What I mentioned earlier about social and historical context is important right here.
This portrait was made,
composed, a year after a very important event which rocked the Japanese polity,
especially leaders in this time.
This is called the Morrison incident which occurred in 1837,
a year before this painting was done.
An American merchant ship,
which was called the Morrison,
traveling from Macau and several other places in Asia had
picked up seven castaways who were Japanese.
And as was often the case in the Pacific Rim,
or in other parts of the world at this time,
they set out to repatriate these seven castaways.
They also hoped that they would be able to refuel,
to replenish their timber and their water in
order to continue with their journey back to the continent.
Also, it's thought that the merchants,
the American merchants who were on board,
hoped also to convince, persuade,
by their act of noble kindness,
to allow the bakufu, or to convince the bakufu
to open up Edo and the other ports to free trade at the time.
Of course, Japan was a closed society, a secluded nation,
and rejected any approaches from
the European or American powers at this time to open up to trade.
What happened is, during this time from the beginning of the 19th century,
the Japanese bakufu government published
edicts forbidding foreign ships to enter into Japanese ports.
Which means that any foreign ship trying to enter
any of the ports other than Nagasaki - which allowed
a certain amount of Dutch ships in -
any of the other ports that witnessed ships trying to come in,
the local officials were encouraged to
shell and to physically, militarily, repel the ships that were coming in.
The Morrison, as it tried to approach the shore of Kagoshima in the southwest of Japan,
and also the shore,
one of the ports near Edo,
was bombarded by the Japanese forces.
The ship wasn't damaged. No one was injured.
But they left with the stowaways, the Japanese nationals,
on board and were forced to retreat onto the open ocean.
This is something that was not published broadly in Japan at the time.
There was a great deal of rumors about what actually had happened.
But the ruling class, the Samurai class,
many of the young intellectuals especially,
were extremely interested in this event,
especially young men who were like
Watanabe Kazan were involved in foreign learning, Western learning.
What happened was that Kazan,
together with his collaborators who were studying Western learning,
found out about, knew about,
the Morrison event and were extremely worried because they realized that this would
give an excuse to the Western military powers to,
perhaps, invade Japan, because the Japanese had not
shown the proper civilized attitude and did not follow
universal maritime law allowing ships to enter port
and be refueled, and also to return to repatriate the men and women onboard.
So, they realized that the sort of bombarding and rejection
of the American merchant ship could lead to military action against Japan itself.
So they, Watanabe Kazan among others,
wrote these hand script manifestos against the bakufu policy.
This was discovered in 1839.
The fact that he'd written this was found out.
Watanabe Kazan was arrested, interrogated, released.
But then, in 1841,
fearing that the actions that he'd taken would reflect poorly and put into danger
his own Lord in the domain that he was from, committed suicide,
ritual seppuku, sword, suicide by sword in 1841.
So, in order to sort out the timeline and see how these things actually progressed,
we have the Morrison event occurring at 1837,
Watanabe Kazan painting this portrait of his geisha girlfriend in 1838, right as he is
at the same time,
composing these manifestos against the bakufu's treatment,
reaction to the Western forces.
And then we have him arrested in 1839.
This leads to his suicide in 1841.
Looking again, once again,
at the words that he uses in his text, which nominally,
at least, seemed to be referring just to this young woman,
we see him describing what it means to be human,
what the conditions are to be described as someone who's human.
Right here once again,
"No man or woman born into this world without the capacity
to feel a desire to eat or drink."
How important it is to love the very,
very basic sort of human instincts.
These instincts, understanding them,
using them as a tool to survive and to communicate
within society is not simply essential to the individual living,
but is also, as he describes here,
the "universal way of the world."
And as I said, the term that he uses tenka, or tenka no kōdō, is a
very, very political term.
It means the universal world,
which also is used in a political sense to describe proper politics or polity,
a righteous successful way to govern the nation itself.
So, I think that we can read this passage and also the
portrait that he's made of this geisha as a sort of allegory.
A presentation of what he feels towards a one particular woman in his life,
but also how he recognizes that instinct,
that desire to bond with another human being as being
the common sort of bond that we have as humans in humanity.
Beyond that, he's undoubtedly thinking about the universal law of the sea,
how European nations might conceive of Japan as being barbarian,
not allowing them to come in to eat and to drink,
to return to them their countrymen.
I think that there's a sort of parallel here between what he's trying to say in
his manifestos and argue against the bakufu policy
with what he's positively trying to describe here and to relate as
a sort of veiled message perhaps an allegory to his disciple Kenzai.
This is an idea that I've had.
I want to ask you to think about it and perhaps to think about other instances,
like allegories or metaphors,
that are used in Japanese art or in other art,
literary or visual, from all over the world,
in different parts of the world,
in different ages that are used to perhaps cover or to convey another message,
a veiled message beyond what's actually on the paper or on the canvas.
This was done often in Japan.
And we can see, we might be able to think of these portraits,
one portrait here of a beautiful woman being more than a recapturing of
her physical shape and composure but also trying to convey something
about what the painter himself hoped
for and was anxious about the state of the country itself.
Robert CampbellEmeritus Professor, The University of Tokyo
