A Teenage Boy and Girl with a Viewer for an Optique Picture (Nozoki-karakuri); Kōbō Daishi’s Poem on the Jewel River of Kōya (Kōya no Tamagawa: Kōbō Daishi) 1778 - 1798

Suzuki Harunobu made this print in the mid-1760s using woodblock and ink on paper. It depicts a teenage boy and girl with a viewer for an optique picture. The title also includes a reference to a poem. It’s worth thinking about the vogue for “Dutch” or Western-style novelties in Japan at this time, and the way imported visual technologies entered the culture. Here, a young woman is peering through a lens at a print laid on the floor; her companion gestures towards what she is seeing. A poem in the upper left refers to a river, but also probably to the reflected image. This print is from the Edo period, when the Tokugawa shogunate ruled, and Japan was officially closed to foreign trade, except through very controlled ports. This print might reflect the culture’s ambivalent attitude to the outside world. What is the status of images when their mode of production and reception are changing so rapidly? Art historians can explore this by looking at trade records and the diaries of the period. A careful analysis can tell us a great deal about how this picture once functioned in society.