Ukiyo-e, Shuji, Nawashi - Things one should know

One of the best things about my job is that I get to learn new stuff. For example, I was re-writing an Artist PR relese and read that this Japanese artist learned Shuji, or Japanese Calligraphy, at a young age.

Now this interested me because I like Japanese culture. So I looked on the web for Shuji calligraphy hoping to find pretty things.

As the computer filled up with pics of Japanese children learning to draw Japanese letters, it became clear that Shuji is indeed the art of writing Japanese letters, on the most basic level known to most Japanese, Shodo is "The way of writing", a higher artistic level of writing letters.

In other words, this guy was trying to sell being able to write in his own language as artistic skill. This is like me saying that I can draw Hebrew letters. It is indeed true, I can write the ancient language of my people just like any other Israeli person can, but it's not a special thing.

This however was followed by a pleasent Artist who claimed to be inspired by Ukiyo-e, which is both a wood-block printing technique AND the name for the theme "Pictures of the floating world." These were done between the 17 and 20 Century and are linked to the emerging Japanese middle class and the decline of "Ancient" Japan. Shunga, or Erotic Japanese prints, were a part of that visual culture.
It was a middle class comfort for a middle class just starting to understand itself as such. With wonderful artists like Hishikawa Moronbu and Utagawa Kunisada leading the way to see that new class, with it's good and ugly sides, in a the new way.

Now this Artist was a white American woman inspired by Japanese culture. Which made me think about something Midori said about the Nawashi (professional rope bondage performer ) trend in (some parts) of the west. "I think you can be a scholar of another culture, you can appreciate it. But there's a difference between a scholar and a fetishist. A scholar studies a culture in a three-dimensional way, but a fetishist selects certain things that appeal to him and creates a fantasy idea of what the culture is. "I think there's a lot of fetishizing of Japanese culture going on in certain circles."

So why be a fetisher when you can actually check stuff out* for yourself? Isn't that a whole lot groovier?:)

*Yes, there is some wonderful nawa shibari Art out there. And I suggest you start with Araki Nobuyoshi.