Katsushika Hokusai’s Ghost of Kohada
Koheiji: Image from a Falling Era
Sara Sumpter
Writer’s Comment: The instructions for this essay, assigned for my Survey
of Japanese Art class, were simple: “the topic must concern a literary theme
as it appears in a work of art.” This kind of assignment was both blessing and
curse, for it enabled me to explore nearly any subject of my choosing, but it also
demanded a great deal of planning on my part. I was familiar with the hyaku
monogatari, or One Hundred [Ghost] Stories, prints of Katsushika Hokusai, and I
was interested in using one of those works to examine traditional Japanese ghost
stories and their role in culture and society during the Edo period. It was not,
however, until my research was under way that the essay took on a definitive
shape. Through my study it was increasingly clear to me just how oppressive
and censorious the Japanese government was during the Edo period, and I realized that my selected print, the Ghost of Kohada Koheiji, and others like it, might
well have carried a far greater significance than their made-for-popular-consumption veneer initially suggested.
Thanks must be given to Professor Hannah Sigur, whose challenging
assignment allowed me to craft not only what I consider to be a thorough and
fascinating study, but one of my favorite pieces of writing as well.
—Sara Sumpter
Instructor’s Comment: Art History is ideally a matter of uniting the concretely observable with the intangible facts of history, society, and intellectual
endeavor. This process is critical in understanding the art of Japan, where literature plays a foundational role in visual tradition. The essay assignment for
Survey of Japanese Art asked students to explore this connection through one
work of art. Sara Sumpter’s articulate, richly detailed, tightly focused, and beautifully organized analysis of Katsushika Hokusai’s pictorial interpretation of
the famous story, Ghost of Kohada Koheiji, is superlative. Her examination of
a single woodblock print takes the reader on a journey from the specific to the
general, revealing the dynamic and complex relationship between the literary
and the visual, and between art and society, in 19th century Japan.
—Hannah Sigur, Art History
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Sara Sumpter, Hokusai’s Ghost of Kohada Koheiji
T
he Edo period of Japan
(1600–1868) was charac­
terized by a cultural
shift. It emerged as a peaceful
period in the nation’s history,
after four centuries soaked
in the blood of civil wars. In
the era directly preceding, the
Momoyama period, the unification of Japan had been begun by
Oda Nobunaga. This unification
was continued and completed
by the vicious warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi after Nobunaga’s
assassination. Upon Hideyoshi’s death in 1598, power was
usurped by Tokugawa Ieyasu.
With a newly unified Japan in
his grasp, and a powerful family to support him, Ieyasu founded the
Tokugawa shogunate and instituted an era of peace that would last
for two and a half centuries. That peace was not without a price,
however, for in order to obtain safety the Tokugawa shoguns enforced strict laws regarding expression, ownership, and behavior.
As a result, the peace of this era could not protect it from eventual disintegration, and in this period of repression and restrictions,
the ghost story—hyaku monogatari—and the subsequent images
based on the most popular of those stories would emerge, not just
as depictions of popular Edo culture, but also as metaphorical social
commentaries. Katsushika Hokusai’s Ghost of Kohada Koheiji,
from the series One Hundred [Ghost] Stories, is an image born of
its period. Through this single grotesque woodblock print, Hokusai
illustrates the social discontent of the Edo society with a flawed system that was soon to fall.
Tales of the supernatural were not uncommon in the periods
that preceded the Edo. Perhaps the most famous example of Heian
era (794–1185) literature, The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu,
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features several supernatural happenings over the course of the
story. It is worth noting, however, that these supernatural elements
are not necessarily ghostly in nature. In the first supernatural
attacks of The Tale of Genji, though one character is visited and even
murdered by a spirit, it is the spirit of a living woman. This woman,
the Rokujō lady, suspects that she may have committed misdeeds as
an evil spirit but is seemingly unable to prevent this. Her musings
reveal how typical belief in ghosts was amongst the Japanese: “it was
common enough for the spirits of the angry dead to linger on in this
world. She had thought them hateful, and it was her own lot to set
a hateful example while she still lived” (Shikibu 167).
In other Heian era works, ghostly action is more pronounced.
