Ainu family with baby bear and dog

Tags

ainu, ainu dogs, bear meat, hokkaido inu, hokkaido ken, japan, japanese art, ritual sacrifice

Currently on display at the East Asian library on my campus:

Illustrated by Utagawa Gyokuransai

Sorry about the strange angle. Since the book was displayed under glass, I was trying to get it without glare. The red spot is a reflection of the emergency exit light, overhead.

The display placard reads:

Mamiya Rinzo 間宮林蔵, Kita Ezo zusetsu　北蝦夷図説, Ill. Utagawa Gyokuransai (Sadahide)　橋本玉蘭齋 （貞秀）.
Edo: Harimaya Katsugoro, 1855.

The Ainu and other tribes of northeastern Asia revered the bear as a deity or divine messenger. In a common ritual sequence, the bear, obtained as a cub, was shown all the care a human baby might receive — until it grew too large. Then sacrifice and ritual consumption took place. Modern anthropologists characterize the rite as an opportunity to host a divinity, partake of its strength and virtue, and, through death, release its soul to return to its proper home.

Recommended reference:

Walker, Brett L. The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion,1590-1800. Berkeley: University of California, 2006.

Also, a tangentially related link:
“LAND GRAB!!! Plots of land in the Hokkaido countryside from just one Yen per square meter”

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PRINT: Piebald street dogs of Tokugawa Japan

Tags

archery, edo period, fuzoku gaho, japanese art, japanese cats, japanese chin, japanese dogs, ooku, piebald dogs, stray dogs, street dogs, tokugawa japan

As much as piebalds and pintos are reviled in the various Nihon ken breed standards, this coat pattern has been around for quite some time as a visibly marked, figurated (not necessarily figurative) type of dog within Japanese society — that is, a dog of a fixed, expected form. Breed purity mattered naught at the time that the pictures below were sketched in the late 19th century, featuring life during Tokugawa Japan. Rather, the piebald dog appears to be an index of lower class society in Japanese popular imagination.

Click any of the pictures below to enlarge. Unfortunately, I suck at reading brush script, so I couldn’t make out the artists on most of these. If anyone has more information, feel free to drop a comment.

Artist unknown, Fuzoku Gaho no. 62 (10 December 1893), p. 10

This first spread is a pretty good example of how the piebald dog gets categorized alongside other denizens of the streets — including the street walker (夜鷹, upper right-hand corner), the racketeer (ごろつき), blind masseuse (按摩, enjoying a bowl of noodles top and center), and various snack and meal vendors catering to those who live on the go and eat at odd hours. The piebald dog here accompanies a hunch-backed oden seller (おでんや), weary and frail as if crushed by a lifetime spent beneath his yoke. I’d like to think his dog not only accompanies him, but protects him from the dangers that apparently lurk everywhere for a man who earns his living amongst miscreants.

Artist unknown, Fuzoku Gaho no. 2 (10 March 1889), p. 10

This second downcast dog with angular hips and a desperate countenance, on the other hand, appears bereft of human companionship. He lingers outside of a fox shrine during the Inari matsuri, looking forlorn and conspicuously isolated in the foreground against the bubble-headed children and festival hubbub.

Artist unknown, Fuzoku gaho no. 67 (25 February 1894), p. 10

That exact same dog, almost as if cut-and-pasted (or perhaps sketched by the same artist), shows up in several other street scenes of Tokugawa era life. I didn’t include every replication… Similarly scrawny dogs are often inserted into busy street tableaux and placed on the outskirts of temple scenes, as if to balance out the composition, providing another set of eyes to gaze and reflect upon the scene.

Artist unknown, Fuzoku Gaho no. 57 (10 August 1893), p. 24

Even with eyes closed, the dog can provide another perspective and additional “color” to a scene. I’m not entirely sure how to regard this archery hall staffed by some rather suspicious women in loose-fitting clothing, milling about this riverside rest stop. However, the mere presence of the sleepy mutt, curled up at the corner of the building, invites interpretation and signals that this is not what you might think of as an elite kyudo dojo.

