Her Haughtynesses Decree

Showing posts with label Lesbian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lesbian. Show all posts

Sunday, December 25, 2022

西施 | Xi Shi | 505-473 BCE | Bijin #17

Xi Shi (c.505 - 473 BCE | Xi of the West) is one of the 4 great Ancient Chinese Beauties.[1][2] These 4 women are known today more by their legendary status and reflect a great deal of Beauty Standards from the era they existed in. Each began their stories in the courts of noblemen, although Xi Shi covers how well we can see the development from background to foreground womens role became as beauties between the Han and Tang Dynasties (220 BCE - 907 CE). Xi reflects how Meiren went from literal tradable merchandise, to the Drunken Lotus type (that is a heavenly level of beauty who Tang era women could recognise in their revelry) who sat around in the Palace Poetry of Tang court poets reclining, drinking and fanning themselves thinking of their Handsome lovers back home in total luxury. Xi's story reflects this shift in the beauty standard which saw men as sole arbitrater to female enfranchisement during the Tang Dynasty in the epochs literature.

Modern representation of Xi (c1700) He Dazi | 赫達資

Xi in Love

During this time, Xi's King, the Lord of Yue had been defeated by his neighbours, the King of Wu. So naturally, the advisor to the King of Yue suggested that they capture young women to turn into spies of the bedchamber who would be sent to spy on the King of Wu.

Xi story essentially follows this line of bizarre logic as beginning her tale as a lowly servant girl who is happened upon by roaming court officials in Southern coastal China. Roving court official Fan Li takes a liking to her after seeing nature stop in its tracks and decided she would make an excellent sex spy and was trained for 3 years in the art of blowdarts and sent away by 490 BCE.[8][14] During this time, Xi was sent as part of a 'trade convoy' with Jade, Horses and Exotic Food to the King of Wu.

Apparently that plan worked, because the King of Wu starts ignoring state affairs to just stare at Xi. He killed his advisors and built a pleasure palace.[8] The Pleasure palace consisted of many women, who slept surrounded by many treasures and rose at the moon, drew back their pearl blinds and moon gazed. They would paint their faces surrounded by canopies (like a fly screen my grandfather used to use in the summer) of pearls, like phoenixes flapping around in light autumn mists.[14]

Everything was great until the Yue kingdom attacked once again, (fifth times the charm eh?) to find these two sitting underneath bamboo trees, as radiant as goddesses (they also sent a Ms.Deng). Xi manages to return to Yue. When she returns, she is said to fall in love with Minister Fan Li, and like the great natural  beauty she is, the pair go by boat never to be seen again, at night![8] 

Xi's way with Mei

The stories originate from the writings of Zhuang ( 369 - 286 BCE), before the first time China began burning books which led to the first Chinese Dynasty, the Ch'ing (221 BCE - 226 CE).[3][4] During these times, people like Zhuang were officially court appointed, the Heimin were spoken for under the 'Minor Talks' school of thought.[5] Zhuang is only handed down to us as a scholarly poet who wrote of the 'great beauties' of the past who were bewitching they scared nature.[6] 

The beautiful Xishi, troubled with heartburn, frowned at her neighbors. An ugly woman of the neighborhood, seeing that Xishi was beautiful, went home and likewise pounded her breast and frowned at her neighbors. But at the sight of her, the rich men of the neighborhood shut tight their gates and would not venture out, while the poor men grabbed their wives and children by the hand and scampered off. The woman understood that someone frowning could be beautiful, but she did not understand where the beauty of the frown came from.[7]

Xi was said to be a true beauty, one of nature in this sense and upheld the Beauty standard of the time, which was to be slender with long black hair. Zhuangzi and subsequent writers after him when contemplating Mei ( 美 | Beauty ) in this way rejected therefore fake/false beauty and accepted there is a spectrum of natural beauties. It was these natural beauties who represented the genuine which were to be revered as Damei ( ?? | Great Beauty ) which was held by the aesthetic and inner beauty of anyone, but which was not made but only produced naturally.[7] This was a reflection of Zhuang's following of the Dao ( | Way );

For this reason, whether you point to a little stalk or a great pillar, a leper or the beautiful Xishi, things ribald and shady, or things grotesque and strange, the dao makes them all into one. Their dividedness is their completeness; their completeness is their impairment. [...] Only the man of far-reaching vision knows how to make them into one. So he has no use [for categories] but relegates all to the constant. The constant is the useful; the useful is the passable; the passable is the successful; and with success, all is accomplished. He relies on this alone, relies on it and does not know he is doing so. This is called the dao.[7]

Zhuang also warned against the attainment and influence of beauty. Instead Zhuang encouraged us not to want for aesthetic or beautiful perfection, but to instead understand our own flaws and to understand that these give us their own unique beauty or advantages.[7] In the sense that Xi however started off life as a relative pauper however, Zhuang was also teaching scholars of the time the idea that you can be both beautiful and poor as well, that beauty arises in all things, types and variants even if we cannot imagine it to be do so. It is in following truthful openness to beauty, that Damei arises.