Shuichi Kato notes, “Heian-period literature, such as the Ise
Monogatari and the Konjaku Monogatari, contained tales of people
being eaten by ogres, while other tales told of people being haunted
or killed by live or dead spirits” (201). While ghostly elements were
common in Japanese literature, they typically did not dominate the
narrative in this era. They were just there, part of the fabric of the
tale, because in Japan the supernatural is a common part of everyday life, understood and unstated. Still, the ghost story, though
an ingrained part of the Japanese literary tradition, was not yet a
part of common visual culture. Indeed, ghost tales were not widely
depicted until the 14th or 15th century; as Kato states, “Illustrations
or paintings of these tales were rare, and monsters were not widely
depicted until after the Kamakura period (1185–1333)” (201).
The ghostly imagery common in the Edo period, of which the
Ghost of Kohada Koheiji is but one, may have emerged from the
popular game of hyaku monogatari, the Gathering for One Hundred
Ghost Stories. This game had its origins in religious ritual; as Noriko
T. Reider states, “these gatherings may have had their origin during the medieval period in Hyakuza hodan (One Hundred Buddhist
Stories), in which it was widely believed that miracles would happen
after telling one hundred Buddhist stories over one hundred days”
(15). The standard premise of the game was that friends would
gather after nightfall to tell scary ghost stories. At the start of the
recitation, one hundred lights were lit, and, as each of the tales was
told, one of the lights was put out. In the growing darkness, it was
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Sara Sumpter, Hokusai’s Ghost of Kohada Koheiji
believed that at the end of the game something frightening would
occur.
This game continued its popularity into the Edo period. In
a collection of ghost stories called Hand Puppets, it was alleged,
“when one hundred frightening tales are told, a frightening thing
happens without fail” (qtd. in Reider 37). This game would eventually give rise to the publication of the most popular tales in book
form. This no doubt increased their widespread popularity. By the
1600s the hyaku monogatari had more or less gained a standardized
format that was well-known and often used by the masses. This
game was the foundation for the literature and images to come.
Midori Deguchi points out, “the popularity of the game resulted in
the publication of various printed books entitled Hyaku monogatari
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” (19).
The popularity of these tales was not just a random fad, but
an indication of a larger social movement at hand. The unification
of the country under the powerful Tokugawa Shogunate “made the
terror and death associated with civil war a thing of the past. In a
time of peace, people could regard strange phenomena and terror as
entertainment” (Reider 16). The unification of Japan and the period
of peace heralded by the rule of the Tokugawa shoguns created an
incubation chamber for the rise of ghost tales. As the popularity of
these tales increased, it was only a matter of time before imagery
would be made to complement them.
It was in Hokusai’s lifetime that ghost prints became prevalent.
Midori Deguchi points out that “by the early nineteenth century,
the term hyaku monogatari came to be used as a generic term for
ghost stories, and a great variety of hyaku monogatari prints began
to be made” (19). The tail end of the Edo period would, in fact, see
a massive shift towards the depiction of a literary tradition that had
prevailed for centuries. This shift was characterized by extremities
of grotesque depiction, as “the Japanese painters of the time exhibited their imaginative capacities by painting numerous ghosts and
monsters, going beyond mere realism” (Kato 195). Hokusai was
one of the many artists to participate in this enterprise.
The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji is a color woodblock print that
depicts what is perhaps the most popular ghost tale involving a male
phantom—tales involving female phantoms were far more typi-
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cal. His first appearance was in a novel by Santō Kyoden, Fukushû
kidan Asaka no numa (A Weird Story of Revenge in the Swamp of
Asaka). Murdered by his wife’s lover, Koheiji returned from the
grave to avenge himself. His haunting led to his killers’ unnatural and untimely ends. This tale was converted into a kabuki play
and performed widely. It was this repeated production that spurred
Kohada Koheiji’s popularity. The numerous performances of the
story as kabuki play “resulted in the production of various Koheijirelated scenarios” (Deguchi 21).
