Bunmei Kaika: Political Landscape in Early Modern and Modern Japan

About the Publication

A fascinating and accessible introduction to political prints from Edo- and Meiji-period Japan.

Organized thematically, this catalog explores the connection between government and landscape imagery from the late Edo period (1615–1868) to the Meiji period (1868–1912). The motto bunmei kaika, meaning “civilization and enlightenment,” was used during the latter period to celebrate Western ideas and industrialization as marks of a cultured society. Woodblock prints made throughout the nineteenth century and early twentieth century reveal how both the Tokugawa shogunate and subsequent Meiji government influenced Japanese social order through propaganda, censorship, and Westernization.

Featuring works largely drawn from Vassar College’s Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center alongside select loans, the publication includes such celebrated artists as Hiroshige, Hokusai, Kunisada, Yoshitoshi, and Kiyochika. Bunmei Kaika illuminates a thriving print culture whose clever navigation of government regulations and prohibitions, playful and daring rendering of current events, and feeding of public interest cultivated the national imagination of a modernizing Japan.

This exhibition and catalog, organized by Monique A. D’Almeida, is the 2023–2026 Deknatel Curatorial Fellow in Japanese Works on Paper.