Utagawa Yoshitora (active 1850-1880) The Fight Between Diseases and Drugs, c. 1846. Oban triptych.
Click here for a full size image.
This is a tremendously important print, showing as it does the emergent consciousness in Edo Japan of hygiene, medicine and drug treatment years before any of the events that would lead up to the opening of Japan’s borders in the 1860’s. It is also important for showing the incredible influence that Japanese graphic art of the Edo period had upon visual storytelling, manga and modern illustration… look at the figures on the left sheet and then at some of the characters from Futurama for example.
Importantly, the print above all offers a window onto 19th century Japanese attitudes to drugs, medicine, treatment of illness and social attitudes to severe and often epidemic illness. The bulk of the population lived in unimaginably squalid conditions and connecting epidemics and public health with sanitation and cleanliness was an uphill battle. The introduction of modern standards of hygiene and modern medicines was resisted with superstition; hence a propaganda print such as this that uses the language of the populace to convey a technical, specialist subject matter.
The print shows various diseases on the left and centre sheet that are portrayed in the guise of familiar demons and evil spirits from folk tales - yokai. These are pictured in blue; the usual colour for supernatural occurrences. On the right, and in the central melee, the drugs are characterised as samurai, fighting under the banners of patent medicine. The helmets, as it were, of the warriors also carry the names of drugs and remedies. On the far right conducting the battle is is the figure of Shinno (Shennong) the god of medicine, shown here as a sage old man.
In its way this print is a masterpiece of imagination, persuasion and propaganda. A vitally important document of the transition from a medieval to a modern imagining of disease. The print - through usage I imagine - is in adequate condition. Trimmed at the top edge, the surface is worn and there are signs of age and fading. None of that matters though in view of its cultural and historic importance. There is one other copy I know of in the collection of the University of California.
The print was part of Christies London sale no 1801 in 1980.
75 x 35 cm.
