Graffiti on a Storehouse Wall

In the early 1840s, the Japanese government passed laws to limit what it saw as excessive freedom of expression among Japan’s urbanites. The laws banned the overt representation of current events in works of art and theater. Although actor images were still allowed, adding written information about the actor or his current production was forbidden. The artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi poked fun at those restrictions when he released a series of prints that purported to illustrate a wall covered with graffiti but actually contained multiple actor portraits, many accompanied by notes that hinted at the roles they were playing. The artist chose a specific term for the graffiti, nitakaragura, because it incorporates the Japanese phrase nita kara, meaning “don’t they look like?” Apparently the joke was subtle enough, because two different government censors left their seals of approval on the page.