Palace Poetry

In following the great Tang tradition, Palace Poetry, that is poetry about beautiful women locked in the Harem wing of Imperial Kings and Courtiers Palace Mansions also conferred a place on Xi Shi. Wang Mei (699-759) for example wrote of how Xi wore Makeup, Silk clothes and of other women imitating her eyebrows.[9] Li Bai ( 701-762 CE) wrote:

Xi-Shi, a girl spotted on a stream in Yüeh,
Was born of parents from Chu-lo Hill.
Her beauty overshadowed women past and present,
And her lovely face put lotus flowers to shame.
She washed yarn, played with the green water,
And spent her leisure with the clear ripples.
Indeed her white teeth rarely opened to speak,
And her thoughts tarried in the blue sky.
Exalted by Kou-chien, who was looking for a supreme beauty,
She entered the Kingdom of Wu,
Where she was raised above others in the Kuan-wa Palace.
Distant and elusive she is nowhere to be found:
The moment Fu Chai’s Kingdom was destroyed, She disappeared, and, in the ages that followed, was seen no more.[10]

Xi Shi here was compared to the Lotus Flower, perhaps a reference to that saucy new religion Buddhism to refer to ephemeral beauty, an idea Japanese people later developed as Mono no Aware ( Beauty of Transience ). She also is considered to have white teeth even though she is low in court rank, another confusing double bind. Bai then writes:

The time when the crows are roosting on the terrace of Ku-su, is when, in the Wu king’s palace, Xi Shi is growing drunk.

The songs of Wu and dances of Ch’u—their pleasures had not reached its height, As the green hills were about to swallow a half side of the sun.

From waterclock more and more drips away, from the basin of gold with its silver arrow, And they rise and they watch the autumn moon sink down in the river’s waves,

As in the east the sun grows higher, what shall their joy be then?[10]

In this poem, Bai is alluding under the setting sun that the Wu kingdom is collapsing, (mentioning the negative imagery of crows also). The falling autumn moon being the most exciting motif, as it alludes to the feelings of our wonderful heroine in being unable to return to Yue to be with Lan Fi. It is this sense that we can become excited about Palace poetry and palace beauties as they offer the first classical instances of offering agency for beauties, partiularly women. Xi Shi is not meant to be admired for her aesthetical beauty, even though she has it, but instead she is to admired for her personal characteristics. 

The moon as a motif, shows how Ying and Yang were presented by some Confucian scholars, with Sun being the male, Lunar motifs as female, complementing one another. Palace poetry though centers women as the mainstay of the narrative, that Xi becomes a protagonist all listeners should heed the advice of in following their discipline. In this sense, the Yang (Sun) is dying as it is unbeautiful, intolerant. The Moon rather is rising as Xi's victory will do. It is here that we see that this is not The kings world, but Xi's world. She is the agent of her own destiny, the moral compass of the poem.

Other moral truths coming from the ephemeral beauty of Xi expound that to hold this fairy-like, nymph or heavenly beauty is only something that one can have from birth. Bai writes:

Summer

On the Mirror Lake three hundred li around

Gaily the lotus lilies bloom.

She gathers them—Queen Xi-Shi, in Maytime!

A multitude jostles on the back, watching.

Her boat turns back without watching the moonrise,

And glides away to the house of the amorous Yueh king.[10]

Bai's use of the idea of Summer delivers the Yang aspect of Xi's beauty. It is said that Yang represents 'masculinity' which tells us a lot about why Palace poetry is quite so Palace-poetry in the first place. Using the motif of Summer, Xi becomes active agent who tips the natural balance back to its correct state, that is returning back to a domesticity of society which sees Kings no longer ruling as tyrants. Jealousy and imitation of Xi's power (her eyebrows, gestures and personality) are shown to be false pretenses against Xi's original power (Xi's Lotus Flower face) and she is unable to be matched, 300 Li around. Gathering her Lotus Blossoms at a peculiar hour she is followed by these imitators who can only watch on at her feminine power and beauty as it rises with the moon. 

Women in Power

Women had long being holding public office, writing and power since the time of the Duchess of Wey,  Ms.Nanzi ( active 534 - 480 BCE ) in lieu of her gay husband, Ban Zhao ( 49-120 CE) of her writings & Empress Jia Nanfeng ( 257-300 CE ) for her disabled husband. Palace poetry is set against the backdrop of the imperial carnage that was the 7th/8th century in Imperial Tang China as caused by squabbling men. A time of constant civil warring until the state was unified under the first outright Empress Wu Zetian ( 624-705 CE) by 665CE which lead to a period of unbridled imperial success, sparking the golden era of Chinese Art, aesthetics and womens rights otherwise known as the Tang era. Following her death in 705, her daughter Princess Taiping (c662 - 713CE) was the real powerhouse behind the throne even though her husband technically was Emperor. When her lesbian lover, Shuangguan Wan'er ( 664-710 ) died, Taiping buried her 'mountain of muse' with a noblewomens burial rites even though she was an unpopular figure in her lifetime.[11]

It is against this backdrop of women being in real power for nearly half a century which allows a blossoming of feminine power. That is the idea women can be powerful at all being considered. It was in this climate that Palace poetry increasingly gave 'Yang' to women, that is agency in the poetry of the time. During the early Tang period, most Meiren (Beauties) were to be admonished, as Empress Jia was in the 5th century in the Admonitions of the Court Instructress scroll as a WOC who stepped beyond her societally acceptable place. When Wu Zetian came to power however, this changed of course becuase you didn't get to draw anti-Empress propaganda under Wu Zetian, you just got beheaded. So women in the male gaze increasingly reflected this new power dynamic, they became more active agents.

