[soundtrack begins[1]]
The epidemic rages.
[sirens of ambulance begin]
As the sirens of ambulances blare outside my window, I trace the contours of the print cautiously in pencil. Although ambulances pass by carrying patients of the COVID-19 epidemic, my thoughts are fixated on another epidemic in another time—the 1862 measles epidemic in Edo Japan encapsulated within the print.
[soundtrack changes then resumes]
The epidemic rages.
[roaring of winds begin]
As the winds roar portending the spread of measles, the artist sketches the contours of the print nimbly in ink [sirens and winds fade].[2] He is part of the highly commercialized process of ukiyo-e woodblock printing, requiring four different experts and depending on the financial priorities of the publisher.[3] They are among the ukiyo-e artisans who take advantage of a tragic affair that spawns sickness and suffering as a perverse opportunity to make money. Their work is so prolific that they create a distinctive genre of hashika-e—or measles prints—during this epidemic.[4]
[soundtrack changes then resumes]
Ironically, the artist lampoons commercial religion and medicine for this very reason. He draws four forlorn figures standing in the corner of a print, looking on with consternation as the mass of common people attack the large, spotted measles demon with all their vigor.[5] These figures represent a Buddhist monk and three apothecarists, who are viewed as furthering the epidemic rather than ameliorating it. Much as we condemn the price gougers of hand-sanitizer and masks, the commoners of Edo Japan resent the vendors of healing rites and medication.[6]
[soundtrack changes then resumes]
But, perhaps, we shouldn’t be too critical of the artist for his seeming hypocrisy. He is a commoner himself struggling with a seemingly strange disease.[7] Perhaps, just as we need to believe that wearing masks and avoiding crowds will protect us from COVID-19 [silence], he needs to believe that eating the right foods and avoiding the wrong ones will save him from measles [bustling of fish market]. He compiles a lengthy list of “foods good to eat” and draws a medley of “big forbidden objects.”[8]
Perhaps, as much as we need to trust the potency of ventilators and antibodies [beeping of ventilator], he needs to trust the efficacy of talismans and magical cures [chanting of Shinto healing prayer]. “Please Tenmangusama,” he begs, “I and our children have not caught measles. I pray that we will escape it.”[9] He and his customers paste the print to the entrance of their homes, hoping that it will invoke the deity Tengmangusama to protect their loved ones from the epidemic.[10] He draws a spiny holly leaf and inscribes on it a verse for the deity Master Wheat. It is meant to be carefully clipped from the print by his customers. They send the paper holly leaf it down the stream in desperation, hoping to transfer their pustules to the deity who shares the disease’s name.[11] Abandoned by elite medicine and religion, the commoners turn to the print as not only a source of information but as itself the cure.
[soundtrack changes then resumes]
Still, the artist integrates ideas from academic Chinese medicine into his prints—the product of an iterative assimilation over centuries of cyclical contact. On the prescription of “things that become poisonous,” he writes, “to be exposed to the morning and evening breezes is bad.”[12] Although he might not know it, he reflects the belief in the danger of winds as the “origin of all disease” from Ancient Chinese Medicine.[13] The very idea of forbidden foods that he relies on could be from European ideas of “food’s polluting residues”, brought to Japan by the Dutch—the result of a porous isolation during centuries of supposed seclusion.[14]
[soundtrack changes then resumes]
Their beliefs may sound to us irrational, incompatible, fantastical. But their motivations should not seem so strange to us [sirens and wind fade in]. Amidst raging epidemics of unfamiliar diseases, what choice do we have but to reach for reassurances from every source we can [sirens and wind come to a crescendo]? We weave together the threads of different systems of knowledge—of religion, of medicine, of folk practice; of technology, of biology, of public health—to form syncretic solutions [sirens and wind fade out].
[soundtrack changes then resumes]
Yet, with the power of historical retrospection, I ponder: does the artist know that measles is not an unfamiliar disease in Japan? Does he know that the deity that he paints, vanquishing spiky-haired measles demons, lived through another “age of epidemics” nearly a thousand years before?[15] Does he know that the disease now raging through Japan was introduced then—in the Heian era?[16]
Maybe, he does know that measles isn’t new to his nation. Maybe, he portrays measles as unfamiliar to bolster the sale of prints. Maybe, he depicts measles as foreign to express resentment against the weak Tokugawa government, unable to stem the tide of European imperialism and the wretched diseases it brings.[17] But little does he know that when the Tokugawa government disintegrates, his craft will also fade. Through ages of imperialism and war, his prints will be sold to Americans and stashed in their archives with little regard.[18]
[sirens and wind fade in]
There they languish where I find them, living through another epidemic’s anguish.
