Jakuchu Gajo,  a series of prints by Ito Jakuchu, was bound in a foldable casing protecting two volumes of screen prints depicting nature scenes like flowers, leaves, and small animals and insects.  My initial impressions of it were that it has a rustic and fragile quality, with some yellowing on its pages, but the prints inside were kept pristine. The book is cleanly bound in alternating folds (called accordion folds), with a handmade print on every page. The volume caught my eye because it did not have any text or decoration on the outside, so it made me curious to know what was inside the cover. It has two volumes, rather than one, divided evenly. The content of each is not drastically different between one volume or the other. Another characteristic that really drew the eye was the way the book was closed with little hooks that stuck into a small strip to secure it (called a chitsu clasped case). As a Chinese American, I’ve seen many containers and books bound this way from my parents and when I was younger, so the nostalgic and familiar binding drew me towards opening the old book. In order to handle the book, I had to slowly peel open the bindings because it was close to bending over the spine and breaking. It was about 14 inches in height and 7 or 8 inches in width, with thick, coarse paper. The woven covers had stamps and labels with older Japanese or Chinese pictographs that were worn and greyed from time. It was incredibly reminiscent of old movies I used to watch as a child with my grandparents, with historical Chinese village people were carrying around bound books similar to this one. Even though it is Japanese in origin, the influences of Chinese culture on Jakuchu was clear before the book was even opened.

The experience of this book was meticulous and careful one because every fine detail of the imprints could be seen if you examined each print. Even the stamps on the front and the back had a dainty, fragile quality to them. The images in the book were all depictions of nature scenes and carefully designed creatures. The positive and negative space in the designs were inverted, having the subjects be highlighted in the paper color and the background be grainy greys. In this way, the prints emphasize the ethereal and elegant qualities of nature that go amiss if they aren’t highlighted in the cleaner, pure colors (see below).

 

In this particular example, the spiderweb on the page wouldn’t be as fine if the small traces of white were not used to accent it. The pure quality of nature is a large theme in these prints. The typography and layout of the book is not anything special. The prints are laid evenly from the margins on all sides and there are no creative arrangements of images either. What makes Jakuchu Gajo so interesting, though, are the images itself and the textural quality of them. If you ran your finger along the images, you could feel millions of small imprints and valleys that make the depictions of nature look deeper despite that there are no traces of three dimensional depth like shadows or darker lines that indicate it.

The cover and the way the book is bound also enforces the interest of the book by creating a variety in images to look at because it is an unconventional way to “read” a book by flipping its pages in an accordion style, and unraveling it out to see all of its contents. The fact that the cover that protects the volumes is a deeper green color intrigued me as if the blankness of it enveloped something more mysterious within the pages. An attractive book does not have to be something flashy because an intriguing cover with nothing on it can the viewer/reader guessing and prompts them to open it to discover what is inside. Designing a cover in this way and using the accordion folding technique to allow the reader to physically unfold the images within the book is an effective design choice because it gives the viewer a full experience of “exploring nature” and its contents, rather than just viewing images on a page in a removed perspective.

 

 

 

The significance of this book is that it was one of the books that was able to make it out into western civilization during the Edo period when Japan was closed off to every country but China in an attempt to protect eastern culture and values (Reed 1). In the description that came with the book, it describes it as “a rare book that uses the ishizuri block print process where the print effect is created by wetting paper and pressing it into an engraving block, then inking the raised portions and press it against another sheet of paper thus making the background black and the image white.” This rare printing style makes it even more rare in that very few books were ever printed using this method and even if there were more copies, it would be incredibly difficult to obtain it due to its price and uniqueness. This book is actually a reprint of the ones made when Ito Jakuchu was alive, which could have been anytime from 1716-1800. Since Japan still had a Chinese trade relationship during the time these volumes were printed, it could explain the Chinese stamping on the inside of the pages (see below).

Ito Jakuchu was a renowned painter who often painted scrolls that had Chinese paintings styles such as the Ming and Yuan styles (“Sanjin KEIGETSU” 1). He was known for his realism and decorative painting style that had extremely intricate details. In early life, Ito studied Kano style paintings, which had a heavy emphasis on the Zen philosophy, with strong brushwork and little use for colored inks (Department of Asian Art). The prints in Jakuchu Gajo are prime examples of Ito’s influential style with extreme realism and the use of negative and positive space. The depiction of insects and animals are reminiscent of his art style, for he was well known for drawing flowers, plants, insects, fish and fowl (The Editors). During the mid-Tokugawa period when Jakuchu was the most active, the cultural and artistic realm in Nagasaki was flourishing due to Dutch and Chinese traders (Reed 1). The turn from traditional, idealistic Japanese paintings to heavily influenced Chinese Zen styles was underway, and Ito Jakuchu was a part of the Chinese influenced painting revolution. This book specifically showed the styles from idealistic depictions of nature to showing the “defects” of nature, with holes, small tears, and deformities in nature that are purposefully placed as decorative artistic elements. Jakuchu Gajo, in its rarity, has shown the purity and imperfections of nature and exemplifies in depicting the changing influences of paintings in Nagasaki during the artistic flourish when Japan was cut off from the world.

 

Sources:

Reed, Edward J. “The Tokugawa Period (1603—1868).” Japan: Its History, Traditions, and Religions, Dec. 2015, pp. 175–236., doi:10.1017/cbo9781139178662.017.

 

“Sanjin KEIGETSU  /Atsushi ITO.” Scroll Artists, Tokonomascroll.scom, www.bonsaiinformation.com/artistspage.html.

 

Department of Asian Art. “The Kano School of Painting.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/kano/hd_kano.htm (October 2003)

 

The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Itō Jakuchū.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 5 Dec. 2016, www.britannica.com/biography/Ito-Jakuchu.