The Japan Society Review 89
Book, Stage, Film, Arts and Events Review

Issue 89 Volume 15 Number 5 (October 2020)

The aim of The Japan Society Review is to inform, entertainand encourage readers to explore the Japan-related works
reviewed in its pages. With many events in the UK being
held online, cancelled or postponed due to the current
pandemic, this October issue concentrates on books, butnevertheless the scope of our publication is once again asdiverse as always.
Our first review explores the recently publishedmemoirs of Hans Brinckmann, a Dutch banker who has
lived in Japan for over forty years. Covering a period fromthe early 1950s to the present, The Call of Japan offers
an individual’s view and experience of postwar Japanese
history.
Approaching history from the perspective ofimportant events, Tanaka 1587: Japan’s Greatest Unknown
Samurai Battle by Stephen Turnbull examines the historicalsiege and battle of Tanaka Castle occurred in the context
of the reunification of Japan under Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
This issue also presents reviews of two fictional books,
My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki and One Love Chigusa by
Shimada Soji. Shimada’s short novel, translated by former

Japan Society chairman Sir David Warren, is a dystopic
story with cyberpunk touches which questions andchallenges the meaning of life and love. My Year of Meatsis set in the Unites States and follows the experiencesof two women, a Japanese American filmmaker and aJapanese housewife, in the modern world determined bycorporations and gender expectations.
Finally, we conclude this issue with the review ofJapanese Prints: The Collection of Vincent van Gogh,the catalogue of the homonymous art exhibition at the
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam in 2018. Accompaniedby splendid, full-colour prints of both European andJapanese works, this art book discusses the influenceof Japanese arts and prints on the life and work of thecelebrated Dutch painter. The review is illustrated withbeautiful images that reveal visually how Van Gogh was
inspired by the work of Japanese artists such as Utagawa
Hiroshige.
Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández

Contents
1)

The Call of Japan: A Continuing Story - 1950 to the Present
Day by Hans Brinckmann

Editor

2)

Tanaka 1587: Japan’s Greatest Unknown Samurai Battle by
Stephen Turnbull

Reviewers

3)

One Love Chigusa by Shimada Soji

4)

My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki

Beau Waycott.

5)

Japanese Prints: The Collection of Vincent van Goghedited by Axel Rüger and Marije Vellekoop

Image: Detail from the cover of Japanese Prints: The Collection of Vincent

Alejandra Armendáriz-Hernández
Roger Buckley, Laurence Green, Trevor Skingle, Azmina Sohail andvan Gogh.

The Call of Japan: A Continuing
Story - 1950 to the Present Day
by Hans Brinckmann
Renaissance Books (2020)
ISBN-13: 978-1912961146
Review by Roger Buckley
Confessions for starters. For decades I would see
Hans Brinckmann in the lobby of the apartment blockin Mita but we rarely exchanged much more than aperfunctory nod and a mumbled “good morning”. Now
at last there is the opportunity to make up for lost timeand learn a great deal about an international banker,
strikebreaker, actor, author and political commentator
as he relives his long years in Japan. All this thanks to
The Call of Japan. Hans Brinckmann’s memoirs, despite
a title with a slight Victorian echo that conjures up thedetermination of medical missionaries and university
lecturers to enlist in the West’s initial modernization
schemes, are frank, detailed and highly readable.
As is invariably the case with autobiography theearly years prove the more interesting. Readers, while
following Brinckmann’s progress from raw apprentice
to banking boss, will also inevitably find themselvescomparing their own experiences against those of theyoung Dutchman. Few, though, will be able to recall an
arrival in Japan as early as 1950 when the country was
still under Allied, largely American occupation. Fewer
still will have spent most of the ensuing decades rightup to 2020 looking so carefully and fairly as the nation
picked itself up from widespread poverty and moved
on to an enviable affluence. In the process Brinckmann
worked both hard and successfully at his adopted
profession and yet found the time and energy toclosely identify with numerous aspects of Japaneseculture. His heart was to remain in the Kansai, though
the requirements of international finance brought him
necessarily to Tokyo.
First-hand accounts by Western authors on the
postwar transformation of banking and high finance areconsiderably rarer than those telling of the more traditionalof Japanese arts. It follows, therefore, that Brinckmann’ssections on what he sees as the ‘secret’ (p. 156) of thenation’s success from the 1960s onwards deserve respect.
By then, he reckons, ‘[t]here was no question about it:
Japan was on its way to greatness’ (p. 157).
Yet there have been and still remain endlessexplanations from both within and without on how
the nation raised its game and evolved so rapidly
into the near top rankings of the premier league. For
Brinckmann ‘Japan’s demonstrated strength was not2