Hokusai’s image of the ghostly revenant come for retribution
borders on the monstrous. Indeed, Hokusai was acknowledged as a
lover of the grotesque. In his comparison of various artists of the late
Edo period Shuichi Kato states that “Hokusai, more than any other
painter, preferred to paint monsters” (196). In the image, Kohada
Koheiji is seen peering in through the curtains of a mosquito net,
presumably at his assassins who sleep under its cover. His hands,
skeletal and clawlike, inch the netting open to reveal his face—little
more than bone and sinew. Around his neck are the remnants of
his earthly attire, and upon his head are random strands of his now
decaying hair. Koheiji grins with the grim delight of a skeleton at his
murderers, who are not shown. The scene is colorful but still dark,
with the central figure of Kohada Koheiji shrouded and enclosed by
a deep blue-blackness. Koheiji seems to glow with the passion of
his vengeance.
This vibrant depiction of death gone a-hunting speaks to
Hokusai’s belief in the supernatural. Tsuji Nobuo states, “Hokusai
must have believed in ghosts to have created such realistic images of
them” (70). His choice of subject matter shows how connected he
was to the literary and spiritual currents of his society. The Ghost of
Kohada Koheiji is one of five images in a series by Hokusai entitled
Hyaku monogatari (One Hundred [Ghost] Stories). Each of the individual images is strikingly grotesque and three of the five depict
scenes from the most famous of Japanese ghost tales. Hokusai
evidently knew the most popular tales and drew on them as his
inspiration. Indeed, he may even have believed in these specific
ghosts, as was common in the Edo period. Reider notes that the
typical Japanese audience was inclined to believe in the stories, even
when presented as fiction: “there seems to be a convergent point
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Sara Sumpter, Hokusai’s Ghost of Kohada Koheiji
in Japanese society where individuals from all walks of life seem to
unite in their belief of the supernatural, at least on some level or
other” (35). So, although Hokusai most often painted lovely images
of nature and culture, his five depictions of the ghostly grotesque
show, according to Gian Carlo Calza, that he “was not neglecting
topics connected to iconography and popular traditions” (232). The
ghost story was an undeniably crucial part of Japanese society at
this time.
Hokusai’s works were tremendously influential, both on his
contemporaries and on foreign artists who discovered his work
in the late 1800s, after the opening of Japan to the west. Still, not
all of his impersonators would match his vitriolic terror. This was
particularly true of Western imitators, who tended to tone down
the horror aspects of Hokusai’s works in their copies. While some
Western works are nearly mirror image reproductions of Hokusai’s
compositions, his “pictures of monsters often end up being caricatures, or at least their capacity to inspire fear is played down” (Calza
506). Naturally, the Western reaction to the ghost story is different,
indicating an entirely different social response to the supernatural.
Unlike other ghost story–based images of the time period by
contemporaries like Kuniyoshi or Yoshitoshi, Hokusai’s five Hyaku
monogatari possess an intimate style that heightens their emotional
quality. Kuniyoshi, in particular, though a well-known printmaker of
ghostly images, often created cluttered scenes that did not have the
immediacy of terror presented by Hokusai. In addition, Kuniyoshi’s
works often depicted actors in the roles of famous phantoms, rather
than the famous phantoms themselves. For Hokusai there was no
such illusion, as “spirits and demons were the friends that the old
Hokusai feared and loved” (Nobuo 73). All of his ghosts, frightening
in their truth, appeared with no veil of safety to protect the viewer.
In this respect, Hokusai showed himself to be, for all his eccentricity, in touch with the beliefs of his era. As a follower of the
Nichiren Buddhist sect, Hokusai had an obvious belief in life after
death, and even believed that he would one day walk the earth as
a phantom. In a haiku written shortly before he death he wrote:
“Though as a ghost, I shall lightly tread the summer fields” (qtd.
in Nobuo 73). Given this comfort with the supernatural, it is no
surprise that Hokusai captured the emotional atmosphere of his
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society in practically the only sanctioned format available in the
Edo period—the ghost story.
Hokusai’s treatment of ghost stories speaks to the general
discontent of Edo society that would contribute to the fall of the
Tokugawa shogunate. Shuichi Kato notes, “Ghosts and monsters
emerge from the depths of human consciousness, but they are usually kept in check by social order. When order is lost, collective
hysteria surfaces (Eejanaika) and visions of ghosts and individual
imaginings are allowed to emerge in works of art” (195–196). In the
nineteenth century, Edo society was collapsing under the weight of
economic failure and authoritarian restrictions. The Kansei reforms
that began in 1787 were particularly oppressive—particularly as
they concerned trade with foreign nations, the amount of debt
incurred by government that a common Edo merchant could collect on, and what a person was allowed to own. In this atmosphere
of unease, the ghost story was a perfect fit for the fears and worries
of a concerned people. Noriko T. Reider states, “widespread belief
in the supernatural can provide people a way of comprehending the
strange or troublesome” (33). However, there are drawbacks to this;
as Reider notes, those stories can also “be the incubus for inciting
mass-panic, terror, and social unrest” (33).