UTAGAWA Kuniyoshi 歌川国芳, Fuzoku Gaku no. 69 (10 March 1894), p. 17

But indeed, not every piebald or spotted dog can or should be read the same way. Associated with people in the street, the piebald dog seems more frequently to indicate lower class, unstable, or itinerant figures, as in the case of this monk (or a female nun?) in this two-paneled spread on “The Vicissitudes of Middle-Aged Ladies in the Tokugawa Ooku,” the inner chambers of the Tokugawa shogunate where all the palace ladies and concubines resided. I don’t know if this panel is referring to some specific episode of intrigue. My interpretation of this scene is influenced by stories of corrupt Chinese monks who exploited their access to women’s quarters to curry favors with the ruling elite. Thus, religious monkhood should never be taken as merely a position of transcendent asceticism, but rather, a kind of political power with the potential for both sageliness and hypocrisy. Perhaps the dog also indicates that two-facedness in this context?

At any rate, I’m intrigued by the pairing of the monk’s mutt with the woman’s toy dog, on the right. Or is it a cat? Whether piebald Chin or feline (I’m thinking the latter), he clearly occupies a different symbolic status as he helps disrobe his mistress in this titillating boudoir scene.

What impresses me from this small sample is that the piebald street dog appears to have just as much claim to Japanese “tradition” as the elite pedigrees of Nihon ken “proper”. It’s a wrench to throw into the standard breed histories, anyway. No matter what the breed standards say or how THE six native Nihon ken would become enshrined as exclusive national treasures in the 20th century, there were always other types of Japanese dogs at the margins of society who manage to slip through the cracks by being difficult to classify.

Print: Old-style Japanese falconry vs. new-style rifle hunting (1889)

Tags

falconry, hunting, hunting dogs, japanese art, pointers, sports hunters

The back page of every issue of Fūzoku gahō 風俗画報, a Tokyo-based illustrated magazine of Japanese life and customs, featured a pairing of some cultural practice “before” and “now.” Several of these layouts included dogs, and I’ll be blogging them as I get a chance to raid the archives.

Each spread was presented with inscriptions from the magazine’s editors, calligraphers, and other journalists. My ability to decipher brush script isn’t great, so I’m not going to comment on the text (though sadly, that means I will fail to credit the illustrator[s] until I get a chance to follow up). As my greater interest is in documentary images, I focus on the visuals for now.

These layouts remind me of the constructed boundaries of tradition, and how this category is always formed in dialectical opposition to an emergent sense of the modern. Neither should ever be treated as stable categories. Both words frequently make me twitchy when uncritically applied to monstrous, complicated bodies of knowledge and experience. In my field, there is often much at stake depending on who (or what) gets to act in the name of preserving “tradition,” and who gets to participate in the making of “modernity.” Therefore, I am seldom inclined to treat these words as self-evident descriptors of historical truth. It behooves us to be much more precise about what we mean whenever we use these terms, or at least double back on our own assumptions and ask just where we’re coming from when we label something as traditional or modern.

… End digression. Here’s a pretty picture (click for enlarged view):

Artist unknown (for now), Fuzoku Gaho no. 9 (September, 1889) p. 24

Japanese falconry (takagari 鷹狩) is contrasted against rifle hunting (jūryō 銃猟) as elite sports. While it is the hawk that bears categorical equivalence to the gun here, I can’t help but notice the proportional weight given to the dog in this layout. I especially like the way the hunter is caught with his hand mid-stroke on the back of the dog’s neck. Perhaps the samurai is expressing his appreciation for his animal companion in his own, dispassionate way.

So who do you suppose bagged the dead duck between them?