to be found only in quantifiable techniques, which
could be copied, as indeed they increasingly were’.
Japan was no ‘ordinary country’(p. 156). Instead heprefers the cultural view that ‘their whole attitude
to work, life and society differed fundamentally fromours’, insisting that Japanese ‘egos were not allowed
to get in the way of collaborative effort and the pursuitof handed-down objectives’ (p. 156). From his earlyoccupation-era beginnings Brinckmann saw ‘clear
national objectives to guide the business world andthe workforce’ (p. 157), though he does slightly change
his tune when it comes to the nation’s predicament in
the 21st century.
While Brinckmann does, indeed, discuss what it
must be said is a somewhat well-rehearsed listing ofJapan’s ‘fundamental problems and vulnerabilities’ (p.
273) in his concluding section, the core of his work ismore personal than political. It is inevitably the view
based on both his successful personal career and afulfilling, if decidedly nomadic, family life with moving
descriptions of both his mother-in-law and his wife
Toyoko, to whom he was married for nearly half acentury. The account of her last illness and the funeralservices is particularly moving.
Doubts about Japan’s future, however, are not
the author’s main concern. Equally, his criticisms ofwhat might almost be termed his adopted nation
rarely get in the way of a generally positive andgraphic, chronological portrait. Brinkmann places
most attention on his first two decades in Japan fromstarting out in 1950 to the celebratory Expo 70 andMishima Yukio’s bizarre suicide.
It was in these earlier years that Brinckmann
first produced what he slightly grandly calls Japan’s
positives and negatives. Prompted, perhaps, by hisbanking background, he deploys the equivalent of
his personal slide rule to chart what is almost literally
a national balance sheet on Japan’s successes andfailings. Most expats never actually get round to putting
this type of examination onto paper, though suchcomments come up frequently in casual conversation
with friends in the office or faculty room at the end ofa particularly tiring working day.
Brinckmann, professing what is, of course, an
impossible objectivity, decided to carefully analyze‘Japanese traits, habits and realities’ (p. 215). It is a mixtureof recent history, social anthropology, aesthetics andpersonal foibles that he may not have greatly alteredin later years. He made it immediately after shaking the‘clammy, grasping and hasty’ hand (p. 214) of Prime
Minister Tanaka Kakuei when paying a courtesy call with
Issue 89 Volume 15 Number 5 (October 2020)

his American superior - it seems to have been at least
one reason behind the author’s wish to quit Japan in
1974. Needless to say, the draw of the country would
bring him back regularly on business and family trips,
before he returned permanently in 2003.
At times he would indeed report on the nation’s
faults, calling it a ‘twisted country’ (p. 207) with ‘asuffocating web of social obligations and rituals’ (p.
206) , but his criticisms were generally outweighedby his respect for its ‘solid social foundation’ p. 300).
His kaleidoscopic memoirs include everything fromcalls on the renowned potter Hamada Shoji and two
visits to the Yoshiwara before it finally closed its doors,

plus serious attention to Zen, squash at the British
embassy’s now lost court, endless mega-receptions,as well as fast footwork in order to get round financial
red tape and a polite interrogation for residential
infringements.
Hans Brinckmann has clearly made the most of
the opportunities and challenges that came his way,concluding with a deep bow for ‘Japan’s generally
caring, non-violent, balanced way of life’ (p. 302). The
Call of Japan, packed with photographs, would makean ideal gift for the approaching Christmas and the
New Year seasons.§

