A Japanese Bestiary: Living with Animals in Edo-Tokyo (18th-19th Century).

For more than two hundred years, from the closure order
of the country of 1639, Japan of the Edo period (1603-1868) restricted
drastically the exchanges with the outside world. After the
signing of trade treaties with the United States and Europe
in 1858 but especially from the Meiji Restoration (1868), the
government adopts a policy of industrialization of the country and
promotes the introduction of Western ideas. Foreigners who
then went to Japan and left detailed descriptions of the country
and its inhabitants. The American naturalist Edward S. Morse notes
in Japan Day by Day that city dwellers bypass or step over
dogs and cats lounging in the middle of the road so as not to
disturb, and use the honorific suffix "san" to call them
(equivalent to "Mr." or "Mrs.") The painter and draftsman
French Georges Bigot (1860-1927), who stayed in Japan from
1882 left a large number of works full of humor, animals
and people. A long period of peace and stability gives the
Tokyo residents the leisure to enjoy life and have fun.
willingly surrounds himself with pets: small dogs and cats,
small birds such as nightingales and quails, or even
insects whose song we enjoy, such as crickets and grasshoppers.
The inhabitants of Edo, a city with a topography rich in hills, rivers, and
open to the sea, live in connection with nature and seasonal rites
mark the course of the year as changes
seasonal offers many opportunities to admire superb
nearby natural landscapes.
First clay figurines of wild boars or others, under the influence
of Chinese civilization, animals are then represented under
fantastic shapes from the continent like phoenixes and
dragons make their appearance as well as animals that we do not
not found in Japan, such as tigers and peacocks.
The flourishing of a refined civilization based on aesthetics
Properly Japanese stands out from Chinese culture and art:
animals then begin to represent the spirit of a season or
symbolize traditional Japanese stories. With the development,
in literature, word games based on the sounds and meaning of
Japanese language, we appreciate the drawings of animals synonymous with
auspicious because of their names or the way they are written.
Thus, in the Edo period, the new financial power of the class
shopping stimulates the birth of a true urban culture
and the refinement of various objects of everyday life: the patterns
decorative animals evolve towards a greater
design freedom and richer variations.