Palace poetry reflected this shift towards women doing things, just as they would in the next century when they became ardent art patrons, supporters of Buddhism and more vocally active participants in society. Suddenly, the 'Harem' so to speak demanded respect, otherwise all of those Meiren would up and go to the monastery to write about you for all posterity as Nuns. So the image of the meek, gentle women who 'conceals beauty within' herself, of course only in the bedroom or kitchen became one of the more active 'pining beauty' trope, where the young, beautiful, wise, all-knowing, pampered beauty sitting around fanning herself in the Imperial Mansions of Wu longing for Fan Li became in a Duchess of Wei, the Ancient Tang version of the New Woman.[12] This is why women like Xi, suddenly have backstories, attributes and personalities like as a humble silk-washer, all elegantly drunk.[14]

The Drunken Lotus Bijin

In context therefore, we see that Beauty was being discussed during the Ancient Chinese dynastical period as a way to conceptualise transcendental pleasure.[7] Being beautiful was not the ability to be aesthetical, but rather to embody an inner grace and beauty from within. The tale of Xi from the West was a moral story about how beauty should be used to understand that the educated must learn to think outside of the box rather than simply turning to the familiar. Xi was a beautiful human being, not an aesthetically pleasing woman. It is in this sense that ancient Chinese scholars addressed how beauty should be thought of and approached in the metaphysical sense under newly emerging power dynamics which saw women ruling and expressing themselves in the Imperial Courts.

When we think of how this was handed down to Japanese people, this is the idea that to be a Beauty is to be virtuous, self-sacrificing, tolerant and authentically natural. These values supposedly allowed the ugly to become beautiful and the pauper to become a palace beauty in the popular Tang imagination, beginning the trope of the Palace Beauty: often a woman who leads a secluded life in imperial concubinage who longs for another, primping and passing the time in luxury. Xi in her initial pre-Imperial writings is a passive agent, who through renewed lenses by the Tang era, a more likely point of contact for Noble Japanese women, became an active negotiator of the Tang era Palace Poetry by the 6th century. This established her beauty as one pursued by women, crafting Xi in their own likeness as a symbolic feminine Beauty of Mei or Bijin standards.

In that vein I leave you with the explicitly aesthetical Bai poem:

A girl from Ruoye Stream with a face like Jade,

Whose Black Eyebrows beset carmine makeup,

A pair of golden-yellow clogs,

And two feet as white as snow.[14]

Bibliography

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Shi

[2] http://en.chinaculture.org/2017-05/04/content_998481.htm#:~:text=Chinese%20ancestors%20became%20adults%20at,00%2Dyear%2Dold%20history.

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_books_and_burying_of_scholars

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_Zhou

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Schools_of_Thought#School_of_%22Minor-talks%22

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Beauties

[7] Beauty (Mei, 美) in the Zhuangzi and Contemporary Theories of Beauty, Peng Feng, 2020, Volume 54, No.2, pp.22-34, The Journal of Aesthetic Education | https://fh.pku.edu.cn/docs/2020-04/20200415132901819403.pdf

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Shi

[9] https://hellopoetry.com/poem/14731/the-beautiful-xi-shi/

[10] Li Bai's eight poems about Xi Shi, Liang Ying, September 2011, Volume 1, No.3, pp.159-161 Journal of Literature and Art Studies, ISSN 2159-5836 | https://www.davidpublisher.com/Public/uploads/Contribute/551e2b55bf6fd.pdf

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangguan_Wan%27er

[12] See Bijin #16

[14] The Silent Beauty: Changing Portrayals of Xi Shi, from "Zhiguai" and Poetry to Ming Fiction and Drama, Olivia Milburn, 2013, Volume 26, No. 1, pp.26-33, Asia Major

 Bijin Series Timeline

11th century BCE

- The Ruqun becomes a formal garment in China (1000 BCE) [Coming Soon]

8th century BCE

- Chinese clothing becomes highly hierarchical (771 BCE) [Coming Soon] 

3rd century BCE

Xi Shi (flourished c201-900CE); The Drunken Lotus Bijin

2cnd century BCE

        - The Han Dynasty

0000 Current Era

1st century

        - Han Tomb portraiture begins as an extension of Confucian Ancestor Worship; first Han aesthetic                                scholars dictate how East Asian composition and art ethics begin

                       - Isometric becomes the standard for East Asian Composition (c.100); Dahuting Tomb Murals

                       - Ban Zhao introduces Imperial Court to her Lessons for Women (c106);                                      Women play major roles in the powerplay of running of China consistently                                until 1000 CE, influencing Beauty standards