Tanaka 1587: Japan’s Greatest
Unknown Samurai Battle

February with the Sengoku Higo Kunishu Festival at
Mikawa Sogo Shishatonari in Kumamoto.
The part of this history which is referred to as theBattle of Tanaka Castle (Tanaka-jo no eki) is describedlocally as one of Japan’s most important historicalevents, ‘a grand battle’ between Toyotomi samurai and
Wani kunishu (local troops). It is reproduced during
the festival in order to convey the event to posterity,
although the author rather mockingly describes it as‘a noisy, enthusiastic and highly inaccurate recreationof the battle’.
The historical context leading up to the siege of
Tanaka Castle, along with the complex and seemingly
ever changing alliances and conflicts in the region,is explained with great clarity. The account of thetransition from the Warring States period to the gradual
reunification of Japan under first Oda Nobunaga thenToyotomi Hideyoshi and finally Tokugawa Ieyasu (who,according to legend, in sequential order boiled thewater, made the tea and drank it) are quite detailed
yet probably much clearer and easier to understandthan many explanations seen in previous publications.
What then follows is an account of a rather more
localised Kyushu conflict, initially between Hideyoshi’s
forces and the Satsuma Shimazu prior to the Higo
Rebellion, the final part of which was their last heroic
stand at the siege of Tanaka Castle.
There is a lot of necessary detail about the
involvement of the loyal vassal of the previous ruler Oda
Nobunaga, the Daimyo Sassa Narimassa, in the processof centralising control in the region. The account goeson to explain that it was this and the reallocation of
the land belonging to the local independent kokujin(provincial samurai) to Narimassa’s vassals, with theaccompanying loss of prestige and economic status,
which fostered the resentment and eventually led

by Stephen Turnbull
Helion & Company (2019)
ISBN-13: 978-1912866496
Review by Trevor Skingle

Tanaka 1587: Japan’s Greatest
Unknown Samurai Battle is part two of the ‘From
Retinue to Regiment’ series which is currently
limited to four books and covers the period 1453 to1618 connecting the High Medieval Period to the
Early Modern Era. For those who are familiar with
Stephen Turnbull’s many publications not much of
an introduction is needed. His generally enjoyableromps through Japanese history, mainly focused on
the samurai, ninja and historical battles, are always
well laid out, easy to read and, even though containing
much historical detail, are aimed at the non-academic.
The cover title though is rather misleading. The battle
isn’t that unknown in Japan. However this is clarified
early on in the text when the author explains that the‘unknown’ factor relates, predominantly, to the rest of
the world. There is however, prior to this publication, adearth of information in English relating to this specificconflagration.
The book’s narrative revolves around the Higokunishu Ikki (Higo People’s Revolt), the conflict which
helped trigger the katanagari sword hunt in 1588,
commonly referred to as the Taiko’s Sword Hunt,to deny swords to Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s enemies
and the peasantry. The conflict coincided with
Hideyoshi becoming Kampaku (Imperial Regent)and is remembered every year on the 2nd Sunday ofLatest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/reviews3

to the Higo Rebellion and the destruction of Tanaka
Castle by the forces of Hideyoshi.
The chapter on the Wani Family and Tanaka Castle
is probably the most revelatory given that not a lot of
information, especially the most recently discovered,about the layout of the castle has been available to
the general reader. The narrative is laid out in a logicalsequence and even though the initial context setting
seems somewhat wide-ranging, it really is necessary to
lay the foundation for the culmination of the story that
leads to the siege. The book doesn’t disappoint with
the illustrations and photographs which range fromthe sort of thing that might be expected in a computer
game through reproductions of Japanese prints to theauthor’s own photos, along with one photograph, a
bit of a coup, which is accredited to Gensaiji Temple in
Yamaguchi Prefecture.
Though a relatively small book the amount of
information contained and covered within its justover one hundred pages is extensive. Whilst the text
is a reasonably easy read, and as pointed out is nonacademic, there is a lot of detail to digest. The book is
definitely one for either the visitor to the area or theserious Japanese military campaign buff, or both.§

