Buildings and Objects

Commentary on specific elements of Japan’s hierarchy found a home in prints involving tsukumogami, vengeful animated objects. The Confucian and Buddhist ideals that formed the backbone of Edo social structure and morality emphasized humility and discouraged extravagance. Powerful and wealthy citizens, meaning members of higher classes, usually samurai, strayed from these values during the Edo period and indulged in lavish homes, clothing, and possessions. Lower class citizens did not have access to the same luxuries, or at least could not flaunt them openly, leading to tension between classes. Apart from imbalance of wealth, those who were members of the lower castes of Edo society were relatively powerless in politics and control over their own lives. Stories and prints of tsukumogami acted as a surrogate for these people’s desire to revolt against those that controlled and limited them, usually depicting low-value household objects attacking high-class citizens after being discarded. Shogunal reforms at the time would have banned prints depicting actual rebellions, and so prints of tsukumogami rising up against their previous masters became an outlet for these messages that could easily be passed off as fanciful storytelling.