Bulletin du Centre Franco-Japonais d'Histoire des Sciences (Kitakyushu-Paris), Vol. 13(2):50-59 (2019)
日仏科学史資料センター紀要

ISSN 1882-3548 (online), 1882-353X (CD-ROM)―Museum Report―
Witnessing the Anthropocenic sceneries in Kitakyushu city through theartworks by Shikō Munakata, a woodblock-printmaker: A Report on
the Special Exhibition at Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History and
Human History
Tomonori Kawano1,2,3,4,5
1
2

Graduate School of Environmental Engineering, The University of Kitakyushu, Kitakyushu, Japan;

University of Florence LINV Kitakyushu Research Center (LINV@Kitakyushu), Kitakyushu, Japan;
3

Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History and Human History, Kitakyushu, Japan;
4

5

RIKEN Center for Advanced Photonics, Wako, Saitama, Japan;

Université Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Institut des Energies de Demain, Paris, France(kawanotom@kitakyu-u.ac.jp)

Abstract
As one of emerging fields of interdisciplinary studies focusing on the environmental
changes, “ecocriticism” connects the study of literature and the environment from aninterdisciplinary point of view. Interestingly, scholarly trends in ecocriticism are gradually
expanding the corpus from literatures to other forms of arts. Today, we live in the newest
geochronological epoch “Anthropocene” and facing the onset of anthropogenic climate changes,
and thus, recent ecocriticism started to deal with the emerging concept of Anthropocene. In thisshort report, the artworks (woodcut prints) by Shikō Munakata, one of the most renowned
woodblock printmakers, as models for ecocritical art corpus recording the changes in scenery andlandscapes reflecting the industrial growth of Kitakyushu city and surrounding areas possiblyreflecting the early phase, the great divergence, and the sustainable phases of Anthropocene inJapan (and Asia).
Keywords: Anthropocene, arts, ecocriticism, industrial history, museum, Kitakyushu.
Kawano, T. (2019) Witnessing the Anthropocenic sceneries in Kitakyushu city through the artworks by
Shikō Munakata, a woodblock-printmaker: A Report on the Special Exhibition at Kitakyushu Museumof Natural History and Human History. Bull. Cent. Fran. Jpn. Hist. Sci. Vol. 13(2): 50-59.

50Introduction: Literature as the measures of environmental changes. How about
artworks?
As one of emerging fields of interdisciplinary studies focusing on the environmental changes,“ecocriticism” connects the study of literature and the environmental issues from an interdisciplinary
point of view by reexamining the texts in the literatures, even Shakespeare (1564-1616), for illustrating
the historical changes in environmental states and concerns (Estok, 2005). In the United States,
Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) is hosting and leading the field,
through organizing biennial conference opened for the scholars handling and discussing theenvironmental matters in literature (Glotfelty and Fromm, 1996).
It is widely considered that the pioneering work by Meeker (1974) entitled “The Comedy ofSurvival” should be credited as the founding study in the field of literary ecology which is “the studyof biological themes and relationship which appear in literary works (Glotfelty and Fromm, 1996),”attempting to study the relationship between the literary arts and scientific ecology. In the first edition
of “The Comedy of Survival” Meeker also attempted to discover what roles have been played byliterature in the ecology of human species (Glotfelty and Fromm, 1996).
In the latest edition (Meeker, 1997), Meeker expanded the corpus for his consideration fromclassical pure literary works such as Dante (1265-1321) and Shakespeare to the works of modern
naturalists (researchers and writers) such as E. O. Wilson (1929-) who is known as the father ofsociobiology with enthusiasm for biological and sociological behaviors of insects (chiefly, ants). In
his latest work, Meeker considered comedy and tragedy as the form of adaptive behavior in the natural
world which promote us for survival, and such behavior is viewed to be shaped under influence byliterature, he eventually introduced the idea of a play ethic, as opposed to a work ethic. In a series ofworks, Meeker emphasized the importance of play as a necessary and desirable component of the
comic spirit.
In Japan, the scholarly trends for literary ecology or ecocriticism have been imported from theUnited States in the middle of the 1990s and was gradually accepted by Japanese scholars (Yuki, 2014).
Interestingly, Yuki (2014) viewed that the association between literature and nature is so deeply
imprinted in the Japanese mind, thus, plenty of descriptions or expressions reflecting the changing
environmental parameters surrounding the authors of literatures could be mined out through criticaltext reading. If the-above-mentioned proposition noted by Yuki can be considered to be true, there
should be additional historical records, descriptions, or expressions of environmental and ecologicalstatus to be uncovered from non-professional Japanese authors of daily records such as diary and nonliterature Japanese artworks such as drawings, paintings, printings, and sculptures, while ecocriticism
generally covers the purely literally artworks and play texts.