                       - Qiyun Shengdong begins to make figures more plump and Bijin-like (c.150) but still pious

4th century

Gu Kaizhi (active 364-406); Metaphorical Beauty

        - Chinese Artists begin to make aesthetic beauties in ethereal religious roles of heavenly Nymphs

                       - Luo River Nymph Tale (c.400)

          - Womens clothing emphasized the waist as the Guiyi (Swallow-Tail Flying Ribbons) style (c.400)

                       - Wise and Benevolent Women (c.400)

5th century

          - Chinese Art becomes decadent; Imperial Culture begins to see more expression in religious statues (c450)

                       - Longmen Grotto Boddhisattvas (471)

6th century

           - Women begin inspiring Pining Love poetry inspiring many artists

Xu Ling; (active 537-583); Gongti or Palace Bijin [Coming Soon] https://www.jstor.org/stable/495525?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents

7th century

            - Tang Dynasty Art (618-908)

           - Rouged Bijin (600-699 CE) [Coming Soon] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_of_the_Tang_Dynasty

Yan Liben (active 642-673); Bodhisattva Bijin [Coming Soon] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%A7%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%B4%E0%B8%A1.jpg Guan Yin 

Wu Zetian (active 665-705); The Great Tang Art Patron [Coming Soon]

Asuka Bijin (c.699); The Wa Bijin

8th century

            - Princess Yongtai's Veneration Murals (701) [Coming Soon]

- Introduction of Chinese Tang Dynasty clothing (710)

- Sumizuri-e (710)

Yang Yuhuan Guifei (719-756); [Coming Soon] East Asian Supermodel Bijin https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/275768522.pdf https://factsanddetails.com/china/cat2/4sub9/entry-5437.html#chapter-5

Zhang Xuan (active 720-755); [Coming Soon]

- What is now Classical Chinese Art forms

                    - An Lushun Rebellion (757) 

 Zhou Fang (active 766-805) ; Qiyun Bijin

- Emakimono Golden Age (799-1400)

9th century

                       - Buddhist Bijin [Coming Soon] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_of_the_Tang_Dynasty#/media/File:Noble_Ladies_Worshiping_Buddha.jpg + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogao_Caves#/media/File:Anonymous-Bodhisattva_Leading_the_Way.jpg

10th century

                       -End of Tang Art (907)

13th century

                     - Heimin painters; 1200-1850; Town Beauty

15th century 

- Fuzokuga Painting schools; Kano (1450-1868) and Tosa (1330-1690) 

Tang Yin (active 1490-1524); Chinese Beauties [Coming Soon] https://www.comuseum.com/painting/masters/tang-yin/ 

16 century 

- Nanbanjin Art (1550-1630) 

- Wamono style begins under Chanoyu teachings (c1550-1580)

- Byobu Screens (1580-1670)

 - End of Sengoku Jidai brings Stabilisation policy (1590-1615)  

17th century  

- Land to Currency based Economy Shift (1601-1655)

- Early Kabuki Culture (1603-1673) ; Yakusha-e or Actor Prints

- Machi-Eshi Art ( 1610 - 1710) ; The Town Beauty

- Sumptuary legislation in reaction to the wealth of the merchant classes (1604-1685) 

- Regulation of export and imports of foreign trade in silk and cotton (1615-1685)  

Iwasa Matabei (active 1617-1650) ; Yamato-e Bijin  

The Hikone Screen (c.1624-1644) [Coming Soon]

- Sankin-Kotai (1635-1642) creates mass Urbanisation  

- Popular culture and print media production moves from Kyoto to Edo (1635-1650); Kiyohara Yukinobu (1650-1682) ; Manji Classical Beauty

- Shikomi-e (1650-1670) and Kakemono-e which promote Androgynous Beauties;

 Iwasa Katsushige (active 1650-1673) ; Kojin Bijin

- Mass Urbanisation instigates the rise of Chonin Cottage Industry Printing (1660-1690) ; rise of the Kabunakama Guilds and decline of the Samurai

- Kanazoshi Books (1660-1700); Koshokubon Genre (1659?-1661)

- Shunga (1660-1722); Abuna-e

Kanbun Master/School (active during 1661-1673) ; Maiko Bijin 

- Hinagata Bon (1666 - 1850) 

- Ukiyo Monogatari is published by Asai Ryoi (1666) 

Yoshida Hanbei (active 1664-1689) ; Toned-Down Bijin

- Asobi/Suijin Dress Manuals (1660-1700)

- Ukiyo-e Art (1670-1900)

Hishikawa Moronobu (active 1672-1694) ; Wakashu Bijin

- Early Bijin-ga begin to appear as Kakemono (c.1672)  

- Rise of the Komin-Chonin Relationship (1675-1725)

- The transit point from Kosode to modern Kimono (1680); Furisode, Wider Obi 

- The Genroku Osaka Bijin (1680 - 1700) ; Yuezen Hiinakata

Sugimura Jihei (active 1681-1703) ; Technicolour Bijin 

- The Amorous Tales are published by Ihara Saikaku (1682-1687)

