Megane-e

Some young women using a megane-e device
Harunobu, c. 1760s

In Japanese art, a megane-e (眼鏡絵, 'optique picture') is a print designed using graphical perspective techniques and viewed through a convex lens to produce a three-dimensional effect.^[1] The term derives from the French vue d'optique. The device used to view them was called an Oranda megane (和蘭眼鏡, 'Dutch glasses') or nozoki megane (覗き眼鏡, 'peeping glasses'),^[2] and the pictures were also known as karakuri-e (繰絵, 'tricky picture').

Perspective boxes first appeared in Renaissance Europe and were popular until superseded by the stereoscope in the mid-19th century.^[3] The Dutch brought the first such device to Japan in the 1640s as a gift to the shogun. The devices became popular in Japan only after the Chinese popularized them in Japan^[4] about 1758,^[5] after which they began to influence Japanese artists.^[4]

The artist Maruyama Ōkyo (1733–95) made serious study of imprted perpsective techniques and applied them to his painting. He gained an interest in making ukiyo-e prints through the ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Toyoharu, who produced uki-e 'floating pictures' using linear perspective techniques. Ōkyo began making uki-e prints for viewing through a convex lens: megane-e.^[5] Ōkyo later dismissed his megane-e, perhaps because their subjects were of kabuki and the pleasure quarters and thus considered of low artistic value.^[6] Prints by artists such as Utamaro and Masanobu depict people enjoying megane-e.^[7]

References

1. Fujii 2004, p. 80.
2. Screech 2002, p. 99.
3. Fujii 2004, pp. 80–81.
4. Leibsohn & Peterson 2012, p. 45.
5. Fujii 2004, p. 81.
6. North 2010, p. 177.
7. Fujii 2004, p. 82.

Works cited

• Fujii, Shigeru (2004). "眼鏡絵". 眼玉の道草. Bungeisha. pp. 80–86. ISBN 978-4-8355-4803-6.
• Leibsohn, Dana; Peterson, Jeanette Favrot (2012). Seeing Across Cultures in the Early Modern World. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4094-1189-5.
• North, Michael (2010). Artistic and Cultural Exchanges Between Europe and Asia, 1400-1900: Rethinking Markets, Workshops and Collections. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7546-6937-1.
• Screech, Timon (2002). The Lens Within the Heart: The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later Edo Japan. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-2594-2.