Kaze no Rakusho--The Voices of Edo Folk Engraved in the Times

Kaze no Rakusho--The Voices of Edo Folk Engraved in the Times

In the Edo period, graffiti was not merely a prank, but was sometimes treated as a subtle resistance to politics and the system. Initially, graffiti was treated as a "conspiracy to write" crime, which disallowed documents or satire that might sway power and imposed heavy penalties, even death in some cases. The Tokugawa Shogunate's Code of Laws and the Goshiki (Code of Criminal Procedure) established a category of crimes known as "kakusho kakuban," in which acts of deceiving others or plotting against them through writing were severely punished.

Over time, however, graffiti gradually gained a certain degree of acceptance as a form of expression that reflected the thoughts of the common people. There is an anecdote that the Shogun Ieyoshi (an expression based on a certain tradition) urged the common people to "write what you think without hesitation," which is not an institutional permission but a symbolic narrative that reflects the growth of folk culture. Amid the fluctuations between bans and lifts, graffiti became a medium for inscribing a sense of life, irony, satire, and desire on the walls and fences of the city.

The background of this period was that the literacy of the common people was improving and the culture of writing was spreading through terakoya (temple schools) and the role of a streetwalker. People who could handle letters wrote "small voices" on familiar objects and left their traces on streets, alleys, and house walls. Ukiyoe, kusa-soshi, popular poetry, and other forms of expressive culture interacted with graffiti, and graffiti became an established cultural device in the city of Edo.

However, the growing acceptance of graffiti did not mean that the powers that be permitted it. There was still pressure to crack down on graffiti that was highly critical or that directly upset the shogunate or clan system. In the tension between the front and back sides, graffiti continued to exist as a place to inscribe "voiceless voices" while always maintaining a measure of distance from the authorities. Through this historical background, a genealogy of expression surrounding graffiti, from contemporary street art and graffiti to anonymous expression on social networking services, will emerge.