Print: Ainu life with dogs from Fūzoku gahō illustrated magazine (1889)

Tags

ainu dogs, ethnography, fuzoku gaho, hokkaido ken, indigenous dogs, japanese art, japanese dogs

Here’s an ethnographic sketch from Fūzoku gahō 風俗画報, a Tokyo-based illustrated magazine of Japanese life and customs. I don’t know why the preview pic looks so hideous. You have to click on it to see a clear view of Ainu domestic life, complete with dogs and puppies.

Artist unknown, Fuzoku Gaho no. 10 (November 10, 1889) p. 13.

I love how the adult dog on the left is absorbed into the background, incorporated as a semi-permanent fixture of the scene. The dogs are small figures, but not peripheral or extraneous. As alien and strange as mainstream Japanese journalists represented the Ainu to be, I do appreciate the close proximity they kept to their dogs. Ainu dogs may not have been allowed inside, but it seems inside/outside mattered far less than the distinction between homefront, hunting grounds, and other spaces of conquest…

Western dog netsuke

Tags

deerhound, japanese art, netsuke, sighthounds, wolfhound

Netsuke: takumi and share 根付：たくみとしゃれ, Ed. ARAKAWA Hirokazu 荒川浩和 (Kyoto: Tankyōsha 淡交社, 1995) p. 91

Of interest to this blog is the netsuke (Japanese ornamental toggle) and sagemono (dangling box) in the upper left-hand corner. Embossed in gold on the abalone-shaped box is a “Western dog” 洋犬 floating amidst decorative cherry blossoms, with a matching toggle carved out of ivory featuring a dog in a stylized “foo dog” or guardian lion stance. Date and artist unknown.

I’m intrigued by the sighthoundly figure of the dog, more clearly seen on the box than the carving. With its wired fur, would this perhaps represent a Wolfhound or a Deerhound? And who is trying to draw attention to the foreignness of the dog — the now-anonymous artist, or the cataloguer who labeled and titled this museum piece after the fact?

I remember a couple similar pieces from my visit to the Asian Art Museum. It seems that the curious, whimsical association between canines and humans, or at least foreigners and their dogs, was enough to inspire a few pieces. I am struck by the jovial faces of these two figures below.

People who know Nihon ken would be hard-pressed to call something like this long-bodied beast an indigenous Japanese breed.

I suppose it’s more likely that this artist was also trying to represent a “Western” dog, rather than an endearing local mongrel that happened to have dropped ears. But I think it’s just as likely that this was a simple, idealized image that drew on everything that the artist knew about dogs, without necessarily corresponding to any concrete model or even personal experience. I almost want to read these objects as some kind of inverted Japonisme, where the foreign is appropriated and rendered into a beautiful object for domestic consumption, blurring any strict distinction between East and West. Which is not to say that such notions don’t matter, but that, perhaps in certain private, personalized realms, they mattered less than our labels presume.

Tiger-dog-reptile-alien

Tags

高木春山, Honzō zusetsu, japanese art, japanese dogs, Takagi Shunzan, 本草図説

Ill. Takagi Shunzan 高木春山, from the Honzō zusetsu 本草図説

I love this “dog,” if indeed that’s what it is… I love the idea of this creature, a barely mammalian, tiger-striped, sighthound-shaped hybrid that is as wild as its coat pattern and alien face. However, I need to do a little more research to figure out if this illustration was supposed to document a real canid that existed around the time of its artist, TAKAGI Shunzan 高木春山 (b. ? ~ d. 1852), or if was a record of his imagination.

The drawing originally came from a 195 volume encyclopedia of flora and fauna, the Honzō zusetsu 本草図説. I scanned this particular illustration from The Graphics of Japanese Dog [Nihon no inu 日本の犬], ed. TAKAOKA Kazuya 高岡一弥 with photographs by KURU Sachiko 久留幸子 (Tokyo: Pie Books, 2005).

