{"id":8,"date":"2020-11-15T22:45:43","date_gmt":"2020-11-16T03:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/?p=8"},"modified":"2021-01-22T17:25:38","modified_gmt":"2021-01-22T22:25:38","slug":"object-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/2020\/11\/15\/object-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Object #2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">T\u014dmatsu Sh\u014dmei \u6771\u677e\u7167\u660e (1930\u20132012)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\"><em>Sandwich Men<\/em> (<em>Chindonya 4<\/em>), Tokyo, 1961, printed 1988<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Gelatin silver print<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">image: 28.4 x 41.7 cm. (11 3\/16 x 16 7\/16 in.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">sheet: 41 x 50.8 cm. (16 1\/8 x 20 in.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, gift of Robert Gambee, Class of 1964<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">\u00a9 Estate of Shomei Tomatsu<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">This photograph comes from T\u014dmatsu Sh\u014dmei\u2019s 1961 series that document the <em>chindoya <\/em>\u3061\u3093\u3069\u3093\u5c4b performers on Japanese streets. The <em>chindoya<\/em> are actors and musicians, usually in groups, who wear elaborate <em>kimono<\/em> and play traditional instruments such as gong and drum to advertise for shops on the streets of commercial districts. A convention that can be traced to the late Edo period, the <em>chindoya<\/em> performance experienced a decline in the twentieth century, due to the challenges of economic depression, war, and new forms of advertisement such as newspaper, television and neon signs on streets.<a style=\"color: #000000\" href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a> After WWII, the 1950s witnessed a brief revival of the <em>chindoya<\/em> performance followed by a continuing decline starting from the 1960s. T\u014dmatsu took the <em>chindoya<\/em> series in 1961 when the tradition was on the edge of the downtrend. In this series, T\u014dmatsu tactfully addresses the cultural dilemma of the <em>chindoya<\/em> performers in between the cultural and economic modes of Edo-era Japan where it was rooted and an increasingly Westernized and Capitalized society in contemporary Japan.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-8 gallery-columns-1 gallery-size-medium'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon portrait'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/239\/2020\/11\/A8615D.jpg'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"197\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/239\/2020\/11\/A8615D-197x300.jpg\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/239\/2020\/11\/A8615D-197x300.jpg 197w, https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/239\/2020\/11\/A8615D-672x1024.jpg 672w, https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/239\/2020\/11\/A8615D-768x1170.jpg 768w, https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/239\/2020\/11\/A8615D.jpg 853w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 197px) 100vw, 197px\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><span style=\"color: #666699\">Fig. 2-1. A <em>chindonya<\/em> performer in Akita, Japan. Photo Japan \/ Alamy Stock Photo.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">In this photograph, instead of recording a moment that best characterizes the cheerful <em>chindonya<\/em> performance, T\u014dmatsu captures one fragment of it\u2013\u2013a close-up of the faces of two <em>chindonya<\/em> performers in rather spontaneous and provocative expressions, which make the viewer wonder about the inner minds of the two performers and the state of the cultural tradition that they stood for at the time. In terms of composition, this photograph can be divided into roughly two parts and three picture planes. The left half of the image is dominated by the face of a <em>chindonya<\/em> performer looking downwards and lies in the middle plane. Though her face is out of focus, her somewhat exaggerated makeup and her facial expression are not difficult to perceive because of the sheer size of her face. The slightly blurry, soft-focus quality of her image corresponds with her melancholy expression to insert into the photograph a dejected atmosphere that is at odds with a typical <em>chindonya<\/em> performance. On the right of this photograph, the face of another<em> chindonya<\/em> performer in the background plane is framed by the triangular top part of a typical traditional Japanese drum in the foreground, one that was probably carried by the <em>chindonya<\/em> performer shown on the left side of the image (Fig. 2-1). The<em> chindonya<\/em> performer in the background plane is captured in sharp focus, and every detail\u2013\u2013including the wrinkles on her face under thick makeup, her headdress in the upper part of the photograph and the cherry blossom pattern on her <em>kimono<\/em>\u2013\u2013is clearly seen. While dressing in elaborate garments and playing supposedly cheerful music, the <em>chindonya<\/em> performer shows an absentminded and even bewildered expression. The spontaneous expressions of the two <em>chindonya<\/em> performers\u2013\u2013an inattentive one and a slightly distressed one\u2013\u2013reveal an extremely intimate and private moment in the middle of a public, commercial performance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\">Moreover, the faces of the two <em>chindonya<\/em> performers also resonate with each other to reflect a complicated, perplexed state of mind of the performers that is symbolic of the predicament of the declining <em>chindonya<\/em> tradition and the traditional Japanese culture in general in presence of the forceful Western, especially American culture in contemporary Japan\u2013\u2013a theme that T\u014dmatsu constantly returned to throughout his career. The way that T\u014dmatsu juxtaposes one face with a Japanese drum and frames another face through this loud instrument associated with an exuberant atmosphere further accentuates the contrast between the joyful, booming music that was performed and the silenced, dispirited faces of the performers. As both the trifold structure of this photograph and the English title of this series, <em>Sandwich Men<\/em>, suggest, the impoverished <em>chindonya<\/em> advertiser-performers were sandwiched, both visually and metaphorically, in between the remnants of an unreachable past and signs of a rapidly changing contemporary society in both cultural and socio-economic senses. So unitedly integrated in one image formally through the framing strategy, the three motifs\u2013\u2013the performer in the background, the performer in the middle ground and her drum in the foreground, nevertheless, betray the social and cultural incongruities of Japanese society in the early 1960s.<\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><span style=\"color: #666699\"><a style=\"color: #666699\" href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> For more information, see Chapter 2, \u201cChindonya\u201d \u3061\u3093\u3069\u3093\u5c4b, in Shun&#8217;ya Yoshimi and Akihiro Kitada, ed.,\u00a0<em>Rojo\u0304 No Esunogurafi: Chindon&#8217;ya Kara Gurafiti Made<\/em> \u8def\u4e0a\u306e\u30a8\u30b9\u30ce\u30b0\u30e9\u30d5\u30a3: \u3061\u3093\u3069\u3093\u5c4b\u304b\u3089\u30b0\u30e9\u30d5\u30a3\u30c6\u30a3\u307e\u3067 (To\u0304kyo\u0304: Serika Shobo\u0304, 2007), 112\u2013188.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>T\u014dmatsu Sh\u014dmei \u6771\u677e\u7167\u660e (1930\u20132012) Sandwich Men (Chindonya 4), Tokyo, 1961, printed 1988 Gelatin silver print image: 28.4 x 41.7 cm. (11 3\/16 x 16 7\/16 in.) sheet: 41 x 50.8 cm. (16 1\/8 x 20 in.) Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, gift of Robert Gambee, Class of 1964 \u00a9 Estate of Shomei Tomatsu This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3443,"featured_media":125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tomatsu-shomei-"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3443"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.princeton.edu\/art574-yixu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}