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• 1 2020-03-14T03:40:14+00:00 The Ubume in The Illustrated Demons Night Parade 15 plain 2020-04-13T18:55:26+00:00 In 1776, Toriyama Sekien wrote the first of his Gazu Hyakki Yagyō series (Hundred Demons’ Night Parade). A collection of four illustrated encyclopedias, today the works are accredited as a leading factor behind the rise in popularity of yōkai from the Edo period (1603-1868) onward. Whereas yōkai had previously been visually depicted on scrolls for the wealthy or well-connected to view or own, Sekien inserted them into popular culture. Born into a prestigious hereditary line of obosu (high-ranking servants of the Shogun), the artist applied the formal Kano painting techniques the position taught him onto his mass-produced books, “[unleashing] an easily referenced database of the yōkai upon the population at large” (Yoda and Alt ix).
  
  
  Sekien’s works reflect a larger trend of commercialization occurring in Japan. As warfare moved from daily reality to historical memory, literacy and learning spread across classes and helped foster a vibrant Genroku culture (Mansfield 37). The Genroku—or early Edo period—was known for its arts, part of which included a burgeoning publishing industry as it adopted the more affordable woodblock printing that Sekien would use. As Japan isolated and strove toward developing a national identity, many of the pieces published included almanacs, guidebooks, and encyclopedias, all of which were encouraged by the rise of neo-Confucianism. 
  
  A strain of thought promoted by Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542–1616), the founder of the shogun, according to neo-Confucianism, there is a true reality, and “through the careful examination of all things…order can be achieved both personally and politically (Foster 32-33). Ieyasu used this strain of thought to defend the strict class hierarchy he enforced in Japan, promoting Confucian doctrines that supported his feudal values and the authority he and rulers should have over the masses (Hein 46). While illustrated encyclopedias had a long history in China (several of which Ieyasu would import), it was not until the rise of neo-Confucianism in the unified Edo state that they gained traction in Japan. Considered the first illustrated encyclopedia in Japan, the Kinmozui, or the Collected Illustrations to Instruct the Unenlightened,  sought to introduce “people to things they might not otherwise know about and [acquaint] them with the ‘proper’ names of thing for which they might know only a local term” (Foster 35). Given the centralized power structure of the shogun, it would prove beneficial for the rulers to endorse texts that helped assimilate different regional knowledge bases.
  
  While Sekien may have used a favorite form of the shogun, by populating it with yōkai—figures which are by definition uncategorizable—he points out the artificiality of classifications. As Foucault states in The Order of Things, “that which is given in things as their inner law, the hidden network that determines the way they confront one another, and also that which has no existence except in the grid created by a glance…” (xx). Particularly as the wealth of some merchants began to surpass their social status and even that of some of the samurai, many artists were aware of the contradictions embedded within the shogun's hierarchy and often used their work to critique it. However, because such critiques could result in jail time or more severe punishment, they often relied on poetic allusions, ghost stories, ancient history, and monsters to make their point.
  
  Whereas in the more segmented Japan of before, each region may have had its own iterations of ghosts and monsters, more and more, such creatures relocated to Edo (today's Tokyo) where both the shogun and merchants resided. Here, the city was divided into high and low: the High City which—with its natural springs and well-watered gardens—belonging to the warrior class, and the Low City belonging to merchants, craftsmen, artisan, and the lower classes (Mansfield 27). Sekien’s title for his work mirrors this shift from 'natural' to 'urban' landscape, “Gazu Hyakki Yagyō” referring to the myth in which it is said one hundred yōkai would invade the city of Kyoto. 
  
  The myth that appears in several setsuwa collections may have relied on Kyoto (where the emperor resided) as its setting; however, had it been conceptualized during Sekien's time, it too likely would have relocated to Edo where bustling industry replaced the undeveloped territory that was once the yōkai's habitat. Because yōkai “are not controlled by and are therefore usually harmful to humans” (Komastu 15), people typically can remain safe from them by avoiding their territory. However, by 1700, most of Japan's land had been developed, its resources exploited as much as possible: “the archipelago could sustain no more than the 30 million humans then resident, given their levels of material consumption and the technology and social organization of the day” (Totman 175).  There were no shadows left in the land for the yōkai to hide.
  
