Impossible Cast Shadows in Ukyio-e Paintings

A very limited number of shadows is registered in Eastern art (Toyama and Naito 2008). Among these are those that are depicted in two scrolls at the Tokyo Idemitsu Museum of Art. The first is a representation of Scenes from the Life of Edo by Miyagawa Chosyun (1682-1752) (Figure 1). The second, by Chôbunsai Eishi (1756-1829), dating from the first years of the 19th century is entitled Going to Yoshiwara (Figure 2). In both cases we are presented, in a portion of the respective scrolls, with an interior seen through what appears to be shadows cast on a shoji, the traditional silk paper sliding door. In the Choysun scroll, a set of musicians is playing in a pavilion by the sea; in the projections on the shoji it is possible to recognize a string player, a flutist and a third character. In the Eishi scroll, the projections on the shoji show an undefined person, probably a music player, and two bending servant at a banquet, one of whom offers a bowl to a character in full view. The projections on the scroll do look like shadows, but are they really shadows? The geometry of the situation seems to exclude it. The top left bending character in the Eishi painting is prolonged in its own shadow in a way that would require the light source to be at an infinite distance opposite to the viewer. Moreover, the figures on the shoji appear to be distributed in the third dimension, partially overlapping each other. In the Eishi scroll, the leftmost player’s projection bends around the corner formed by two sliding doors. Indeed, in all those cases these figures are best construed as silhouettes of the people as we would see them were the shoji removed. However, the intention of the painter seems to have been that of conveying