Melodrama in Meiji Japan: The NLA Clough collection of woodblock printed frontispieces (kuchi-e)

Recent scholarship of the Japanese print has considered the woodblock-printed frontispieces (kuchi-e) produced for novels and literary magazines of the Meiji period (1868-1912). Interest in them not only extends to the role that they played as illustrations to emerging genres of Japanese literary fiction but also to their artistic merit, since many were printed to a high standard and as reflections of the changing trends in Japanese woodblock-printed imagery and in the art world during the Meiji era.

From 2011 to his death in 2014 a collection of over 600 kuchi-e dating from the late 1890s to the 1920s was donated to the NLA by the retired Sydney academic Professor Richard Clough. The Clough collection comprises works by over twenty-seven artists. This, together with the range and subjects of kuchi-e in the collection, offers a representative sampling of the entire woodblock-printed kuchi-e tradition. This talk will introduce the Clough collection, alongside recent scholarship on kuchi-e profiled in the exhibition.

Gary Hickey is a curator and scholar of Japanese art. He sits is on the directorial board of the Tokyo-based International Ukiyo-e Society. 

Image: Tomioka Eisen (1864-1905), A Wife’s Heart (Tsuma no kokoro), 1901 (detail). Pictures Collection, nla.pic-vn5744662