With the thought of loss of control firmly in mind, the government of the Tokugawa shogunate held a strong grip on the legislation
of the supernatural at all times. In addition to the strict Kansei
reforms that had by 1790 begun extending from sumptuary laws
towards control of publishing and reform of general philosophy, the
Tokugawa shogunate issued edicts throughout the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries against a variety of supernatural stories in the interest of preventing outbreaks of hysteria. It was clear
that the supernatural was a subject with which officials were not
comfortable: “This ‘supernatural threat’ was never too far from the
bureaucrats’ and governor’s minds, for they knew the unknown was
something they held very little, if any, control over” (Reider 38).
It is interesting, though, that in spite of this unease—which
stemmed mainly from a broad-based belief in the supernatural—the
Tokugawa government did not fully ban the ghost story. Political
and social satires, on the other hand, were dangerous to publish.
Santō Kyōden, author of the first novel which featured Kohada
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Sara Sumpter, Hokusai’s Ghost of Kohada Koheiji
Koheiji, was also famous in his time for suffering one of the harshest
punishments for publishing material found unfit by the Tokugawa
government. Nishiyama Matsunosuke explains:
When Sant ō Ky ō den drew the illustrations for
Ishibe Kink ō ’s kiby ō shi entitled Kokubyaku mizukagami (Black and White Reflected in Water), the
authorities struck back and sentenced Ky ō den to
a heavy fine. Undaunted, Ky ō den published three
more satirical books three years later [1792]; this
time he found himself manacled for fifty days. (51)
Kyōden was not the only one to suffer for the publication. His publisher and the judges who approved his book also suffered greatly.
His publisher was fined half of his net worth, and the judges were
exiled from Edo. Censorship would only increase from there.
In this atmosphere of unrest, the ghost story emerged as the
safe form of expression in a very dangerous era. The ghost story was
generally overlooked because it was related to characters (both fictional and historical) who existed in the past. The government kept
an eye on creative works of fiction, but “by setting tales in the past,
authors could get away with prognostication, political punditry and
even judgment, since there was no direct association between the
historical, fictional characters and Japan’s then-ruling class” (Reider
67). With harsh punishments befalling both writers and artists who
dared to break the rules, or who were even perceived to have broken
the rules, many writers and artists may have turned to ghost themes
to express their discontent.
Santō Kyōden’s novel Fukushû kidan Asaka no numa (A Weird
Story of Revenge in the Swamp of Asaka) quite possibly fell into this
category. The novel was based on a historical figure, for Kohada
Koheiji was a real murder victim, and could not be associated with
the ruling government. While very little is known about Kyōden’s
intent with this tale, we do know that it was published in 1803, well
after his period of trouble with the Tokugawa government. Here
one can only speculate, but it is of note that after his extremely harsh
and potentially lethal punishment (the ukiyo-e painter Utamaro is
widely believed to have died from health complications that arose
during a prison stint he served for publishing politically incor-
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rect prints [Encyclopaedia Britannica]), Kyōden veered away from
potentially inflammatory material.
While Kyōden’s novel may not necessarily have been laced with
political innuendo, it almost certainly expressed the social mind-set
at this time. Reider points out, “in Japan’s highly structured, rigid
class system, any ideas outside the box of normalcy would have
appealed to those who felt trapped by the constraints of their class
and birthright” (54). Not only were ghost stories potentially motivated by politically-minded challenges, they expressed the general
desperation that filled the majority of Japan’s citizens. As that very
desperation was a slight against the Tokugawa government, which
no doubt saw itself as superior and righteous, the natural everyday
feelings of the common man were virtually outlawed. Through that
aura of discontent and misery stalked the Ghost of Kohada Koheiji.