One Love Chigusa

The Iron Man, Akira, Ghost in the Shell or Astro Boy - theoverwhelming sense that this tale is more like somethingout of a cyberpunk anime or manga than traditional
Japanese mystery literature. Indeed, it will come asno surprise, and as the book’s dedication makes plain
upfront, that all this is intended very much as a homage
to the so called ‘God of Manga’ Osamu Tezuka.
It’s not all about the graphical extremities though- there’s wry humour to be had here too, with sometelling nods to the perils of modern, technologydependent urban living. At one point, Xie’s doctor
observes ‘You’ve got an extraordinary number ofdevices in your body... You’ll need to attend rehab
classes at least once a week for the next year’. As
Xie comes to terms with his new mechanical body,he feels terrible discomfort, fear and loneliness atseeing how almost everyone around him rushes past,faces screwed up in anger. ‘In an instant, he lost theconfidence to live in this city’. In a manner recalling
many of the patients in Oliver Sacks iconic The Man
Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, although Xie’s physicalbody has been patched up and repaired, his mental
acuity has been left bizarrely altered. All women now
appear to him as red-faced devils, whilst men become
transparent when he looks at them, with ‘indicators likecalculators displaying financial figures on their bodies’.
The world has become a revolting, terrifying place
for him. Smiling faces no longer register on his visualcortex and his sexual desire has entirely departed...
That is, until he spots a singularly beautiful woman
who reignites his reason for living.
With shades of Haruki Murakami’s On Seeing the
100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning mixed
with Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name, we see Xie fall headover heels in love with this one-in-a-million encounter,and he proceeds to follow her with dogged insistence.
In a brilliant sequence, which to reveal more of

by Shimada Soji
translated by David Warren
Red Circle (2020)
ISBN-13: 978-1912864102
Review by Laurence Green
Going to the office was something of a relief. He felt as
if he was at last returning to being a normal working
person. When he looked around, half the office staff
looked as they had before. Someone raised their arm
to him in greeting. Grinning, he gave a slight bow inreturn, but it was a person he didn’t recognise.

It’s a scenario that might feel all too familiar for manyof us over the coming months, but for Xie Hoyu, it’s
the very least of his concerns. Returning to the office
after a horrific motorcycle accident that requires
his mutilated body to be re-built from scratch, thebeleaguered protagonist of Shimada Soji’s One Love
Chigusa finds his life is never quite the same again.
The year is 2091, and we are in distinctly weird
territory, even by Shimada’s standards. Famous forbestsellers such as The Tokyo Zodiac Murders (publishedin English by Pushkin Vertigo) which is invariably hailed
as one of the best locked-room mysteries of all time,
Shimada pulls no punches in describing the finer
points of Xie’s accident and the resulting aftermath.
We are told in excruciating detail how his body was‘crushed, torn to pieces and scattered around’, but that
he is to be thankful ‘his insides remained intact despite
becoming part of the debris spread around the crashsite’. To these remnants, prosthetic arms and legs areattached, and Xie becomes - in essence - a cyborg-likemachine-man hybrid.
Longtime aficionados of Japanese pop culture will
immediately recognise in the premise echoes of Tetsuo:
4Issue 89 Volume 15 Number 5 (October 2020)

would spoil the punchline, we think we discover the
woman’s identity, only to be immediately challenged
in our assumptions. Much like The Matrix, we are neverquite sure what is part of Xie’s imagination and what isgenuine reality in this strange, futuristic world. At times,
the outright weirdness and tones of body-horror recall
Kobo Abe’s The Face of Another, whilst at others thetechno-philosophising are more reminiscent of Philip
K Dick or George Orwell. Reading Shimada’s dark, razor
sharp prose, I began to ponder that other master ofthe short story form such as Roald Dahl and his 1953
collection Someone Like You (the source of much of
the material that would be adapted into the classic
television series Tales of the Unexpected), which has
seen a remarkable sales boom in Japan this summer
after it was mentioned on TV by the popular comedian
Kazlaser. Like Dahl’s own ‘unexpected’ tales, Shimada’sfable-like storytelling uses exaggerated, often shocking
weirdness to unveil the shadowy, conflicted depths ofthe human heart; the hidden rhythms and desires thatdrive us to often incomprehensible action.
All these cultural touch-stones, intended or not,come as shivers up the spine; Easter egg-like nuggetsof deja-vu that thrill in the exercise of accumulation,reference stacked within reference. Indeed, if these plot
devices feel at times overly familiar or derivative, one
could argue that is precisely the point and pleasure of
the book’s parable-like qualities. As the story progresses
further, things slide into the meta-physical as Xie’s
thoughts become increasingly existential; pondering
the very meaning of what it means to live and love.