51

Ecocriticism and Anthropocene
We are currently working on the emerging issues related to Anthropocene by forming an
academic group named Anthropocene Research Club (ARC) (Kawano, 2019a). As we have discussed
in the previous articles appeared in this media (Kawano, 2019a,b; Kawaguchi, 2019; Nakao and
Kawano, 2019), today, we are facing the realistic environmental problems possibly determining thefate of Earth in the critical time point in the future along with the geochronological time scale as
Eugene Stoermer and Paul Crutzen (Revkin, 2011; Steffen et al., 2011) have coined the term
“Anthropocene” in order to point out that there must be a key difference between the 120 century-old
Holocene and the recent 250 years including the present time that we live in today, in which we areapparently facing the onset of anthropogenic climate changes. Since the concept of Anthropocene is
attractive, one may be interested in how ecocriticism deals with this emerging concept of
Anthropocene.
Interestingly, Buell (2016) has sketched an Anthropocene-triggered “panic” among theecocriticism specialists. Buell has critically stated that ecocriticism’s recent interdisciplinary
maturation has shifted its position even stronger position than ever before and environmental
humanists believe that they have valuable contributions to make to re-thinking and re-dressing
excessive nature of human activities in Anthropocene. Buell (2016) has strongly insisted that ecocritics (and environmental humanists) have unfortunately foregone a key opportunity as scholars
avoided the controversial issue of unsustainable human population growth (1) as a sociohistoricalphenomenon and (2) an impetus to creative imagination.
According to Clark (2015), the 21st century has seen an increased awareness of the forms ofenvironmental destruction that cannot immediately be seen and localized. Clark (2015) further
explored the possibility of an alternative mode of critical practice, tightly engaged with the destructive
force of the global environmental crisis. From the literature-based and culture-based eco-critical pointof views, he argued that the concept of Anthropocene represents a threshold at which modes ofinterpretation that once seemed sufficient or progressive become inadequate or even latently
destructive.
Corrigan (2016) has reviewed the-above-mentioned work by Clark. He pointed that “we havealready heard much about this threshold’s dangers: rising temperatures, rising sea levels, and worse”
by citing the Clark’s view that Anthropocene as the epoch at which human impacts have passed adangerous threshold. Corrigan continued that “Clark probes the threshold’s imponderability, its
messiness and multiplicity. However, although thresholds are the book’s pivotal concept, Clark does
little to reflect directly on thresholds as thresholds” suggesting that there should be clear discussion
on the nature of threshold (Corrigan, 2016).
In our previous articles, the author and a colleague (i) employed the population dynamics for52

discussing the thresholds for human population as sociohistorical phenomenon in Anthropocene(Kawano, 2019a,b), (ii) proposed the dissection of all known parameters of Anthropocene, into two
types, namely, the parameters being convergent (thus, obviously approaching the limits or thresholds)
and the rest of parameters seem to be divergent (Kawano, 2019a), (iii) argued that slowing of theconverging parameters reflecting the finiteness of resources or the presence of capacity size limit of
the ecosystem is urgently required in order to avoid the catastrophic outcomes in the ecosystem(Kawano, 2019a), and (iv) proposed a possible periodization within Anthropocene in Asia (Nakao and
Kawano, 2019).
Today, Anthropocene experts (Steffen et al., 2004, 2011) consider that Anthropocene can bedissected into the early phase (initial 170 years following the industrial revolution) and the Great
Divergence (outbreak of economy and anthropogenic impacts after WWII). Here, the author
reconfirmed the periodization proposed in our previous article (Nakao and Kawano, 2019) that
Anthropocene has already entered into the third sub-epoch reflecting the shift to greener andsustainable society, from the year (2000) when the term Anthropocene was coined by two scientists.
The author view that the impact of the terminology with the concept of threshold for human survival
was unignorable in determining the behavior of the public. Therefore, in this latest sub-epoch of
Anthropocene, setting of the realistic and sustainable target levels/goals for the diverging parameters
is highly important.

