawn, indicating that he has Namazu under control. A poem praises the water god Suijin for sparing the lives of the artist's family. (Wikimedia Commons)

Despite all the destruction he caused, Namazu was also viewed as a savior. He was regarded by many people as the agent of world rectification sent from the gods above and, in the eyes of many people living at the time, would change Japanese society for the better. Many Namazu-e prints offered inspiration to the citizens of Edo by depicting Namazu, in his role as a yonaoshi daimyojin, spewing coins (often with Daikoku, the god of wealth, looking on) to people all over the city, promising a new era of prosperity through rebuilding Edo. Others even depicted Namazu (or numerous Namazus) apologizing and helping to rescue people, claiming that it was the profiteers who wanted Namazu to go on his rampage! Many of these prints were said to have special powers that gave the owner protection from Namazu and his wrath, thus boosting the popularity of the Namazu-e genre of woodcut.

Naturally, it wasn't long before the Tokugawa shogunate caught wind of this genre and decided that they couldn't have the people mocking the government and breaking its strict censorship laws. In January 1856, the Tokugawa shogunate officially banned Namazu-e prints from production. Since a lot of Namazu-e prints were one-of-a-kind prints made by relatively unknown local artists, many of them vanished forever.

One legacy of Namazu-e is that it was a "protest art". It emerged at a time when social discontent was very high in Japan and protests had been becoming more and more common over the decades. The Ansi-Edo earthquake in general brought all this discontent and anger out to the surface, and Namazu-e was the perfect way to express it.

Namazu-e was a very small genre of Japanese art that existed for only a very short period of time in the Edo area. It depicted and satirized the huge divide between rich and poor that existed in Edo society, the changes that were brewing in Japan underneath the surface of Edo society, and the changes that were soon to come. Furtthermore, Namazu-e prints gave the people of Edo a sense of safety and security and gave them a reason to smile and laugh. In this sense, Namazu-e was a two-sided art genre.

For more info about Namazu-e, check out:
-http://pinktentacle.com/2011/04/namazu-e-earthquake-catfish-prints/ (Blog post from Pink Tentacle about Namazu-e. Includes a gallery of Namazu-e prints and background info on these prints.)
-http://shinku.nichibun.ac.jp/namazu/ichiran.php (A very comprehensive gallery of Namazu-e. Japanese language only.)
-http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/g/j/gjs4/Shaking_Up_Japan.pdf (Paper about Namazu-e by Gregory Smits.)

Telescopes in Edo-Period Japan

"Young Woman Looking Through a Telescope" by Edo artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). (Visipix.com)

During the Edo period in Japan (1603-1868), a device came from Europe to Japan that revolutionized science and astronomy, helped change the calendar, and became a hot novelty item among the public. That device was the telescope.

The first refracting telescope (which was the type of telescope most widely used by the public before the reflecting telescope started becoming more popular over the past century) was brought to Japan in 1614 during a mission to open trade between England and Japan. That telescope was presented as a gift to the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu from the English captain John Saris and one of his sailors,William Adams.

A few years later, the first homemade telescope was made by Tohichi Ikushima. Unfortunately, this milestone also led to telescope manufacturing being initially banned in Japan by the Tokugawa shogunate due to its dual purpose as a military application.

In 1659, telescopes received their first major military usage when they were used at three different observation towers set up along Japan's coast for observing foreign ships arriving in Japanese waters.

According to Peter Abrahams's in-depth history of the Japanese telescope, it was used throughout the course of the 17th and early 18th centuries mainly for terrestrial purposes, such as measuring angles and military observation. Over the course of the 18th century, more and more of the general Japanese public, including astronomers, would use the telescope for observing the nighttime skies. The telescope was used by Edo astronomer and government official Harumi Shibukawa when, in the early 18th century, he discovered a series of new stars and added them to the traditional Chinese celestial map, which had been used for centuries. This new celestial map, named the "Tenmon Seisho-zu", became the foundation of modern Japanese astronomy.

After the creation of the new map, new advances were made in Japanese astronomy, such as a new set of celestial globes by Shibukawa and the creation of a new "lunisolar" calendar. Astronomy became a popular subject of study for the country's intelligentsia. All of these advances were helped in 1720 by the Tokugawa lifting their ban on scientific research from the West that had no religious implications. However, the Tokugawa shogunate made the priority of the nation's new science not of mapping the galaxies, but for making new calendars to justify its own power and prestige.

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the Japanese learned about the art of the telescope from the Dutch, who also imported their own telescopes and telescope parts such as lenses. Also during the 1700s, a number of Japanese astronomers and artisans started making their own telescopes. By the end of the century, homemade telescopes and lenses were very commonplace.

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the telescopes made in Japan started catching up to the Western models that were imported to Japan. The famed telescope-maker Zenbei Iwahashi's (1756-1811) refracting telescope from the late 1700s was equal - and possibly superior to - the Western telescopes which were the standard of the time! Also during the early 19th century, the Asada school, founded by astronomer Asada Goryu (1734-1799), created modern astronomy instruments and used Iwahashi's telescopes for their observations. These and other developments set the basis for the optical industry in Japan - a tradition that continues today with Japan's leading camera and optical equipment manufacturers.

Kunitomo Ikkansai's telescope, c. 1832. (Wikimedia Commons)

In 1833, after spending a little time in Edo (modern-day Tokyo) learning about telescopes from the Dutch, the ex-gunsmith Kunitomo Ikkansai created Japan's first Gregorian reflecting lens telescope. This telescope allowed him to make some very detailed observations of sun spots and the surface of the moon.

After the Tokugawa shogunate became a little less paranoid about the usage of telescopes, they became a popular novelty item among the public. Telescopes made their way into Japanese fiction such as kibyōshi (黄表紙). They were used by ordinary people for observing nature, nearby cities, and so on. Many ukiyo-e prints from the time depict ordinary people watching birds or observing ships at sea with telescopes. During the 19th century, crowds gathered at observation points to look out over mountains or the ocean.

Telescopes also became popular during the Edo period for gossip and voyeuristic purposes! As a matter of fact, some of the "pleasure districts" in Japanese cities offered telescopes for this very purpose.

In 1854, the Tokugawa shogunate opened Japan's borders to foreign trade. In 1868, the Tokugawa shogunate's rule came to an end and the Meiji Restoration began. During the Meiji period, Japan opened its doors to the outside world. The Meiji government formally adopted the solar calendar used by the West and Japanese astronomers were finally able to study the science of astronomy in full.

The telescope is an instrument that has become a part of our everyday lives, but in Edo-period Japan, it was instrumental in changing science and society.

For more about Japanese astronomy in the Edo period, here's another site you might want to visit:
http://teapot.lib.ocha.ac.jp/ocha/bitstream/10083/3391/1/P242-244.pdf