  Such exploitation by the elite made them particularly susceptible to the yōkai's wrath. During Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, it's understood to be fatal for nobility to look upon the yōkai, elite families like the Fujiwara turning away afraid or upset by having been shown it. Parallels to such a response can again be found during Sekien's period as the elite averted their eyes away from the damage they were causing the land and its people. Because of massive land clearance, population growth, and construction boom, Japan had to substitute coal for wood in order to meet Japan's construction and fuel means. Coal mining not only resulted in inferior products--its "user mostly [employing] it from necessity rather than choice” (Totman 174)--but polluted the downstream rice fields, and, as it advanced, "rendered potable water poisonous for humans and animals, fouled irrigation systems, thereby poisoning rice crops, and killed fish and diverse coastal marine life” (Totman 172). The villagers would protest the opening of new mines only to be met with "bakuhan authorities [who] would avert their eyes to the damage, commonly siding with mine operators, who provided the government with the metal it needed" (Totman 172).
  
  As the state of the land grew more and more toxic, so did the representation of the ubume. In Sekien’s entry on her, he uses the label in an earlier scholarly encyclopedia titled the Wakan Sansaizue, which depicts the ubume according to her Chinese interpretation—as the ubume-dori, or ubume-bird. Regarded as an evil deity, in this version, it is said when the ubume puts on feathers, she turns into a bird, and when she takes them off, she turns into a woman: “For this reason, the bird has breasts and takes pleasure in snatch people’s children and making them its own (Shimazaki 201). However, unlike the Wakan sansaizue, which shows an image of a bird for the ubume, Sekien illustrates her according to her Japanese form—that of a sorrowful woman standing in the river and clutching her child. The juxtaposition of the Chinese characters against what would otherwise be a traditional Japanese depiction of the ubume offers several parallels to society, including the increasing globalization necessitated by Japan's growing industry and the increased risks for children who would be inheriting this polluted land. 
  
  The expanding impact of humans on the land aligns further with an artistic movement in which Sekien belonged to known as "grotesque." According to Michelle Li, "The grotesque body is not separated from the rest of the world…The stress is laid on those parts of the body that are open to the outside world, that is, the parts through which the world enters the body or emerges from it" (43). While many artists used this style to critique the strict class orders, today, with our understandings of the Anthropocene, we can see how easily it can be applied to the relationship between humans and their environment. In Sekien’s illustration, he blurs the bottom of the ubume into the river, nothing to indicate any separation between her and the water below.
  Nevertheless, while Sekien may have intended his encyclopedia to critique artificial orders, he abetted in the creation of new one, becoming Japan's “most authoritative test on the subject” (Yoda and Alt viii) and a leader in Japan’s new commercialized society. Sekien even refers to this market-driven world in his preface, noting that, despite his “embarrassment” at the “unworthiness” of his illustrations, he continues to present them to satisfy consumer demand (Foster 70). In this commercial boom, Sekien and many other merchants found his successes that allowed them to live on spacious parts the streets their class title may not have otherwise allowed. But not all were so fortunate. Common people lived in squalor and “[craved] all manner of diversion and [preferred] to spend the little money they had on pleasures and aesthetically pleasing possessions than to save for an uncertain future” (Mansfield 28). Rather than face the monsters of their new industrial environment, people turned to the monsters that felt almost nostalgic now in their hidden crevices of the land.  
  
  As the land continued to decline, people needed more distractions, not understanding that their want for such distractions pushed for a world in which they would need more and more of them. And the ubume—no longer relegated to her post in Watari—transformed from a regional to national figure where she found great demand in this new order of consumerism.