The tale’s closing chapters, full with idolisation of the‘heart’, in many ways surface themes similar to thoseseen in Metropolis - both in its Fritz Lang incarnation,and the Tezuka manga of the same name.
Perhaps what is most remarkable about One
Love Chigusa is how unassuming it is in many ways.
Fans of Japanese literature in the Anglophone world
have been father spoilt for choice recently, with a raftof stellar releases hitting the shelves over the past few
years (including the Jay Rubin-edited Penguin Book ofJapanese Short Stories, which One Love Chigusa feels
as if it shares much of its DNA with). That this little bookcan fit in so many big ideas is also testament to thehighly proficient, powerful translation by David Warren,
who will be familiar to many as the British Ambassador
to Japan from 2008 to 2012 and Chairman of theJapan Society of the UK from 2013 to 2019. As part ofa series of ‘Red Circle Minis’ - offering first editions ofsome of the finest voices in Japanese literature, written
specifically for the series and published in English first this is an admirable initiative. Likewise, at a concise 115
pages, this is a tale that can be polished off in a single
sitting, and when its conclusion finally comes it is every
bit as satisfying as it is (quite literally) heartbreaking.
Just as Xie himself is pieced back together
following his accident, so too is One Love Chigusa an
assemblage of pieces. A kind of MTV-esque ‘greatest
hits’ melange of science-fiction tropes rendered intoa bullet-like, postmodernist package; taken as a whole
it makes a riveting statement as a Frankenstein for our
After-Corona age. Electrifying stuff.§

My Year of Meats

documentary filmmaker working in partnership with
BEEF-EX, a corporation whose aim is to promote thebeauty and health benefits of American meat to Japan.
Through the creation of a new TV series, My American
Wife!, Jane travels across the country in search of “model
housewives” for her Japanese audience. Wives whose
concern is no longer ‘old-fashioned consumerism’
but ‘contemporary wholesome values’ like providing‘good, nourishing food for her entire family. And thatmeans meat.’
Running parallel to this is the story of Akiko Ueno,a shy manga-artist in Japan and new wife to John, adeeply misogynistic employee of BEEF-EX. From her
naivety and ingrained ideologies, she enters into thisabusive relationship with the expectation to purely
cook and conceive for her husband. Without this aim,
she is useless. Through each segment of My American
Wife!, Akiko’s eyes are soon opened to alternativeby Ruth Ozeki
translated by Michael Brase
Viking Press (1998, first edition)
ISBN-13: 978-0670879045
Review by Azmina Sohail
If you’ve read any work by Ruth
Ozeki, you know that her writing
has the power to draw you into her world. “Ozekiland”,
as she likes to call it. A world that teaches us that time
travel is possible, Zen Buddhism is strangely familiar
and the curious lives of Japanese schoolgirls are aforce to be reckoned with. In a word, Ozekiland allows
us to discover lives we never knew we needed and My
Year of Meats is no exception.
In true Ozeki-style, the story is two-fold. We
are first introduced to Jane, a Japanese-American
Latest reviews: www.japansociety.org.uk/reviews

5possibilities of living in the world and having a family.
For Akiko, Jane’s housewives are perfect; a sweet young
mother with a picture perfect family (and a husbands
dark secret), a flamboyant Southern farmer, (whosemeat consumption has disturbing consequenceson her child’s development), and a black vegetarian
woman (whose lesbian lifestyle is still taboo in Japan).
Akiko slowly discovers her true desires and what
fertility really means to her.
When Ozeki writes, it’s clear she knows what she’s
talking about. As a Japanese-Canadian herself, sheintertwines her facts with her fiction creating candidcharacters that highlight the difficulties of cultural
assimilation between consumerist America andtraditional Japanese approaches to family. Both Janeand Akiko are on paths of self-discovery that, throughfate and time (occurring themes in Ozeki’s writing)bring them a step closer to each other. Each woman
learns to acknowledge and accept their past in orderto take control of their future. Their journeys prove tobe perfectly imperfect and illustrate the heterogeneityof the female experience in the modern world.
The story also sheds light on the link between dietand fertility, particularly in the case of the “mad cow
disease” or BSE (Bovine spongiform encephalopathy) of
the 90’s, whose outbreak effected meat consumption in
the UK, US and Japan. During the late 80’s, a case of BSE
was confirmed in the UK, a new disease found in cattle.
Fear that this could be transmitted to humans in the formof Vcjd (a slow-degenerative disease), consumption of