Hishikawa Morofusa (active 1684-1704) [Coming Soon]

- The Beginning of the Genroku Era (1688-1704)

- The rise of the Komin and Yuujo as mainstream popular culture (1688-1880) 

- The consolidation of the Bijinga genre as mainstream pop culture 

- The rise of the Torii school (1688-1799) 

- Tan-E (1688-1710)   

Miyazaki Yuzen (active 1688-1736) ; Genroku Komin and Wamono Bijin 

Torii Kiyonobu (active 1688 - 1729) : Commercial Bijin

Furuyama Moromasa (active 1695-1748)

18th century

Nishikawa Sukenobu (active 1700-1750) [Coming Soon]

Kaigetsudo Ando (active 1700-1736) ; Broadstroke Bijin

Okumura Masanobu (active 1701-1764)

Kaigetsudo Doshin (active 1704-1716) [Coming Soon]

Baioken Eishun (active 1710-1755) [Coming Soon]

Kaigetsudo Anchi (active 1714-1716) [Coming Soon]

Yamazaki Joryu (active 1716-1744) [Coming Soon]

1717 Kyoho Reforms

Miyagawa Choshun (active 1718-1753) [Coming Soon]

Miyagawa Issho (active 1718-1780) [Coming Soon]

Nishimura Shigenaga (active 1719-1756) [Coming Soon]

Matsuno Chikanobu (active 1720-1729) [Coming Soon]

- Beni-E (1720-1743)

Torii Kiyonobu II (active 1725-1760) [Coming Soon]

- Uki-E (1735-1760)

Kawamata Tsuneyuki (active 1736-1744) [Coming Soon]

Kitao Shigemasa (1739-1820)

Miyagawa Shunsui (active from 1740-1769) [Coming Soon]

Benizuri-E (1744-1760)

Ishikawa Toyonobu (active 1745-1785) [Coming Soon]

Tsukioka Settei (active 1753-1787) [Coming Soon]

Torii Kiyonaga (active 1756-1787) [Coming Soon]

Shunsho Katsukawa (active 1760-1793) [Coming Soon]

Utagawa Toyoharu (active 1763-1814) [Coming Soon]

Suzuki Harunobu (active 1764-1770) [Coming Soon]

- Nishiki-E (1765-1850)

Torii Kiyonaga (active 1765-1815) [Coming Soon]

Kitao Shigemasa (active 1765-1820) [Coming Soon]

Maruyama Okyo (active 1766-1795) [Coming Soon]

Kitagawa Utamaro (active 1770-1806) [Coming Soon]

Kubo Shunman (active 1774-1820) [Coming Soon]

Tsutaya Juzaburo (active 1774-1797) [Coming Soon]

Utagawa Kunimasa (active from 1780-1810) [Coming Soon]

Tanehiko Takitei (active 1783-1842) [Coming Soon]

Katsukawa Shuncho (active 1783-1795) [Coming Soon]

Choubunsai Eishi (active 1784-1829) [Coming Soon]

Eishosai Choki (active 1786-1808) [Coming Soon]

Rekisentei Eiri (active 1789-1801) [Coming Soon] [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Ukiyo-e_paintings#/media/File:Rekisentei_Eiri_-_'800),_Beauty_in_a_White_Kimono',_c._1800.jpg]

Chokosai Eisho (active 1792-1799) [Coming Soon]

Kunimaru Utagawa (active 1794-1829) [Coming Soon]

Utagawa Toyokuni II (active 1794 - 1835) [Coming Soon]

Ryūryūkyo Shinsai (active 1799-1823) [Coming Soon]

19th century

Teisai Hokuba (active 1800-1844) [Coming Soon]

Totoya Hokkei (active 1800-1850) [Coming Soon]

Utagawa Kunisada Toyokuni III (active 1800-1865) [Coming Soon]

Urakusai Nagahide (active from 1804) [Coming Soon]

Kitagawa Tsukimaro (active 1804 - 1836)

Kikukawa Eizan (active 1806-1867) [Coming Soon]

Keisai Eisen (active 1808-1848) [Coming Soon]

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (active 1810-1861) [Coming Soon]

Utagawa Hiroshige (active 1811-1858) [Coming Soon]

Yanagawa Shigenobu (active 1818-1832) [Coming Soon]

Utagawa Kunisada II (active 1844-1880) [Coming Soon]

Toyohara Kunichika (active 1847-1900) [Coming Soon]

Kano Hogai (active 1848-1888) [Coming Soon]

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (active 1850-1892) [Coming Soon]

Toyohara Chikanobu (active 1875-1912) [Coming Soon]

Kiyokata Kaburaki (active 1891-1972) [Coming Soon]

Goyo Hashiguchi (active 1899-1921) [Coming Soon]

20th century

Yumeji Takehisa (active 1905-1934) [Coming Soon]

Torii Kotondo (active 1915-1976) [Coming Soon]

Yamakawa Shūhō (active 1927-1944) [Coming Soon]