Kitakyushu as a model city for studying the onset of Anthropocene in Asia and for
discussing the sustainable society
Anthropocene obviously started from the beginning of industrial revolution (in England), whichbecame largely visible due to acceleration of the accumulation of emitted materials or chemicals which
are listed as the characteristic parameters of the epoch of anthropogenic impacts (Briggs, 1979;
Cossons and Trinder, 1979). Our group (ARC) views that the beginning of Anthropocene in Asia could
be dated back to 1901, the year marking the launch of the first steal making facility at the nationowned Yawata Steel Works constructed in Kitakyushu area for the first time in Asia (Nakao and
Kawano, 2019). Since then, Japan and neighboring Asian countries entered into Anthropocene with
120 years of delay after the European one.
Furthermore, after analyzing the demographic changes and the industrial structural changes in
Kitakyushu city, we concluded that Kitakyushu city can be viewed as a model city not only as theorigin of Asian Anthropocene, but also as a blue-print model for future societies in the world alongwith the shift towards the truly long-lasting sustainable civilization. As discussed in the previous
section, we have proposed a trisected periodization of Anthropocene in Japan and Asia into the early(1991-1950; corresponding to the half century prior to the World War II), the middle (1951-2000; the53

post-war half century reflecting the great divergence of Anthropocene) and the late ages (2001-present
or future; including coming future years characterized by intensive, greener, and sustainable humanefforts).

Shikō Munakata, A traveling witnessof Japanese sceneries
Shikō Munakata (1903-1975) born in
Aomori prefecture, Japan,
internationallyrenowned

was a most
woodblockprintmaker in Showa era in Japan (Yanagi,
1991; Kawai, 2002). Accordingly, his activities
have been largely associated with the woodcuts
made under Sōsaku-Hanga (creative printingarts) movement and the Mingei (folk art)
movement.

His

artworks

also

cover

watercolors, calligraphy, oil paintings, andcalligraphy (Kawai, 2002). In 1970, Munakata
was awarded the Order of Culture from
Emperor Hirohito (Showa), which is the highest
honor in the arts in Japan. In addition to his
popularity oversea, his artworks are highly

Fig. 1. The official poster of the special exhibition

favored by people in Japan. A number ofat Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History andmuseums all over Japan maintain the collection

Human History, entitled “From Kyushu! A

of the artworks made my Munakata, chiefly,

journey of Shikō Munakata. The rediscovery of his

Munakata collections at museums in Aomori

footsteps and interaction” held between October(Shikō Munakata memorial hall at Aomori

12th and December 1st, 2019. Image was obtained

prefecturalfromMuseum),Kurashiki(OharaMuseum of Art), and Toyama (Shikō Munakata

thewebsiteofthemuseum(http://www.kmnh.jp/event/290/)

memorial hall, Nanto Fukumitsu Art Museum)
are well known.
Two years after Munakata was awarded the "Prize of Excellence" at the Second International
Print Exhibition held in Lugano, Switzerland (Yanagi, 1991), Munakata was invited to perform a seriesof exhibitions in 1954, in former Kokura city (today, known as the center of Kitakyushu city), whichmarks the beginning of the series of Munakata’s exhibitions in Kyushu Island (according to
explanation at the Special Exhibition at Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History and Human History).
54

Yaskawa Electric Corporation based in Kitakyushu city (established in 1915 and developed along withthe growth of Kitakyushu industrial region) made a significant effort for inviting Munakata to
Kitakyushu. His visit was followed by continuous support for Munakata’s activities by Yaskawa
Electric Corporation. Under financial supports from Yaskawa Electric Corporation, Munakata
travelled all over Japan and abstracted the sceneries into the artworks mostly in the form of woodcuts(Special Exhibition at Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History and Human History).
Here, after inspiration from the woodblock-prints made by Shikō Munakata which are presented
at a special exhibition at Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History and Human History entitled “FromKyushu! A journey of Shikō Munakata. The rediscovery of his footsteps and interaction (九州発！棟方志功の旅 彫り起こされた足跡と交流)” (from October 12th, 2019 to December 1st, 2019), theauthor wishes to consider a variety of artworks other than literature and plays as additional corpus of
ecocriticism.
The colored artwork known as “Takeda-Kyo no Saku (1970)” (Exhibition No. 40-13) shows two
engineers in typical blue-gray-colored uniforms of Yaskawa Electric Corporation (Mr. Sumiji Ohki
and Mr. Yanosuke Miwa) who were continuously guiding Munakata in Northern Kyushu area. In the
exhibition in Kitakyushu, craftworks such as handmade ceramic tea bowls gifted from Mr. Miwa to
Munakata were presented. These private materials suggest the tight relationship between Munakata
and members of Yaskawa Electric Corporation.

