Professor Hans Bjarne Thomsen from the University of Zurich is here at this month's TTL to discuss the relations between disasters and the arts. Linking Japan to its disasters, for example, natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis, man-made disasters such as WW2 and its atrocities and nuclear disasters such as the atomic explosion at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the powerplant disaster at Fukushima.
This time he mainly focused on the Ansei Earthquake in 1855 in relation to the Catfish Prints produced at the time. A myth believed that catfish cause earthquakes, over two hundred catfish prints were produced, and the prints are full of parodies and puns. The government censorship structure collapses for a short two-month period; there are no restraints on the publishing world. Almost all catfish prints were published without permission from the authorities, without the censor's seal of approval and without the names of the artists and publishers. After two months of censorship in reinstated, everything is burned.
Before the Ansei Earthquake in 1855, other earthquakes occurred in various places across the archipelago, including the great earthquake of the previous year, 1854. In addition, the Japan-US Trade Treaty (The Treaty of Kanagawa) was signed in the same year. People saw these "natural disasters" as a series of related events and attributed them to the government's corrupt politics and the world's general state.
Maybe the reason for censorship at the time of Edo-Japan is that the government does not wish people to produce prints that may cause the power of the government to become unstable and spread the concept of seceding and acting against the state.
China as one of the strictest countries on censorship, it can be suggested that government are afraid of its civilians and does not wish to be critiqued by them. They claim that their reason for censorship in the country is to protect it from foreign forces and enforce national stabilities. But oppressing the people does not stop people from doing actions unfavoured by the government and even increases their curiosity about what is happening outside of the artificial wall China had created for them. Such as the recent protest for freedom in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong, and artists as such Ai Wei Wei and Badiucao.
Arts and creations that were censored by the state (in this case, the catfish prints) do not always involve to critique of the government but enable people to release their emotions and feelings of satisfaction for example seeing the catfish being beaten and eaten. Also, provide people with distancing from tragedy and daily suffering through humour while critiquing the government and its leadership. The catfish can also act as a hero to the people, working on equality by eliminating the gap between the rich and the poor. The catfish prints reflected the artist's and publisher's social criticism and provided a view into how artists processed natural disasters and offered a solution for a better world.