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Sunday, May 8, 2022

エヂテュ・テリー | Edith Craig | 1874-1947 | Essay #14

This is a post regarding the early adoption and promulgation of the Kimono and Japanese aesthetics in the life of the wonderful Edith Craig (1869-1947), daughter of the famous actress Ellen Terry (1847-1928). Edith was also known as 'Edy'.[1] 

A little background on Edith is that she was from Childhood aware of and involved the adoption and cross cultural embrace of Japanese culture, fashion, and Art with a capital A. Edith grew up as the non-wedlock love-child of Terry and the architect Edward William Godwin, originator of the term 'Anglo-Japanese style'. Both her parents had a great interest in Art and Japapanese culture due to her fathers near maniacal infatuation with Japanese ornament (in the architectural sense), which became a main feature of her parents lives after the man was introduced to Japanese arts in 1862 during the London Exhibition. Edith thus grew up with Kimono and other Japanese stuffs around the family house until her mother seperated from her father, and they eventually went to live in seperate houses. 

Growing up in Victorian England, and perhaps even for todays standards, Edith was quite out-of-the-norm. She grew up in this cosmopolitan atmosphere and lifestyle, and was deeply cosmopolitan in outlook and action, recalling much of childhood being 'barefoot' and dressed in 'Japanese clothes'.[3] Her biological brother also carried on this tradition of infusing Japanese Art into his work in theatre spaces by using Noh theatre and aesthetics to underline his own work, with her mother (who outlived her father by decades) also being incredibly receptive to Japanese emigrants such as the actress Kawakami Sadayakko (1871-1946) whom she patronized during her speed run tour of Europe between 1900-1903. 

The Adoption Phase

Under this climate of intercultural acceptance or the 'Adoption' of the Lacambre base model, it was that at this time Japanese art began to be adopted with greater frequency into design and high arts in Europe.[4][5] The Turdman himself gave away a Kimono (images also here), most likely bought from Arthur Lasenby Liberty (1843-1917) at the Farmers and Rogers Oriental Warehouse. This is a type of Wafuku used to sleep (a Yogi) in whose construction is slightly different to a Kimono becuase the armhole is completely attached to the body.[9] The item itself is orange and cream in an Asanoha pattern.

The Adoption element which Ono mentions here refers to the overarching late Victorian tendency to take onboard elements of Japanese art and culture and 'adopt' them into British mainstream design. Most often this came from early discoverers such as Ediths father, who incorporated the work into their homes. The adoption of Japanese art was intended to have a soothing, aesthetically inspiring and stripped-back elegance in Godwins' interiors. This was in direct juxtaposition to the highly ornate heavy designs favoured in the Victorian era inspired by symmetrical Baroque fashions (1660-1770). Japanese aesthetics were the direct reason in British art culture that simplicity began to favoured once more, initialising the stripped back or 'Modern English' period of design in the Fine and later Applied Arts.

When Edith thus wore this Wafuku garment that functioned as a sort of home loungewear, she was being exposed to a culture of what her parents esteemed to be refinement, purity and good taste of design. For Edith, these functions were most likely lost on her, as all of her home reflected Godwins early Total-Design approach after all incorporated the wearers of his designs in Kimono. For Edith, it certainly would have allowed her to become readily knowledgeable on Wafuku garment construction at the very least, and helped instill a cosmopolitan worldview with a tolerant acceptance of Kimono as a legitimate form of homewear as was acceptable by 1885 with the advent of the Kimono as Tea gown.[6] Edith continued to wear Kimono as a teenager, sporting them in a photograph surrounded by Japanese objects in 1888 which established her connections with Japan, and particularly Kimono as an 'aesthetic'or beautiful garment.[9]

The Assimilation Phase

Edith herself lived in something of a secluded bubble created by her mother, most likely as a way to allow Edith to live comfortably in Victorian society which as seen with the Trial of Oscar Wilde, would have thought the Q in LGBTQIA would mean Queer in the derogatory sense. Thus, Edith lived in a house on her mothers estate later in life in a thruplet lesbian relationship until her death in 1947. This was a highly unorthodox Queer paradise, as their homeowner was not only matriarchically inclined in a highly patriarchal society, but served as a communal space for Queer identities and art. It is in this climate we can begin to understand how the Assimilation of Wafuku in British KTC began.

It was in this culture of acceptance and promotion of Japanese Art as a High Artform that Edith herself became a promoter as well, which unfortunately does not fit the reductionist narrative promulgated by certain academics across the pond that all POC were oppressed and inactive agents of their own cultures, desires, interests and destinies and agency. Edith herself (with her Mothers help) helped start the career of 
and the Dramatist writer Kori Torahiko (1890-1924) for example in 1917 when she helped in the creation of his Kanawa (1917) at the Choric School of Dance and Theatre which from 1915-1930 was a veritable hub of Japanese expatriates, artists, queers (in the recovered sense) and bohemians.[2]