Exhibition on the works of Shikō Munakata organized by the history department of
the museum but not in the art museum
Kitakyushu city has both the art museum (Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art; URL:
http://www.kmma.jp/) and the historical museum (Kitakyushu Museum of Natural History and Human
History; URL: http://www.kmnh.jp/english/). We need to think of the reason and significance of thespecial exhibition of the artworks by Shikō Munakata held in 2019 at Kitakyushu Museum of Natural
History and Human History, but not in the art museum. As the title of the exhibition emphasizes “Ajourney” and “rediscovery of his footsteps and interaction,” the aim of the curators in charge might be
to highlight the historical aspect of the artist’s activity.
For supporting this view, the curators on behalf of the museum (President, Dr. Kyoichiro Ueda)
highlighted a series of print works by Munakata recording the symbolic sceneries and landscapes in
Kitakyushu city and surrounding areas typical in the Showa era corresponding to the great divergenceof Anthropocene (in the post-war half century), such as a black and white artwork known as “Yo-koro Hifuki no Saku (1954)” based on the sketch of the structure of Higashida First Blast Furnace (Asianfirst Steel-making facility) still active at the time (January 6th, 1954).

55

Fig. 2. Higashida First Blast Furnace as the core of Yawata steel works established in 1901in Yahata-higashi
ward, Kitakyushu symbolizes the industrial revolution in Asia.

Fig. 3. Great Wakato bridge connecting Wakamatsu ward (left) and Tobata ward (right) across the DokaiBay. At that time of construction, the Great Wakato bridge was the biggest suspension bridge in Asia.

In addition, “Yagiyamatouge Botayama no Saku (1970)” (Exhibition No. 40-12; a black andwhite artwork) showing the huge mountain-sized coal-mining spoil tips in Iizuka city shaped just likethree gigantic pyramids, and “Kitakyushu Wakako-Ohashi no Saku (1970)” (Exhibition No. 40-8; a56

black and white artwork), a sight with the
Asian biggest (at that time) great steelmade suspension bridge named the Great
Wakato bridge, which is connecting
Wakamatsu ward and Tobata ward acrossthe Dokai Bay (82.4 m in height, 627 m inlength) form a series of good record oflandscape in Kitakyushu area..
Interestingly, “Mekarigu Tansetsu no
Saku (1970)” (Exhibition No. 40-2)
witnessed the prior to the change in thelandscape above the Kanmon channel
dividing two major islands in Japan,
namely, Kyushu Island and Honshu Island.
The Kanmon Great Bridge (141 m-highsteel-made suspension bridge, across the 1
km-wideKanmonchannel)wasconstructed and opened in 1973 as thelongest suspension bridge in Asia (at thattime), but this black and white print art by
Munakata (Mekarigu Tansetsu no Saku)
clearly sketched the absence of the great
bridge above the channel, suggesting that
Munakata made the sketch of the landscapeon site and witnessed the last moment of
the shrine and the channel just before the 5
year-long great construction work starts (in1968).

Fig. 4. The Kanmon bridge across the Kanmon channel
and the stone lantern belonging to Mekari shrine(viewed from Kyushu side). At that time of
construction, the Kanmon bridge was the longest
suspension bridge in Asia.

Conclusion
Studies in ecocriticism recently covers discussion on Anthropocene and are expanding corpus
from the written literatures to other form of arts. In this report, the artworks (woodcut prints) by Shikō
Munakata as models for ecocritical corpus recording the sceneries and/or landscapes under rapid
industrial growth in Kitakyushu city representing the early phase, the great divergence, and thesustainable phases of Anthropocene in Japan (and Asia).

57

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