Dog Night with NYMPH

Tags

akita, art, berkeley art museum, dog of juniper, japanese art, nymph, the social registry

Photos taken 8 October 2010

On a whim, and because I was intrigued by the description in the Berkeley Art Museum events program, I went to check out NYMPH on Friday night:

Japan’s Edo Period had a strict law on the books: be nice to dogs and other animals, or else! Brooklyn-based psychedelic-shred/avant-garde ensemble NYMPH bares its teeth for an evening of new music with a decidedly tribal feel. Artist and intergalactic traveler Daniel Jay projects visuals celebrating our four-legged friends, and L.A.-based artist Sara Magenheimer contributes the second of four video loops created for this L@TE series. Dog Night with NYMPH is programmed in conjunction with the exhibition Flowers of the Four Seasons.

With nary an introduction, the four-piece took the stage and flooded the gallery with copious washes of sound. The blurb above is pretty apt; comparisons to other Japanese bands such as OOIOO, the Boredoms, Boris, and Acid Mothers Temple might also be appropriate, though I sense that the band is deliberately trying to avoid such obvious links. NYMPH’s sound reaches its expressive peaks between guitarist Matty McDermott’s hypnotic, heavily processed riffs, and singer-shaman Eri Shoji’s primal shrieks.

The set consisted of long, tranced out pieces culled from the group’s debut full-length, out now on CD at The Social Registry. A limited pressing double-disc vinyl set from their personal label the Dog of Juniper is also available directly from the band via their Myspace page. You can also sample their music at either of these linked sites.

It’s certainly not the most “accessible” music, but that’s exactly why I appreciated their set. Just as our experiences with our canine counterparts aren’t always easy and gentle (especially not with Shiba inu!), neither was this sonic tribute to the Inu in us.

However, I wished for a little more from the visual counterpart to the night’s performance; unfortunately, the images were rather static and synthetic, and thus a poor complement to the audio. Frankly, the projections fell far short of capturing the full range of either NYMPH’s sound or the essence of dogs. There was very little to tie this all together with either the program description or the Japanese art collection currently on display (which is fantastic, by the way, despite the lack of canine representation, though it includes some bold paintings and large, multi-panel screens that are rarely presented in such a cohesive collection outside of Japan).

Ultimately, that’s one of the difficulties of working with abstractions. Yet, abstraction is sometimes powerful in the way it exposes the limitations of its medium. At best, I find that abstract art is less about content or coherent themes, but how a work inspires its audience to imagine completely different perceptual planes altogether.

Dogs of the Asian Art Museum

Tags

art, asian art, asian art museum, chinese art, chinese dogs, indian art, indian dogs, japanese art, japanese dogs, netsuke

I find very few ruminations on the canine-human bond in Asian literature, specifically Chinese literature, so I’m always looking for traces of it elsewhere. Some canine representations are to be found at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, where I spent the afternoon.

The Hindu deity Shiva in the fierce form of Bhairava
approx. 1300-1500
“Here, [Shiva] is shown with traditional characteristics of ferocious beings… He is accompanied by a dog, a creature with fearsome associations in India because it scavenges in cremation grounds.”

Chinese dogs, above
Left: Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE)
Right: Eastern Han (25 – 220 CE)

Sure we see dogs represented as familiars of deities and in totemic or decorative form. But where’s the dog’s place within a distinctly human world, the world of the artisan? Some evidence to be found here, in this extremely busy carving of fishermen’s daily lives:

(Sorry, period and other attributes missing from my notes. Hopefully I can fill them in later.) If you look carefully, you’ll see a dog on a leash (though I’m not sure why the dog’s caught between two figures waving sticks in the upper right), and a dog apparently mooching for a bite of a fisherwoman’s fresh catch (lower left). I didn’t really see individual figures depicting humans and canines until I got to the Japanese netsuke collection.

I’m no art historian. And it almost seems to me as if representations of canines are seldom regarded as “high art” anyway, given how close we presume these creatures to be to our mundane, workaday life. But I suppose this is all the more reason why I am intrigued by any attempts to materialize and “museumify” this relationship which begins with something so close and intimate, yet ultimately transcends space, time, and cultures.