Other queer artists such as Oscar Wilde certainly were aware of the Kimono, and began adopting it in their own wear, work and consumption by the 1880s. In fact Wilde often declared 'Japanese' people (and by extension their dress) to be a figment of the national psyche. In his Intentions (1889), Wilde declared that 
'if you desire to see a Japanese effect you will not behave like a tourist and go to Tokio. On the contrary, you will stay at home, and steep yourself in the work of certain Japanese artists, and then, when you have absorbed the spirit of their style, and caught their imaginative manner of vision, you will go some afternoon and sit in the Park or stroll down Piccadilly, and if you cannot see an absolutely Japanese effect thereect, you will not see it anywhere.' [7]

Frequently, Wilde and other prominent Queer affiliated British artists of the time active in Aestheticism (1868-1899) looked to first Hellenic, then Japanese culture to derive forms of beauty into their lives. This is most likely to have been due to the fact that both of these cultures were known to have had accepted forms of Queer (particularly gay) presentation in both and thus allowed LGBT peoples to push forwards acceptance and tolerance of Queer content and forms of beauty under the banner of 'Classical Art' appreciation. Physical culture also probably helped.

People like Edith who had been brought up wearing, using and admiring Kimono in this time thus helped to proliferate Kimono in their daily lives as an acceptable household item of Fine Art, loungewear and symbol of luxury. Kimono during the Assimilation period (1890-1915) in British KTC became known not just as a facet of the Mikado (1885) costume designs, but was increasingly commonplace in upper and middle class households. This is particularly poignant when we remember that as a producer of Kori's Yoshitomo (1922), Craig would have been showing and choosing which Kimono the cast would have worn and thus what a 'white' majority audience were being exposed to, and was entrusted to be done by a native Japanese wearer of Kimono.[10]

Edith (1895, PD) Anonymous


In this sense of removed appreciation, Kimono became assimilated into the daily garments worn by the Victorians and Edwardians. Figures like Wilde, Renee Vivien[8] and Edith Craig helped make the link to LGBTQIA peoples that Gay and Lesbian history and art existed by making the link to Japanese and Greek motifs of homosexuality and Sapphics in their work and lives meant to be imitated and adopted by the masses.  

In context therefore, we can see how Craig is piecemeal of the evolution of the appreciation of Kimono as global KTC and fall under the adoption (1870-1890) and assimilation (1890-1915) phases.[4] Kimono wearing by Edith was initially an attempt by her parents to rear her in a TotalDesign enviroment meant to evoke beauty and purity during the Adoption phase of Aestheticism. Under the Assimilation phase, figures like Edith drawing on their own childhood interactions with Kimono, made the Kimono a mainstream garment for everyday use in their own homes, which spread the popularity and awareness of Kimono in British middle class society. It also tied the Kimono in the historical and popular imagination as no longer and exotic garment, but earmarked it as a Queer garment increasing the popularity and appeal of Kimono as a global garment for use in various stations and peoples in the Theatre and Art worlds primarily in the late 19th century.

Bibliography

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Craig

[2] https://www.britishartstudies.ac.uk/issues/issue-index/issue-11/little-theatres

[3] Helpers at the Scottish Exhibition, Margaret Kilroy, April 5 1910, p.455, Votes for Women Newspaper, Women's Social and Political Union

[4] Japonisme in Britain - A Source of Inspiration: T. Dogwhistler, Mortimer Menpes, George Henry, E.A. Hornel and nineteenth century Japan, Ayako Ono, 2001, pp.5-176, Glasgow University

[5] Les milieux japonisants a Paris 1860-1880Genevieve Lacambre, 1980, p.43, The Society for the Study of Japonisme (Edited), Tokyo

[6] See Essay #6

[7] Intentions: The decay of lying; Pen; pencil; and poison; The critic as artist; The truth of masks, Oscar Wilde, Percival Pollard, 1889[1891,1905], p.47

[8] See Essay #1

[9] https://cris.brighton.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/4755630/Binder1.pdf

[10] Kori Torahiko and Edith Craig: A Japanese Playwright in London and Toronto, Yoko Chiba, 1996-1997, p.445, Comparative Drama

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Sunday, March 7, 2021

ルネ-ヴィヴィアン | Renee Vivien | 1907 | Kimono as transnational Culture Essay#1

Renee Vivien (1877 - 1909) , born Pauline Tarn, was an English lesbian poet. She wrote in French and perhaps English. She took up the style of the Symbolists and Parnassinism and was well known during the era of the Belle Epoque (the Beautiful Age) for producing Sapphic verse and living as an open quasi butch lesbian poet; her verse derived from the ancient poet Sapphos, also famed for her love of women.

To say Vivien lead a tumultuous life may be an understatement. Born to an American Heiress and a Scots father John Tarn, and the family lived in Paris for a short time until her father died in 1886. Vivien's mother desperately held onto John's family inheritance and gave Vivien hell as a child, frequently putting her under lock and key for perceived misbehaviour and trying to have her declared insane as to inherit the family fortune when it was bequeathed to her upon return to London in 1886.

