Magazine or book frontispiece (kuchi-e - 口絵) (genre 1890 – 1914)

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Biography:

Kuchi-e are woodblock-printed frontispiece illustrations produced for publication in Japanese novels and literary magazines at the turn-of-the-century. Many of the leading woodblock artists of the Meiji Period worked in this genre.

The primary subject matter of kuchi-e are bijin - "beautiful women". Kuchi-e reflect the romantic, idealised depiction of women that was evident throughout the history of Ukiyo-e, but the late-Meiji Period witnessed the development of a western influenced and more realistic style of graphic presentation.

Kuchi-eare approximately 22 x 29 cm in size and typically have two fold marks resulting from the manner in which they were inserted in publications. Many kuchi-e display deluxe printing techniques, including blind printing, the use of powdered metals and burnishing. These deluxe printings may have been, in part, a reaction against the newly-introduced photographic and lithographic printing processes which threatened the popularity of the traditional woodblock print.

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Not all Japanese writers were keen on using kuchi-e

Pedro Bassoe in his 2018 doctoral thesis from the University of California at Berkeley wrote in footnote 67 on pages 18-19: "Despite his professed love for the illustrated fiction of the Edo period, Kafū endeavored to keep his fiction illustration-free for much of his career. In 1909, he wrote an essay on the use of frontispieces (kuchi-e) in modern Japanese literature, in which he denounced the tendency for modern artists to ignore the wishes of the author and to illustrate in whatever manner they chose. He derided the prominence of illustration in modern fiction as a reality driven purely by financial interests and vowed to discontinue the inclusion of frontispieces in his work, at least until he was able to find an artist who understood his vision for the illustration of his texts. Kafū finally found a suitable match in artist Kimura Sōhachi (1893-1958), an illustrator who crafted detailed sketches for Kafū’s most critically lauded novel, A Strange Tale from East of the River (Bokutō kidan, 1937), in which he depicted the story’s setting in the backstreets of east Tokyo. Nagai Kafū, Kafū zenshū (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1992), 6:390-391."

Ozaki Kōyō (1868-1903) "...who wrote passionately against the use of illustration in modern fiction, even as he continued to experiment with the use of images in his own work. As head of the Ken’yūsha literary coterie, Kōyō secured a partnership with Hakubunkan, a publisher of illustrated books and magazines, as well as the Yomiuri shinbun, the leading newspaper of the time. While such partnerships originally proved to be a boon for his literary career, Kōyō eventually expressed dismay at his inability to control the visual expression of his own writings, whose illustrations were shaped by the demands of publishers and readers rather than by his own wishes. He famously published the sashi-e muyōron (argument against the use of illustration) in the pages of the Yomiuri shinbun, before quitting the paper in protest over their insistence that he include illustrations in his work. Even as he battled with publishers over the use of pictures in his fiction, however, Kōyō continued to design his own draft images and to collaborate closely with artists in the production of illustrations for his texts. His involvement in illustration ultimately influenced the direction of his writing, as he explored the limits of verbal and visual perception as a core theme of his fiction." (Ibid., p. 21)

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