Nishimura Yohachi

Nishimuraya Yohachi (dates unknown)[1] was one of the leading publishers of woodblock prints in late 18th Japan.[2] He founded the Nishimuraya Yohachi publishing house, also known as Nishiyo (西与),[3] which operated in Nihonbashi's Bakurochō Nichōme under the shop name Eijudō. The firm's exact dates are unclear, but many art historians date its activity to between c. 1751 and 1860.[4][5]

Eijudō Hibino at Seventy-one
Portrait by Utagawa Toyokuni I commemorating 71st year of Nishimuraya Yohachi, c. 1799

According to Andreas Marks, Nishimuraya's "success came from engaging the best artists and providing a broad range of prints to satisfy the public's interest."[6] One of the press' most significant products was Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, which appeared between c. 1830 and 1833.[7] In addition to Hokusai, Nishimuraya Yohachi published prints by Eishi, Kuniyasu, Toyokuni I and Kunisada.[8] The store is immortalized in the 1787 print Scene of Print Buyers at the Shop of Nishimuraya Yohachi (Eijudou) on New Year’s Day by Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815).[9]

The seal used by the Yohachi shop for the release of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji

Yohachi is known to have been a member of the Fuji-kō, an Edo period cult centred around Mount Fuji.[10] Founded by an ascetic named Hasegawa Kakugyō (1541–1646),[11] the cult venerated the mountain as a female deity, and encouraged its members to climb it.[12] In doing so, they would be reborn, "purified and... able to find happiness."[13] The cult waned in the Meiji period, and, though it persists to this day, it has been subsumed into Shintō sects.[14] The publisher's association with the Fuji-kō gives clues not only to imagery in his portrait by Utagawa Toyokuni I, but also to his eagerness to participate in the production of Hokusai's series celebrating Mount Fuji.

References
  1. "Mr. Edmonds, the cataloguer at Sotheby’s before the Second World War, seems to have been the first to suggest, in a catalogue of 1912, that Eijudō was born in 1729 and would therefore be seventy-one by Japanese reckoning, in 1799. 1799 is a plausible date for the print, but Edmunds cited no source for his information about the year of Eijudō's birth, and no recent Japanese scholar has proposed a date." (Museum Angewandte Kunst)
  2. Newland 2003, 475
  3. Newland 2003, 175
  4. Pushkin State Museum; Japanese Prints
  5. Newland is less precise, describing Nishimuraya as active from the "mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century (2003, 475); Machotka chooses the period c. 1789–1830 (2009, 64), and Volker insists on 1738-1818 (1949, 20).
  6. Japanese Prints
  7. Newland 2003, 206
  8. Japanese Prints
  9. Part of the Gerhard Pulverer Collection currently housed at the Smithsonian's Freer Gallery.
  10. Honolulu Museum
  11. Melton 2008, 231
  12. Yamaguchi
  13. Yamaguchi
  14. Melton 2008, 231

Sources
  • Machotka, Ewa. Visual Genesis of Japanese National Identity: Hokusai's Hyakunin Isshu. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2009.
  • Marks, Andreas. Japanese Woodblock Prints: Artists, Publishers and Masterworks 1680-1900. Tokyo: Tuttle, 2010.
  • Melton, J. Gordon. Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena. Canton, MI: Visible Ink Press, 2008
  • Newland, Amy Reigle. Ed. Hotei Encyclopedia of Woodblock Prints, vol. 2., 2003.
  • Volker, T. Ukiyoe Quartet: publisher, designer, engraver and printer. Mededelingen van het Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Issue 5, Volume 129. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1949.
  • Japanese Prints. Nishimuraya Yohachi. Cowell-Thackray Collection of Japanese woodblock prints and works on paper. Accessed October 27, 2013.
  • Honolulu Museum of Art. Portrait of Publisher Nishimuraya Yohachi I on His Seventy-first Birthday. Accessed October 28, 2013.

See also
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