Pauline became Renee in 1899 when she moved to Paris to escape her abusive mother, and in Paris she dedicated herself to poetry, writing exclusively in French, and running around Paris with wealthy lesbians dressed as Hamlet. She frequently pushed phallocentric narratives and kept to her own agenda in the patriarchal system she found herself living in. Whilst in Paris though she often attracted 'unwanted attentions' from male admirers and so would a body double stand in for her at her poetry performances. In Paris, her ground floor flat on 23, Avenue Foch (then Bois de Boulogne) opened onto a Japanese Garden, and was decorated with antiques from London and 'Eastern art' manufactures of shrines, statues and Buddhas which she smattered around the flat amidst fresh floral bouquets of lilies and offerings of Lady Apples with an ever coming and going stable of wealthy lesbian lovers.

Her first relationship was with Violet Shillito, then Natalie Barney in 1899 with Shilotto dying in 1900, and Barney splitting up as a result of Vivien's grief in 1901, with her first book published in the same year. She became involved in a relationship in 1902 with Baroness Helen van Zuylen, a branch of the Rothschilds family in France. Vivien, known for her aesthetical flair, was reliant on Zuylen who was married with children. Vivien considered herself married to Zuylen, but upon recieving a letter from the Turkish admirer, Kerime Turkhan Pasha, who was also married and so their relationship only developed through their letters. In 1907 however, Vivien was dumped by Zuylen and Vivien travelled to Japan in a rather dramatic relationship rebound to escape the gossip in the Lesbian circles of Paris. Kerime also stopped writing in 1908, turning to drugs, alcohol and sadomasochism of all things. Ever the eccentric, she continued living her lavish bohemian lesbian lifestyle until something we may recognise today as EDNOS caused her death in 1909.

Vivien was an aesthete, and this is evident from how she presented herself in society and how she lived her life. Her translations of Sappho from the Greek at Oxyrynchus, her globetrotting and her multinational heritage clearly played a role in how she came to own and understand other cultural artifacts and concepts, such as the Kimono, which I shall explore somewhat here with regards to viewing the Kimono through the Aesthetes lense.

The Aesthetical Movement, (approximately 1870-1900) in relation to Japanese design was the English answer to French design, developed into the Modern Style which later became Art Nouveau on the Continent. It's better known 'aesthetes' or purveyors of beauty included at the time figures such as Oscar Wilde and Mary Eliza Haweis (author of the Art of Beauty). Figures such as Wilde and Edward Carpenter championed the closeted lifestyle of Gay men, Wilde through his connections in the art world, under the guise of the 'Hellenic' or 'Japanese' worlds (see the Decay of Lying 1891) which touted historical literature as a sort of escapist revisionist Gay Arcadia, and Japan played this role from 1870 - 1933 for figures in the Bloomsbury scene such as Virginia Woolf (see Vogue review of Tale of Genji 1925). 

Decadence, the aesthetical era which Vivien was born into, prized Vapanese (Japanese as the Victorians saw it) art as purely aesthetical, and extension of the art for arts sake mantra popularised in France at the turn of the 19th century.

"'No, not Sappho' said Renée Vivien, who had come in with her light step , wearing an empress' s kimono and carrying a sheaf of roses in her arms , which she offered me by way of greeting. 

-The Muse of Violets (1904;1977)

In this passage, the Kimono is celebrated as a mark of wealth, compared to Sappho (high poetry) and Roses (expensive natural beauty denoting a Englishwoman perhaps) and Empresses, which to the decadent aesthete was a raucous display of finery and nothing more, for beautiful objects were said to have enough merit to exist on their own and as such were viewed as art objects (see Whistler's 1878 trial for more on the matter of substance.)

In context therefore, we see that in the transnational context, Kimono can be used to exemplify new ideals of beauty or aesthetical standards. The Kimono Vivien wears or said to be wearing was a popular staple among bohemians of the era and was used to denote that its wearer was part of the fashionable upper class, less so by the Edwardian era, but still if original a highly coveted item of great beauty and 'refined taste'. The Hellenic and Japanese worlds in a gay Vapanese notion, were regarded as in-code for the wealthy gay lifestyle in this time and place, and which later diverged as fodder into the new form of 'camp' with the inclusion of items such as fans used by performers today positively as cultural appreciation (think Mae West's Drag 1927; the Maltese Falcon 1931, Lindsay Kemp from 1959-2018 etc, also see Roger Bakers Drag, 1995).[1][2][3][4][5]

Next week I shall return to patterns, but the next essay will discuss cultural appropriation in an American context.

Bibliography

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9e_Vivien

[2] http://www.suzannestrohcreative.com/the-cruellest-month-for-renee-vivien/

[3] The Muse of the Violets : Poems, Renee Vivian, 1977, p.9

[4] Orientating Arthur Waley, 2003

[5] Drag: A History of Female Impersonation in the Performing Arts, Roger Baker, 1995, p79

See Also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aestheticism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Style_(British_Art_Nouveau_style)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decay_of_Lying

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-radiant-prince-comes-to-fifth-avenue

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_for_art%27s_sake

http://www.branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=nicholas-frankel-on-the-whistler-ruskin-trial-1878

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphic_stanza#:~:text=The%20Sapphic%20stanza%2C%20named%20after,a%20rhyme%20scheme%20of%20ABAB.

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