[sirens of ambulances end]
[roaring of wind and soundtrack ends]
Footnotes:
[1] Swift, Taylor. Epiphany. YouTube. Folklore. Universal Music Group, 2020. https://youtu.be/DUnDkI7l9LQ: The soundtrack is the instrumental of the intro and coda of Taylor Swift’s song Epiphany, written during and about the COVID-19 pandemic.
[2] The artist of the two hashika-e described in this podcast (Chasing Measles Away and Ryuko Hashika Taisan No Zu) is Utagawa Yoshimori, but I refer to the motivations and perspectives of any artist who created hashika-e rather than specifically about the motivations and perspectives of Yoshimori; Kuriyama, Shigehisa. “The Imagination of Winds and the Development of the Chinese Conception of the Body.” In Body, Subject, and Power in China, edited by Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow, 23-41. University of Chicago Press, 1994: Chinese medical thought and its Japanese adaptations viewed diseases and epidemics as being carried by the winds.
[3] Davis, Julie Nelson. “The Utagawa School.” Print Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2008): 449-456; Kobayashi, Tadashi. Ukiyo-e: An Introduction to Japanese Woodblock Prints. Kodansha International, 1997: The publisher commissions the print, the artist sketches it with black ink and calligraphy pen, the engraver chisels the sketch into a block of cherry wood, and the printer transfers the print onto sheets of paper.
[4] Formanek, Susanne, and Sepp Linhart. “Introduction.” In Written Texts–Visual Texts: Woodblock-Printed Media in Early Modern Japan, edited by Susanne Formanek and Sepp Linhart, 13. Hotei Academic European Studies on Japan ; v. 3. Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005.
[5] Utagawa, Yoshimori, Chasing Measles Away, 1862. Woodblock print, 34.5 x 24.3cm, UC San Francisco, Special Collections.
[6] Bennett, Victoria. “Medical, Anatomical, and Visual Transformations in the Japanese Woodblock Prints of the Edo and Meiji Periods (1603 – 1912).” M.A., University of South Carolina, 2019. http://search.proquest.com/docview/2303308919/abstract/461F28D8691466FPQ/1; Rotermund, Hartmurt O. “Illness-Illustrated. Socio-historical Dimensions of Late Edo Measles Pictures (Hashika-e).” In Written Texts–Visual Texts: Woodblock-Printed Media in Early Modern Japan, edited by Susanne Formanek and Sepp Linhart, 251-282. Hotei Academic European Studies on Japan ; v. 3. Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005: Resentment against doctors, apothecarists, and religious figures was a common theme in hashika-e, especially in the artist Utagawa Yoshimori’s prints, due to the high prices of both medication such as black rhino horn powder and healing rites that required mass entertainment.
[7] Rotermund, Hartmurt O. “Illness-Illustrated:” As artisans, ukiyo-e artists were commoners in the Edo social hierarchy. Many ukiyo-e artists, particularly Yojotei, complain about not being afford expensive medication or foods that were believed to ameliorate measles.
[8] Utagawa, Yoshimori. Ryuko Hashika Taisan No Zu, 1862, woodblock print, 38 x 26cm, National Library of Medicine. https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101392962-img: To translate the text on this print, I used the transcription from this Ukiyo-e database (https://www.dh-jac.net/db/nishikie/results-big.php?f1=778-C009&f11=1&enter=portal&lang=en) and translated the transcription with several online dictionaries and translation services (https://jisho.org/ and https://translate.google.com/). A Japanese-speaking friend, Ken Nguyen, helped me determine the most reasonable translations.
[9] Utagawa, Yoshimori. Ryuko Hashika Taisan No Zu: Tenmangusama is another name for the Shinto deity Sugaware no Michizane.
[10] Smits, Gregory. “Warding off Calamity in Japan: A Comparison of the 1855 Catfish Prints and the 1862 Measles Prints.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, no. 30 (January 1, 2009): 9–31.
[11] Smits, Gregory. “Warding off Calamity in Japan:” The Japanese word for measles (hashika) was a homonym for the word for wheat (hashika). Therefore, folk practice created the syncretic deity Master Wheat, borrowing from Shinto and Buddhist traditions, as a guardian against measles.
[12] Utagawa, Yoshimori. Ryuko Hashika Taisan No Zu.
[13] Kuriyama, Shigehisa. “The Imagination of Winds and the Development of the Chinese Conception of the Body.” In Body, Subject, and Power in China, edited by Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow, 23-41. University of Chicago Press, 1994; Kuchta, Kenny. “Traditional Japanese Kampo Medicine – History of Ideas and Practice; Part 1: From Ancient Shamanic Practice to the Medical Academies of Edo.” Traditional & Kampo Medicine 6, no. 2 (2019): 49–56. https://doi.org/10.1002/tkm2.1209: Ancient Chinese Medicine refers to Chinese medical traditions from the pre-Han period to the Mongol invasion.
