Chapter author : Marianne Simon-Oikawa

Publisher : Institut für Ostasienwissenschaften der Universität Wien

Graffiti are not an invention of modern western subculture. Textual and visual documents, like book illustrations or ukiyo-e prints, show that graffiti existed in pre-modern Japan too. Some are essentially verbal, other purely pictorial, while others combine both the text and the image. This paper focuses on a group of graffiti, in which the relation between the text and the image is particularly intricate, called moji-e. The word moji-e, which was already in use during the Edo period (1603-1868), literally means  » image (e) made from written characters (moji) « . A number of moji-e have been mentioned in Japanese sources as mudagaki, itazuragaki or rakugaki, which are words that we usually translate by « graffiti », and share common characteristics with caricature. The paper concentrates on three of them: noshikoshi-yama, yamamizu tengu and hemamusho nyûdô.

Thematic axes : Avant-Gardes & Modernities

Updated on 01/01/2011