Hokusai was already an aged and learned man when he created his five prints in the Hyaku monogatari (One Hundred [Ghost]
Stories) series. Born in 1760, Hokusai claimed to have begun drawing at the age of six, and throughout his life he was obsessed with
the notion of making the lines in his drawings come to life: “When
I am one hundred and ten, each dot, each line will possess a life of
its own” (qtd. in Calza 12). This eccentricity set Hokusai somewhat
apart from his contemporaries, and throughout his life he walked a
different path from that of his fellow artists.
At the age of 70, when other artists of Hokusai’s era were
painting pictures of the floating world, he was concentrating on
nature and the landscape. Unlike some, Hokusai wore many hats
throughout his life, took many names, and exhibited many styles.
Chief amongst those styles were realism and mannerism, a style
that focuses on the human figure but purposely depicts that figure
in elongated and distorted poses and often skews the scale of the
varying objects in the picture. Tsuji Nobuo describes the duality of
Hokusai’s artistic personality thus:
On the one hand Hokusai the realist, whose sharp
observation enabled him to reproduce the forms,
inner life and outer expressions of man and nature
in a humorous key; on the other Hokusai the mannerist, with a leaning towards the fantastic, who
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Sara Sumpter, Hokusai’s Ghost of Kohada Koheiji
enthusiastically translated nature’s forms into strange
“hokusaisms.” (65)
Hokusai’s mannerist and fantastic style came to the forefront of his
work as he aged, and it is in this style that Kohada Koheiji is done.
Though elements of the supernatural ran through Hokusai’s
work all of his life (Nobuo 70) Hokusai never more graphically
depicted the supernatural than in his Hyaku monogatari series of
1830. This graphic depiction was crucial not just for invoking the
level of terror associated with the ghost story, but for creating an
ingeniously hidden metaphor of Edo society. With a ruling warrior
class exerting an iron grip on the populace, ordinary citizens had
virtually no rights to anything, even their own homes. Citizens in
Edo period Japan were subject to having their homes confiscated, or
their familes moved on the whim of the government (Matsunosuke
37). In this context, Kohada Koheiji is no longer just the ghost of a
man wrongly killed, seeking his much deserved justice. He represents the deadening existence that plagued the commoner classes
of the Edo period. As he peers through the netting of his victims’
tent, the unseen antagonists become not just Koheiji’s victims, but
the victims of the Tokugawa government—a mass of nameless protagonists persecuted by grim reforms and restrictions.
With the benefit of a longstanding tradition of ghost stories,
and the threat of stern punishments for violating publishing reforms,
Hokusai created a piece of art that managed to speak for his people.
This example, which illustrated the anguish and oppression of the
Japanese people at the end of the Edo period, speaks volumes about
why the peaceful Tokugawa shogunate could not ultimately prevail
as a successful social system. The sadness and fear expressed in
the Ghost of Kohada Koheiji, though hidden behind a glaze of the
supernatural, would ultimately tell the tale—not just of a man murdered—but of a social system fallen.
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Works Cited
Calza, Gian Carlo. Hokusai. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 2004.
Deguchi, Midori. “One Hundred Demons and One Hundred Supernatural
Tales.” Japanese Ghosts and Demons. Ed. Stephen Addiss. New York:
George Braziller, Inc., 1985. 15–23.
Kato, Shuichi. Japan: Spirit & Form. Trans. Junko Abe and Leza Lowitz.
Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1994.
Matsunosuke, Nishiyama. Edo Culture: Daily Life and Diversions in Urban
Japan, 1600­–1868. Trans. Gerald Groemer. Honolulu: U of Hawaii
Press, 1997.
Nobuo, Tsuji. “In a Fantasy World: Hokusai’s Late Works.” Hokusai. Ed.
Gian Carlo Calza. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 2004. 65–73.
Reider, Noriko T. Tales of the Supernatural in Early Modern Japan: Kaidan,
Akinari, Ugetsu Monogatari. Japanese Studies Volume 16. Lewiston:
The Edwin Mellen Press, 2002.
Shikibu, Murasaki. The Tale of Genji. Trans. Edward G. Seidensticker.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.
“Utamaro.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2004. Encyclopaedia Britannica
Premium Service. 1 December 2004. <http://www.britannica.com/
eb/artiscle?tocld=9074550>.
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