Dai Nippon Bussan Zue (Products of Greater Japan), 1877

Products of Greater Japan, 1877

Dai Nippon Bussan Zue 大日本物産図会 (だいにっぽんぶっさんずえ)

(A series of 118 prints depicting various economic activities throughout Japan)

Overview

The woodblock print series Dai Nippon Bussan Zue, drawn by Utagawa Hiroshige III (1842–1894), was published by the Tokyo-based publisher Ōkura Magobei on August 10, 1877. Each printed sheet in the series contained a pair of illustrations depicting regional scenes of farming, fishing, mining and other economic activities. Higuchi Hiromu, a collector of 19th-century nishiki-e, wrote in 1943 that there were 60 pairs (120 pictures) in the series, but only 118 are extant.1 There is also reference to over 100 pairs (200 pictures) being issued, based on the existence of prints in this series that carry numbers in their margin, some of which exceed the number 200. However, based upon the haphazard appearance of numbers on only the occasional print, these numbers appear to have no relationship to the total number of prints in the series and we can safely assume that only 59 pair (118 pictures) were issued.

The series' issuance date strongly suggests that their publication was timed for the August 21, 1877 opening of the first National Industrial Exposition (Naikoku Kangyō Hakurankai) in Tokyo's Ueno Park. (See The 1877 First National Industrial Exhibition below.)

The Series Dai Nippon Bussan Zue 大日本物産図会 (Products of Greater Japan, 1877)

This series is also referred to as Dainippon Butsu-san Zukai (Pictures of Products and Industries of Japan) and is variously translated as Products of Greater Japan, Series of Greater Japan Products, Famous Products of Japan, Products of Japan, and Pictorial Record of Japanese Products, among others.

In all, 58 provinces (or regions) are represented in the series.  Fifty-seven provinces are each represented by two prints, with Iyo Province being the one province represented by four prints. The names given for the provinces are those of the pre-Meiji era, sometimes referred to as the "old kuni".  (A brief description of each of the old kuni can be found in the article Former Provinces of Japan.) As shown below, the prints for each province were printed together on a single ōban-size sheet of paper and then cut into separate chūban size sheets.  Uncut sheets can sometimes be found, as in IHL Cat. #362 Producing Soy Sauce and Watermelon Field in Shimōsa Province shown below.

Most Prints Bound Into Books

The printed sheets in ōban format (approximately 10 x 14 inches) were cut and sold as individual sheets or, as most were, cut and bound into books. There are two book formats, a book sized approximately 7 x 9 1/2 in. (18 x 24 cm.) which allowed the prints to lay flat and a book sized approximately 7 x 5 in. (18 x 13 cm) which required each print to be folded in half.  An advertisement included at the end of one bound folding book says “Dai Nippon Bussan Zue, orihon zen 6 satsu,” namely that there were six books in the series.  Extant books do not necessarily contain the same pictures in the same order and it seems that there was no fixed way of arranging the prints when they were bound together.

Signatures and Cartouches on the Prints

Most of the prints in the top half of the uncut ōban size sheet are signed "Hiroshige hitsu" in the bottom of its right margin and most of the bottom prints carry a cartouche in the left margin that gives Hiroshige III's address and his family name, Andō Tokubei, and the publisher's address and name, Ōkura Magobei, in a cartouche in the right margin, as shown below. 

Borrowing of Scenes

Source: Picturing Westernization and Modernization: A Woodblock Print Collection from Late 19th Century Japan, Izumi Koide, June 16, 2006, a paper delivered at the WORLD LIBRARY AND INFORMATION CONGRESS: 72ND IFLA GENERAL CONFERENCE AND COUNCIL 20-24 August 2006, Seoul, Korea http://archive.ifla.org/IV/ifla72/papers/085-Koide-en.pdf

These pictures show industrial scenes such as harvesting natural resources, processing crafts, shipping products, etc. in certain regions, and hence depicting local industry. In the history of Japanese drawings particularly for practical use, there were various genres of pictures: meisho-e described famous places such as temples, sight-seeing spots, etc.; shokunin-e depicted various professionals and how to make things; bussan-e were like pictorial encyclopedia for products; and hakubutsu-e were of things. The Dai Nippon Bussan Zue is a combination of these genres of picture. By presenting images of most regions in Japan systematically with respective local industries, products, and working people, it suggested the variety as well as commonality of the developing nation.

The pictures are of all regions of Japan (see Former Provinces of Japan) and it is unlikely that the artist traveled to each place. Some pictures of the series are “borrowed” from other pictures, a practice known as shakuyō. Some pictures were taken from Nihon Sankai Meisan Zue (Famous Sea and Land Products in Japan, first published in 1799), and others were from Kii Meisho Zue (Famous Places in the Kii Region) of the mid 19th century. There might exist other “originals” upon which pictures in the Dai Nippon Bussan Zue were based, as there were many other regional “famous places series.” 

Despite the borrowing of scenes from older originals, local industries had not changed much for decades when these prints were issued in the early Meiji period in comparison to the immense change in the political system. The pictures in Dai Nippon Bussan Zue gave people images of local industrial scenes, even if conventional or imaginary, in the age of “national industrial expositions.” 

Producing Soy Sauce in Shimosa Province - Three Variations 

The 1877 First National Industrial Exhibition

The First National Industrial Exhibtion (内国勧業博覧会, Naikoku Kangyō Hakurankai) was held from August 21 through November 30, 1877, in Tokyo's Ueno Park and drew over 450,000 visitors. The Minister of the Interior, Ōkubo Toshimichi, who acted as the exhibition's general director, was a powerful advocate for the policy of fostering production and commerce and a proponent of national industrial exhibitions. The exhibition site consisted of a museum, main hall, machinery hall, agriculture hall, animal husbandry hall, horticulture hall, Gokakudō (pentagonal hall), and Rokusō-an tea ceremony pavilion. There were a total of 16,172 exhibitors showing 84,353 items. In anticipation of the event, the government clearly stated its interest in encouraging the growth of export industries and requested that every prefecture in Japan participate in the exhibition, suggesting that the domestic fairs were intended to provide a survey of the products and industries of the entire country and to offer a venue for assessing which of those products might be suitable for export.

The Complete Set of 118 Prints

Notes on commonly used kanji in print titles:

国 (or 國) kuni - province

同国 dōkoku - the same province (a reference to the province written in the cartouche of paired print)

製図 seizu - drawing or sketch

之図 or 圖 or ノ図 (no zu) - picture or drawing