KABUKI in PRINT: Actor, Fans, Image, and Medium in Early Modern Japan and Beyond

November 4-5, 2022
In-person conference at multiple locations

Sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies in conjunction with the Smart Museum of Art, Franke Institute for the Humanities, and the Center for the Art of East Asia.

Click here to download the event poster.

Few early modern theater traditions boast a body of surviving ephemera as large, varied, and multi-faceted as Japanese kabuki. From the seventeenth through twentieth centuries, the woodblock print medium played a pivotal role in connecting kabuki actors and fans and engendering play between actor and role, vision and voice, and between the stage and the imagination. In 2015, the Smart Museum of Art received a transformative gift of over 1,000 Japanese prints from the collection of the late Brooks McCormick Jr. The majority of these works are theater prints of the late Edo (1600-1868) and Meiji (1868-1912) eras, and of these, a sizable number relate to kabuki in the kamigata or Osaka region rather than in Edo. This intimate symposium seeks to bring together experts from theater, literature, and art history in order to study the collection and contribute their own insights on the relation between page and stage in the case of kabuki. The resulting insights will have implications for all who are interested in the relation between print technology, narrative, visual art, fan cultures, and the stage.

Friday, November 4, 2022

1:00pm   Viewing of prints at the Smart Museum of Art Study Room, 5550 S Greenwood Ave. (for presenters only)

4:30pm   Keynote Lecture

  • John T. Carpenter
    Mary Griggs Burke Curator of Japanese Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
    "A Poetics of Inscribed Kabuki Actor Portraits"

IN-PERSON at Cochrane Woods Art Center 157, 5540 S. Greenwood Ave
Read the lecture abstract here.

6:00pm   Reception

7:00pm   Dinner for participants

Saturday, November 5, 2022

IN-PERSON at Franke Institute for the Humanities 1100 E. 57th St

9:00am   Welcome and Opening remarks

  • Chelsea Foxwell
    University of Chicago

9:30am   Morning Session (part 1)

Moderator: Hilary Snow
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

  • 9:30-10:15 Maki Isaka
    University of Minnesota
    "A Biblio-Medium or Two-Dimensional Kabuki in Its Own Right: Publications in the Kabuki Culture"
  • 10:15-11:00 Satoko Shimazaki
    University of California, Los Angeles
    “Recording Liveness: Theater Prints and Books in the Age of Nanboku and Mokuami”

11:00am   Break

11:15am   Morning Session (part 2)

Moderator: Hilary Snow
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

  • 11:15-12:00 Ryoko Matsuba
    University of East Anglia/Sainsbury Institute
    “The Impact of Kabuki on Visual Culture” 

12:00pm   Lunch

1:30pm   Afternoon Session (part 1)

Moderator: John Carpenter
Metropolitan Museum of Art

  • 1:30-2:15 Jiayi Chen
    University of Chicago
    “What Can a Game Board Stage? The Worlds of Toyohara Kunichika’s Sugoroku Prints and Beyond”
  • 2:15-3:00 Melissa Van Wyk
    University of Chicago
    “Trains, Games, and Print: Transportation Technologies in 19th-century Kabuki Playbills”

3:00pm   Break

3:15pm   Afternoon Session (part 2)

Moderator: Janice Katz
Art Institute of Chicago 

  • 3:15-4:00 Rhiannon Paget
    Ringling Museum of Art
    “Kabuki in Perspective: The Theatre and Floating Pictures”
  • 4:00-4:45 Jonathan Zwicker
    University of California, Berkeley
    "The Three Bodies of Horigkoshi Hideshi: Performance and Medium in Meiji Kabuki"

4:45pm   Wrap-up Discussion

Moderators: Judith Zeitlin and Chelsea Foxwell
University of Chicago

7:00pm   Dinner for participants

Jiayi Chen
Ph.D Candidate, University of Chicago
"What Can a Game Board Stage?: The Worlds of Toyohara Kunichika's Sugoroku Prints and Beyond"

Maki Isaka
Professor in Asian Languages & Literatures, University of Minnesota
"A Biblio-Medium or Two-Dimensional Kabuki in Its Own Right: Publications in the Kabuki Culture"

Ryoko Matsuba
Lecturer in Japanese Digital Arts and Humanities, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures and University of East Anglia
"The Impact of Kabuki on Visual Culture"

Rhiannon Paget
Curator of Asian Art, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art
"Kabuki in Perspective: The Theatre and Floating Pictures"

Satoko Shimazaki
Associate Professor of Early Modern Japanese Theater and Literature, UCLA
"Recording Liveness: Theater Prints and Books in Age of Nanboku and Mokuami"

Melissa Van Wyk
Assistant Professor in Japanese Literature, University of Chicago
"Trains, Games, and Print: Transportation Technologies in 19th-century Kabuki Playbills"

Jonathan Zwicker
Agassiz Professor of Japanese, University of California, Berkeley
"The Three Bodies of Horigkoshi Hideshi: Performance and Medium in Meiji Kabuki"

Read all abstracts here.