近代イギリスの中国観 : 陶磁器の文様=柳模様に浮かぶ中国

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The willow-pattern is a classic landscape design of china-ware whose characteristic components include a weeping willow, mandarin's pagodas, three persons on a bridge and a pair of doves, all in blue on a white background. This pattern has a legend of two lovers. In the late-18th-century Britain, it was invented as a product of chinoiserie. Since then, the willow-pattern has maintained its popularity in contrast to the decline of the chinoiserie. While other scholars of china wares and the chinoiserie have pointed out the importance of the willow-pattern and its enduring popularity, this paper focuses more closely on why this pattern has been enjoying such a high popularity, and how this pattern has affected the Western images of China. The willow-pattern covers a wide range of contemporary British cultural products. The willow-pattern plates were originally manufactured in Staffordshire, and they soon spread through the country. The willow-pattern was not exclusive to the motif of china wares. It was applied to the motifs of games, stage set, and gardens. And The Punch and the Times featured it. We can read a typical British impression of the willow-pattern from the following quotation. "The old willow-pattern plate! By every association, in spite of its want of artistic beauty, it is dear to us. It is mingled with our earliest recollections; it is like the picture of an old friend and companion whose portrait we see everywhere, but of whose likeness we never grow weary." ("The Story of the Common Willow-Pattern Plate", The Family Friend, Vol. 1, 1849.) This impression of the willow-pattern has been preserved. As late as 1918, The Daily News mentioned that "It is difficult for anyone who has never been to China not to imagine Chinese life as a sort of willow-pattern ritual." How have British people imagined China through viewing the willow-pattern? It can be said that the willow-pattern products satisfy their curiosity about a mysterious China. The products bolstered the image of China as something like an intangible toy, something beautiful and enjoyable in their childhood. Most British people kept this image of China as a haven of leisure and luxury in their mind until quite recently. It should also be noted that, on the whole, British people turned their positive images of China in the 18th century into negative, dismissive, and derogatory ones in the 19th century. This critical change in British images of China seriously eroded 18th century idea that China was a kind of utopia. Nonetheless, this did not mean that the willow-pattern image was also undermined in the 19th century. The positive image of the willow-pattern has survived in the modern British society. Even when British people generally took a harsh view on China, this image survived, and in part it kept creating the image of China as something nostalgic, familiar, and safe. Why has this image survived? One of the reasons can be found in the following narrative. Harry Barnard (1862-1933), general manager of London Branch of Wedgewood, explained why people loved the willow-pattern and its stories. "Every one in childhood has wondered what the mysterious people, trees, and birds meant. What is boatman doing? Now for the story as was told to me in childhood, and which, of course, I have retained because it was given to me at my mother's knee, who also had it from her mother in the same manner." This quotation clearly explains why the positive willow-pattern image survived. How could anyone critically reconsider the story told at his/her mother's knee? As is clear from the narrative stated above, the willow-pattern image has been ingrained in the mind of British people who rarely reflect on its meanings of how it works.[figure]
2006-03-25

著者

東田雅博
金沢大学文学部

近代イギリスの中国観 : 陶磁器の文様=柳模様に浮かぶ中国

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