specific offal was banned and 3.7 million cattle weredestroyed. Despite these precautions, human cases
were eventually identified and found to be the causesof death. Eventually, media attention dissipated and the
supposed threat of the disease disappeared. Now, overtwo decades later, can we confirm that our attention tomeat consumption has changed?
Thanks to the rise of social media, health has
now become something to be celebrated, questioned
and investigated. More attention has been placed on
British grown food, organic farming and veganism
and consumers have started to ask questions. My Yearof Meats asks us to transfer these concerns to meat.
Much like Jane’s housewives who toil over adorningand decorating their meat to produce an appetising
meal, the same attention needs to be placed on thecare of cattle. How are they kept? What is their dietlike? How are they slaughtered? If we are becoming a
fast-paced, no-nonsense and lethargic society, then so
is our food and our attention to it.
My Year of Meats is essentially a story of thehuman life and the human body. It asks us to question
what it means to be a woman, what we put in ourbodies and how our offspring will value themselves ina world we create. It teaches us that time is not only
healing but changing. Fertility and food now comein various forms and no two experiences will be thesame. These notions are not just about comfort, but
personal progress and happiness; two notions integral
to every humans journey of self-discovery.§Japanese Prints: The Collection of Vincent
van Goghholding true and tangible value in its aesthetic design
and intellectual property.
In the first chapter, Louis van Tilborgh (professorof Art History at the University of Amsterdam andsenior researcher at the Van Gogh Museum) provides
a brief biography of Van Gogh. In the winter of 1886-7,
Van Gogh bought 660 sheets of Japanese art for trade;
33 years old, poor (thus having to share a Parisianapartment with his brother Theo, who regarded
Vincent as constantly involved in ‘the most impossible
and highly unstable love affairs’) and addicted tobrandy and absinthe, Van Gogh was hoping tocapitalise on the Japonisme that was in vogue
amongst France’s commercialised middle class. With
Japan having been hermetically sealed for decades,
there was an immense interest in its culture from the1850s onwards in France (although to a lesser extent
in Van Gogh’s native Holland). Later in the text, Chris
Uhlenbeck (Japanese art dealer and curator) discusses

Edited by Axel Rüger and Marije
Vellekoop
Van Gogh Museum, Thames andHudson, 2018
ISBN-13: 978-0500239896
Review by Beau Waycott
Published by the Van Gogh
Museum,Amsterdam,toaccompany their 2018 exhibition Van Gogh & Japan,
Japanese Prints: The Collection of Vincent van Gogh is
a collection of enriching essays detailing Van Gogh’s
relationship with Japanese art and the influence it hadover him. Accompanied by beautiful, full-colour prints
of both European and Japanese works, this is an art
book that serves as more than a coffee-table piece,
6

Issue 89 Volume 15 Number 5 (October 2020)

Van Gogh’s connection with Siegfried Bing, a Japanese
art specialist who founded Le Japon Artistique, atrilingual journal on the interwoven relationshipbetween Japanese art and the art noveau movement,
which won Bing friendship and business with great
impressionists such as Claude Monet, Alphonse Mucha
and Paul Gauguin.
Van Gogh found the strong, central use of vibrantcolour in Japanese prints, such as Utagawa Kunisada’s
Actor Tying a Poem Slip to a Cherry Tree (fig. 1),
reflected the more positive life he was aiming to leadin Arles, Provence, as opposed to his earlier use of moresubdued colours when affirming primitivist tropes.
Making a distinct loss on his investment, Van
Gogh left Paris for southern France later in 1888,
writing in a private letter to his brother that he viewed
Provence as just ‘as beautiful as Japan’. One reason forhis move was a desire for a “pure”, more simple society
which Paris just didn’t have. In Holland, Van Gogh had
embraced the aesthetic idealisation of primitivism,
coupled with extreme physical and mental austerity.
In Provence, however, he lived a more light, musicalexistence with gaiety and freedom, and it is thoughtthat the simple and uncomplicated nature of Japanese
prints appealed to Van Gogh’s newly-found buoyancy.
However, in late 1888, Van Gogh suffered a mental
breakdown, leading to the ever-famous self harm of
his ear, housing in an asylum, and later suicide. After
this passage, Uhlenbeck explains how the prints weredispersed over Europe during the late 1800s throughto the mid 20th century, when many prints came into
the passion of the Van Gogh Museum.
The influence of works of nanga, a style madefamous by artists such as Ike no Taiga, can clearly beseen in van Gogh’s The Rock of Montmajour with
Pine Trees (fig. 2), with the use of a reed pen to create
supple and distinct lines and the deft use of thickness
to create depth and perspective.
However, it is the art creating during Van Gogh’s
time in Provence that shows the most influence fromJapanese prints. Appreciating the clear, lucid effectthe prints held, Van Gogh attempted to replicate thedistinct style of succinct and varied brushstrokes, but
found the flat effect this creates difficult to achieve.
As a result, he learned to incorporate more abstain
into both his portraits and (more noticeably) his
landscapes. Van Gogh also borrowed a large part ofhis stenographic vocabulary from nanga (a style ofpainting, also known as bunjinga, popularised in thelate Edo period in which landscapes are depicted in

