bamboozled?

as a quiet, ubiquitous symbol, the bamboo has featured in japonisme wherever it occurred. whether it's pictured, or used, or imitated (silver bamboo handles, for example), it has become an instant communication of the east.

it's interesting, however, to look into its usage in japan itself. where it's found, or wherever i was able to find it anyway, wasn't necessarily where i had expected.

yes, it can be found on kimono textiles, and on crafts, like the inro.

in the west there were few instances of crafts where it wasn't used. it's irresistible because it's so graceful, so simple, so emblematic of all that we had accepted the east to be.

in japanese prints, however, there seem to be unexplained limits to it's usage: we will see it, again, as a pattern on kimono.

and, as we've seen before, one might find bamboo in a book of style suggestions.

we will also see it as part of a kabuki backdrop, and it's always used to geographically
place tigers.

but, it seems, and as far as i could find, picturing bamboo groves or forests almost never existed until late in the 19th century. this one hokusai image is the only one i could find. compare their frequency to that of pines.

the yoshida's, father and son, loved them, as did many other artists on into the twentieth century. i can not only find no reason for this, but not even any mention of it.

now this is not to suggest that the bamboo is not beloved in japan. in fact, The sound of the wind in this bamboo forest has been voted as one of 'one hundred must-be-preserved sounds of Japan' by the Japanese government. 1

but although hiroshige did use bamboo's wonderful verticality to accompany the flight of a bird (a sparrow), as did others, the forests and groves were rarely seen.

as 'meaningless,' and quite lovely decoration, though, it could be found in droves throughout europe and the americas.

may we be reassured that these appearances reflected our passion for the illusions we'd formed of japan?

and if so, were these illusions perpetrated by the japanese themselves, or by us?

and, at last, does it matter at all? fashion is as fluid as the wind; listen, you can hear it now. it's a sound which must be protected.

instead, gratitude is a fine option. thank you to tiffany. thank you to rookwood. gratitude to habert-dys. thank you to heintz.

translation is an odd art. what appears to be literal can really only be approx- imate, romanticized, inspirational.

which is quite acceptable.

trippy

when i was a young hippy, underground comix were all the rage, but of course we would never say 'all the rage.' we would say, 'far out,' or 'blows my mind,' or 'toooo much,' or maybe even 'outta sight!' but for sure we would say.... 'triiiippy.....'

i am here to remind you that trippy did not begin in 1968 (or even '67).

of so many of the japanese prints we've seen we might ask, 'what were they smoking?!'

the answer could actually be, 'the same thing you were.' not only was weed legal and enjoyed by many, but it's not such a stretch to see its effects in the prints (of yoshitoshi and kunisada especially).

'a fuckin' hole in my reality,' indeed.

however, there was much more to learn about from the prints beyond just the unpredictability of demons. there were all the other things the westerners were learning from the japanese at that time.

the outline. the strong graphic elements. the flat areas of color. the new and unexpected (to western eyes) uses of and juxta- position of pattern, color, and design. that so many of the prints were surreal goes without saying.

now i am not saying that dave sheri- dan (dealer mcdope) had seen jap- anese prints and used them for inspiration -- he may have, or may have not.

but i can suggest that some of their prede- cessors very likely did. artists like winsor mccay and frank king were wor- king at just that same moment where we here at japonisme usually hang out.

they were exposed to lautrec's posters, and the nabis and the printmakers of their times. they may also have been exposed to manga.

a comic book is a comic book, a super-hero knows no country.

the prints' surrealism of melting bodies and emboldened design has become normal to our eyes.

but imagine being
the westerner
seeing them
for the very first time.