Posted by John Fiorillo on August 19, 1998 at 12:26:10:
In Reply to: Q's on calendars posted by Pat on August 19, 1998 at 10:59:11:
: I have two questions on calendars. The first is whether anyone can provide information on the availability of a good quality calendar featuring Ukiyo-e prints. (Such a calendar would allow those of us who like to view the prints without having to frame them).
: My second question is based on a comment I read that calendars were outlawed in Japan during some part of the 19th century. I was wondering if anyone would know the reason for such a ban?
RESPONSE from JF:
I am not aware of a general ban against "calendars" during the Edo period. Could you be referring to the restrictions on publishing calendar prints (egoyomi)? From 1604 until 1872 Japan relied on a lunar-solar calendar based on sixty-year cycles derived from the Chinese system. Months were twenty-nine or thirty days long ("short" and "long" months), and their order was fixed annually by the government. Only officially licensed publishers could legally issue calendars, although such calendars were copied in altered form and distributed privately as gifts at the New Year. In addition, unsanctioned egoyomi were issued by unlicensed print publishers, mostly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (though a few are known as early as 1686). Egoyomi influenced the development of nishiki-e ("brocade prints," that is, full-color ukiyo-e prints). For example, Harunobu’s early prints in the 1760s included egoyomi. The relationship between egoyomi and privately printed surimono was also an important one – in the 1760s surimono were called "daishô surimono" or "large-small" (= long-short) surimono indicating that one purpose for printing them was their use as calendar prints.
Ukiyo-e artists worked into their egoyomi designs the designations for the long and short months, often in quite clever ways. There has been a long-held belief regarding the apparent "hiding" of the indications for the long and short months in egoyomi (like working the characters for the long months into a textile design and the short months into a landscape or an accompanying poem), but this device probably had more to do with clever design than with clandestine calendrical distribution. It seems that as long as it did not get out of hand, the authorities looked the other way and allowed limited and private distribution of egoyomi.
There is a lot more to be said on the subject. If it is of some interest to you, refer perhaps to M. Forrer: Egoyomi and Surimono – Their Development and History (Uithoorn 1979), or R. Keyes: The Art of Surimono: Privately Published Japanese Woodblock Prints and Book in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (London 1985).