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Fig. 1 - Actor Tying a Poem Slip to a Cherry Tree, fifth
sheet of the pentaptych Favourites All Together in Full
Flower, Utagawa Kunisada, Edo, 1858, Van Gogh Museum,
Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation).

Fig. 2 - The Rock of Montmajour with Pine Trees, Vincent vanGogh, Arles, 1888.

basic strokes of monochrome ink), and began to workin dots, dashes, hatchings and short strokes of ink.
Uhlenbeck argues that the use of colour in Japanese
prints had the greatest impact over Van Gogh, citing his
detest at the fashion for agréablement jaunis (literally‘agreeably yellowed’, it was an artificial patina whereby
7dealers would bleach prints or soak them in tea to dull
the colours, as preferred by French buyers, something
Van Gogh did to not one of his prints). However, for an
impressionist so interested in colour, Uhlenbeck has afascinating passage on how there is no written evidence
that Van Gogh ever remarked on the special effects
used in Japanese prints, such as bokashi (graduatedcolour) or karazuki (also known as ‘blind painting’, a kindof gaufrage that adds patterns of relief to the paper orwood). Van Gogh wrote many letters about his Japanese
prints, making it strange that he never remarked, forexample, on Hiroshige’s use of bokashi to juxtapose
reds, greens and blues, or the striking 3-D effect thatkarazuki gives to the hems of kimonos.
Whilst the successful use of bokashi to celebrate
sublime stillness is evident in both Utagawa
Hiroshige’s The Residence with Plum Trees at Kameido(fig. 3) and Van Gogh’s Flowering Plum Orchard (after
Hiroshige) (fig. 4), Gogh never acknowledged any
kind of interest in the traditional Japanese technique.
Furthermore, Uhlenbeck also notes that, especially fora collection purchased for trade, Van Gogh’s prints are
strangely uniform, consisting primarily of portraits,
and to a lesser extent landscapes, with over 40%
of his pieces showing women (far more when you
consider onnagata –male actors playing female roles
in kabuki– a distinction Van Gogh is unlikely to havebeen able to make). Interestingly, Van Gogh did not
own any shunga (erotic prints) or warrior prints, bothof which were extremely fashionable at the time; hiskachoga (prints of birds and flowers) collection was
also very limited. Following this, Uhlenbeck details
the distinctive printing techniques used, and Shigeru
Oikawa provides an insight into the Western interest inchirimen-e (crépons) and the craftsmanship involved intheir production, which is a well-appreciated addition,
as this is a field uncommonly discussed in art literature.
Overall, Japanese Prints: The Collection of Vincent
van Gogh is a rewarding book that deftly balances
erudite and engaging writings with beautifully
reproduced prints, including works of Van Gogh,
Hokusai, Hiroshige and Kunisada. All images are fullsize, and there has been no cropping or other digitalmanipulation, which adds to the thoughtful aestheticof the book, which is truly beautiful, with each glossy
page detailing fascinating intellectual material
alongside exquisite artworks. Despite it’s relatively
high price, the book will leave you with a warm feeling,
the kind of feeling only the most delicate combinationof stimulating, precise words coupled magnificent,pan-continental artwork creates.§Fig. 3 - The Residence with Plum Trees at Kameido, from theseries One Hundred Viewsof Famous Places in Edo, Utagawa
Hiroshige, Edo, 1857, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam(Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

Fig. 4 - Flowering Plum Orchard (after Hiroshige), Vincent vanGogh, Paris, 1887, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam(Vincent van Gogh Foundation).