Edo Snowmen

By Thomas Gibbs

My last Art of Advent article was a rather stony-faced piece about the aesthetics of transience and microscope studies of snowflakes. Today I want to talk about something quite different: snowmen. 

I don’t know why I had assumed snowmen were a modern Anglo-American phenomenon, but I certainly had never envisioned them cropping up in, say, Edo Japan. And then I found this print by artist (and famous cat-lover) Utaggawa Kuniyoshi. 

Uttagawa Kuniyoshi, Snow Cat: The First Snow of the Year, woodblock print, 1847-50, published by Yamaguchi-ya Tôbei.

That’s right. They’re building a snow-cat! Of course, the subject of snow sculpture was probably Kuniyoshi’s choice, he would put cats in any print he could. Other animals are available though. This much earlier print by Suzuki Harunobu depicts children crafting a snow-dog. And a whole 160 years before Channel 4 came out with The Snowman and the Snowdog! Truly Edo Japan was ahead of its time. 

Suzuki Harunobu, Making a Snow Dog, c. 1767/68, woodblock print, 27.7 × 21 cm, Clarence Buckingham Collection, Art Institute of Chicago. 

The construction of these snowmen was not dissimilar to the modern process. However, I enjoy the contrast between the demure ladies and chaotic boys in these two prints of the 18th century. 

Utagawa Toyokuni, Courtesans and Attendants Making a Giant Snowball, c. 1796, woodblock print triptych, 36.8 × 74.9 cm, The Met, New York (not on display). 

Suzuki Harunobu, Three Boys Making a Snowman, c. 1767-68, woodblock print, 27.9 x 21.1 cm, The Met, New York (not on display). 

My favourite of these prints, though, has to be the snow-daruma by Utagawa Hirokage which completely messes with my established sense of geography, chronology, and Victorian propriety. That’s what I love about art history, there’s always something that will disrupt your view of the world! 

Utagawa Hirokage, No. 22, Snow in Front of the Official Storehouses (Onkura mae no yuki), from the series Comical Views of Famous Places in Edo (Edo meisho dôke zukushi), Woodblock print (nishiki-e), 37.3 x 24.8 cm, MFA Boston.