Santō Kyōden

At 55 years old, Santō Kyōden physical status not available right now. We will update Santō Kyōden's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Ukiyo-e

Kyōden began his career by studying ukiyo-e or woodblock prints which typically depicted "the floating world" of the Yoshiwara under Kitao Shigemasa (北尾 重政), and began illustrating kibyōshi under the pseudonym Kitao Masanobu (北尾 政寅). He began his professional career by illustrating the works of other authors.

His visual artwork is held in several museums, including the Harvard Art Museum, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the University of Michigan Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, the British Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the Yale University Art Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Chazen Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Kibyōshi

In the 1780s, he began writing kibyōshi or "yellow covered" picture books under the name Santō Kyōden. Several of these works are written by Santō Kyōden and illustrated by Kitao Masanobu. His works gained popularity in 1785. One of his most popular works during this time was Edo umare uwaki no kabayaki or "Playboy, Grilled Edo Style" or "Playboy, a la Edo." In this work the main character, Enjirō, is drawn with a pig's nose that became a distinctive feature of Kyōden's illustrations. It is commonly referred to as the "Kyōden nose." Kyōden often depicts himself and his tobacco shop in his works. At the end of Edo umare uwaki no kabayaki, it turns out that Enjirō commissioned Kyōden to write his story. Kyōden wrote thirteen kibyōshi in 1793. Kyōden continued to write kibyōshi until the eventual decline of the genre due to censorship laws during the Kansei Reforms.

Sharebon

Kyōden's first sharebon or "book of manners" was published in 1785. Sharebon acted as guidebooks for how to act in the Yoshiwara. In 1789, Kyōden was punished for his illustrations in Koku bykau mizukagami by Ishibe Kinko. This work displeased authorities and resulted in Kyōden being fined for his illustrations. Following his punishment, Kyōden continued to illustrate, but only his own works. This was not the only punishment Kyōden faced as two years later, Kyōden was handcuffed for fifty days because of three sharebon he wrote. Although there are disagreements as to what the government had an issue with. David Atherton, assistant Professor of East Asian languages and civilizations at Harvard University, in his essay The Author as Protagonist claims that the works were "deemed to contain indecent material" and Kyōden's punishment reflected a "moral connection between author and book that differentiated his position from the others that were punished." During the Kansei Reforms, the bakufu tried to hold artists and publishers accountable for works that they considered to be "harmful to society" for various reasons, such as depicting the Yoshiwara. It is believed that his punishment was used to make an example out of him and to scare off smaller, less famous writers from writing offending material. Adam Kern, professor of Japanese literature and visual culture at the University of Wisconsin, in his extensive thesis Blowing Smoke: Tobacco pouches, literary squibs, and authorial puffery in the pictorial comic fiction, argues that Kyōden was punished not because of the material present within Kyōden's sharebon, but because of a technicality. Due to the nature of these types of works, writers and publishers would often omit their names. During the Kansei Reforms, however, writers and publishers were required to display their names on the cover of the book, something which Kyōden and had failed to do with the three offending sharebon. However, these rules were rarely enforced and thus inconsistent as a result.

Kyōden was not the only one punished however. Kyōden's father was also reprimanded. The two censors who had approved the books were not only fined, but they were also banished from Edo. The publisher of Kyōden's three offending works, Tsutaya Jūzaburō (also commonly referred to as Tsutaju), had half of his assets seized by the government as Kyōden's works violated publishing edicts during the Kansei Reforms. Immediately following his punishment, Tsutaju issued a public apology and admitted that he pressured Kyōden into releasing those works. Kyōden himself was hesitant in releasing them due to the content of them. It would seem that Kyōden was trying to avoid punishments as the punishment he faced two years ago was still fresh in his mind. In Tsutaju's preface majime naru kojo to Kyōden's Hakoiri musume men'ya ningyo, Tsutaju also implied that this incident deeply upset Kyōden to the point where he wanted to take a temporary break from writing. Ironically, this caused sales of Kyōden's works to increase because rumors spread that Kyōden was never going to write again and Tsutaju capitalized on these rumors by reissuing second editions of Kyōden's most popular kibyoshi. As a result, Kyōden stopped writing gesaku or "playful writings" shortly thereafter.

Yomihon

Following his punishment in 1791, Kyōden shifted to yomihon or "books for reading." Yomihon are known for being large scale and for being more dramatic and didactic rather than episodic and humorous like many of the works Kyōden had previously written. Kyōden's first yomihon was Tzuzoku Taiseiden or the "Popular Biography of Confucious." In the autumn of that year, Kyokutei Bakin, who would later go on to write Nansō Satomi Hakkenden, or "Tale of Eight Dogs," was made Kyōden's apprentice.

Overall Career

It is estimated that over the course of Kyōden's career, Kyōden was involved in approximately 200 unique pieces. He is estimated to have written 125 of them himself. Although this number may be bloated because reissues may be included as well. The way in which Kyōden was paid for his writings was different from the way in which other writers at the time were paid. Most authors of the time were paid a "nominal fee" if their works were to gain popularity, but Kyōden was paid "regularly on a manuscript-for-fee basis." The problem with this however, was that when Tsutaju reissued second editions of Kyōden's most famous works, he did not get paid for those, because he was only paid for the manuscript. Adam Kern argues that most of the writers during this time were more concerned with establishing themselves as an identifiable brand first and then writing derivative literature. Within his works, Kyōden would present the image he wanted his readers to have of him as a writer. He would describe in detail the struggles he faced, such as struggling to meet deadlines and trying to constantly produce new writings for his publishers. There is great contention as to whether pieces written by Kyōden and other writers were plagiarized, however Kern argues that it was conventional at the time for works to be derivative and that Kyōden "appreciated this predicament, reveled in it, and even flaunted it in his kibyōshi."

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