This argument is notably present in the literary discussions of the Meiji Period (1868–1912) in Japan. Many Meiji writers, concerned with producing modern literature, expressed that illustrations undermined literature’s possibilities of creating pictures or affecting the reader. Tsubouchi Shōyo, in his influential work of literary criticism Essence of the Novel (Shosetsu shinzui, 1885–6), writes about the reliance on pictures in gesaku (a form of prose that was heavily illustrated and that largely lacks description). Specifically, he perceives this reliance as a weakness and a sign of lazy writing:
When describing the look of things, it is important to be specific. In our country, writers of fiction have often relied on meticulous illustration as a supplement for insufficient verbal description. Becoming accustomed to this easy state of affairs they have grown slack in their literary practice. They are often lazy when describing the appearance of scenery; a grave error indeed! The wonder of the novel does not stop with the movement of its characters, but rather extends to the myriad phenomena that take place on the page. The writer’s skill lies in his ability to make thunder roar, to make waves crash and explode, as though hurtled from the skies, to make warblers sing, and to make plum blossoms give scent, all as expressed through language. To depict only characters and their actions, without describing the environment around them, is like drawing a dragon rising into the sky but leaving out the clouds.
(Shōyo, Shōyo senshu, suppl. vol. 3:154-155, cited in Ramos Bassoe 31)
The writer Ozaki Kōyō raises a similar point in his famous sashi-e muyōron (“argument against the use of illustration” as Ramos Bassoe translates it [61], or “debate about the uselessness of illustration,” in Lippit’s rendering [139]). Having expressed his dissatisfaction with the ubiquity of illustrations in contemporary literature, he quit his position as writer and editor of the literature column in the journal Yomiuri shinbun. In a summary of the debate, printed in the literary column of the Yomiuri shinbun on February 13, 1899, Koyo’s words were given as follows:
“I just can’t understand why anyone would stick illustrations throughout a novel. Instead of relying on the power of images, the novelist should draw exclusively on the strength of language in order to show the reader the story. These days, the public won’t even buy a novel without a frontispiece, so there’s not much one can do about it, but in the future, if I have my way, you won’t find a single illustration in any of my works.”
(Tsuchida Mitsufumi, “Konjiki yasha to sashi-e muyoron,” in Kokubungaku nenjibetsu ronbunshu “Kindai 1”, Tokyo: Gakujutsu Bunken Fukyu Kai, 1980, 325; cited in Ramos Bassoe 61)
The writer Aeba Kōson was even more vehement:
“I understand that not every author is able to move the reader by simply lining up words in a row, but at the very least, they shouldn’t have to draw on illustrations for basic explanations. If this situation continues, I will quit the literary establishment today, and never write another word in my life.”
(Nishimura Kiyokazu, Imeji no shujigaku, 409; cited in Ramos Bassoe 70)
As Ramos Bassoe mentions, Kōson’s opposition was more pronounced than Kōyō’s, and he almost entirely eliminated the use of illustration in his work (70).
The argument that illustrations undermine literature’s duty to be pictorial, however, is not limited to Japan. In the 1909 New York Edition preface to his novel The Golden Bowl (1904), Henry James, for instance, writes:
Anything that relieves responsible prose of the duty of being, while placed before us, good enough, interesting enough and, if the question be of picture, pictorial enough, above all in itself, does it the worst of services, and may well inspire in the lover of literature certain lively questions as to the future of that institution.
(James 7)
For James, there is a conflict between texts (or authors, using his words) that create an “effect of illustration” and illustrations. The conflict is understood as a problem between disciplines. Illustrations challenge the text (and the institution of literature more generally) and constitute for James a competitive process to the act of writing—one that “elbow[s]” (7) authors and texts. James argues that illustrations are often accepted “grudgingly” (7) by the authors due to the contemporary conditions of publication, but crucially, they undermine the duties of prose.
Works Cited
James, Henry. The Golden Bowl. Edited by Ruth Bernard Yeazell. Penguin Books, 2009.
Lippit, Miya Elise Mizuta. “Short-Lived Beauty.” Aesthetic Life: Beauty and Art in Modern Japan. Brill, 2019.
Ramos Bassoe, Pedro Thiago. Eyes of the Heart: Illustration and the Visual Imagination in Modern Japanese Literature. [PhD Thesis] University of California, Berkeley, 2018.
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