[14] Kuriyama, Shigehisa. “Life and Excrement: The Reimagination of Flow in Edo Japan (1603-1868).” Accessed February 21, 2021. https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/asian-studies/fluid-matters: European ideas considered food generally as “excrement to-be” and thus a poison. However, unlike in this print, Europeans did not consider specific foods to be poisonous.
[15] Warren, Emily Rose. “Sick Days in the Konjaku Monogatari-Shū: Healing and Epidemics in Late Heian Japan.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2014. https://search.proquest.com/docview/2062859352?pq-origsite=primo: Sugaware no Michizane was a Heian-era scholar who was deified after his death.
[16] Suzuki, Akihito. “Measles and the Spatio-Temporal Structure of Modern Japan1.” The Economic History Review 62, no. 4 (2009): 828–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00449.x.
[17] Bennett, Victoria. “Medical, Anatomical, and Visual Transformations, 15:” Japanese people believed that diseases such as measles and cholera arrived from Europe but were forced to open their ports due to unequal treaties after the expedition of Commodore Matthew Perry in 1853. Bennet states, “through these disease prints, artists not only expressed themselves, but also reveal the fears of the nation.”
[18] Formanek, Susanne, and Sepp Linhart. “Introduction:” After the Meiji restoration in 1868, ukiyo-e printing was devalued, and prints were sold at cheap prices to Europeans and Americans. The sale of ukiyo-e prints continued after World War II during American occupation.
References:
Primary Sources:
Utagawa, Yoshimori, Chasing Measles Away, 1862. Woodblock print, 34.5 x 24.3cm, UC San Francisco, Special Collections.
Utagawa, Yoshimori. Ryuko Hashika Taisan No Zu, 1862, woodblock print, 38 x 26cm, National Library of Medicine. https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-101392962-img
Secondary Sources:
Bennett, Victoria. “Medical, Anatomical, and Visual Transformations in the Japanese Woodblock Prints of the Edo and Meiji Periods (1603 – 1912).” M.A., University of South Carolina, 2019. http://search.proquest.com/docview/2303308919/abstract/461F28D8691466FPQ/1.
Davis, Julie Nelson. “The Utagawa School.” Print Quarterly 25, no. 4 (2008): 449-456.
Formanek, Susanne, and Sepp Linhart. “Introduction.” In Written Texts–Visual Texts: Woodblock-Printed Media in Early Modern Japan, edited by Susanne Formanek and Sepp Linhart, 13. Hotei Academic European Studies on Japan ; v. 3. Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005
Kobayashi, Tadashi. Ukiyo-e: An Introduction to Japanese Woodblock Prints. Kodansha International, 1997.
Kuchta, Kenny. “Traditional Japanese Kampo Medicine – History of Ideas and Practice; Part 1: From Ancient Shamanic Practice to the Medical Academies of Edo.” Traditional & Kampo Medicine 6, no. 2 (2019): 49–56. https://doi.org/10.1002/tkm2.1209: Ancient Chinese Medicine refers to Chinese medical traditions from the pre-Han period to Mongol invasion.
Kuriyama, Shigehisa. “Life and Excrement: The Reimagination of Flow in Edo Japan (1603-1868).” Accessed February 21, 2021. https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/asian-studies/fluid-matters
Kuriyama, Shigehisa. “The Imagination of Winds and the Development of the Chinese Conception of the Body.” In Body, Subject, and Power in China, edited by Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow, 23-41. University of Chicago Press, 1994.
Rotermund, Hartmurt O. “Illness-Illustrated. Socio-historical Dimensions of Late Edo Measles Pictures (Hashika-e).” In Written Texts–Visual Texts: Woodblock-Printed Media in Early Modern Japan, edited by Susanne Formanek and Sepp Linhart, 251-282. Hotei Academic European Studies on Japan ; v. 3. Amsterdam: Hotei, 2005.
Smits, Gregory. “Warding off Calamity in Japan: A Comparison of the 1855 Catfish Prints and the 1862 Measles Prints.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, no. 30 (January 1, 2009): 9–31.
Suzuki, Akihito. “Measles and the Spatio-Temporal Structure of Modern Japan1.” The Economic History Review 62, no. 4 (2009): 828–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0289.2009.00449.x
Warren, Emily Rose. “Sick Days in the Konjaku Monogatari-Shū: Healing and Epidemics in Late Heian Japan.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2014.