What was the difference between ga and zoku cuture?

Ukiyo question

が(雅)＝High culture, aristocratic ^{_{(similar to modern day opera or ballet)}}

ぞく(俗)＝The common, the commercial, mass culture ^{_{(similar to today's popculture)}}

Buddhist 1) ukiyo = reality of life, world of misery

2) Means the same as the traditional definition on the surface - everything is transient. But in this case it doesn't cause misery rather it is a concept of the changing of popular things. e.g clothes, art, actors, prostitutes. 

What changed in the Tokugawa period?

Ukiyo

• The Tokugawa period is one when we begin to see what arts the common people enjoyed, as previously this wasn't well documented. 
• Up until this point, high culture was exclusive. To access it you had to have a high standard of education. For example, if you wanted to read Genji Monogatari you would have to borrow a copy and copy the whoe document by hand. You could only do this if you had spare time and those with spare time are often wealthy. 
• In addition, previously the idea of patronage was prevelent, meaning wealthy peoply paid for arts to be created, there for they controlled the arts. 
• As art and literature became more accesable to the lower classes, new forms of it began to appear. 

Why did these Changes come about during Tougawa?

Ukiyo

• Development of printing in Japan - enabled literature and art to become mass produced and thus available to the masses. Handwritten literature was only available to the elite classes, as it took a lot of time and resources. 
• Rise of literacy rates - merchant children had to be literate, and accesable education increased for the population. As literacy rates rose, more people were able to read the new forms of literature that were developed. 
• Rise of capitalism - giving wealthy townsmen new economic indepedance.

• The new forms of art and literature were primarily urban forms. As cities underwent massive expansion, the cities became where new forms of culture emerged form. 
• The theatre district and red light district became zones for this. 
• The theatre was the core of Japanese entertainment, kabuki and puppet plays.
• These zones provided an escape from the real world in to one of fantasy and imagination. 

The pleasure quarter 

Ukiyo

• Here, men could spend money on licensed prostitutes and courtesans. These women were trained in the arts, such as shamisen, dance etc. 
• There had always been prostitutes around Japan, but the definition was vague. In the Tokugawa period, a distinction began to occur, and commercial districts began to appear. 
• Every year rankings were published with the names of all the houses and the women who worked there. This refects the transient nature of the Ukiyo, as one courtesan could be ranked number one, the next year she could tumble through the rankings. 
• For men hiring an exspensive prostitute would raise their status in the eyes of their peers. The courtesans would show up with attendants and there were not cheap so the hiring of a high ranked courtesan was extreamly exspensive and the man wasn't gaurenteed to have sex with her.

The theatre

Ukiyo

• kabuki - one of the main two performing arts that rose in this period. (the other is puppet theatre)
• Became a major axis around which all popular culture revolved. 
• Highly influencial - the most extensive genre of ukiyo-e was pictures of popular actors.
• Actors were idiolised by fans.
• The actors in Kabuki became the celebrities of the Edo period and from their popularity forms of merchandise were produced. This merchandise would often be mass productions of a particular item of clothing worn by the actor that featured famous iconography or words associated with that actor. This merchandise also stretched to things such as hair oils and odd things such as bath water. This kind of personal marketing had not been seen before in Japan to this extent. 
• The Bakufu considered Kabuki as dangerous due to it's potential to influence the population and placed many restrictions on it. 

Literature

Ukiyo

• かなぞし- produced guides of merchants (who was the richest etc.)
• うきよ-ぞし- Mass produced literature in the form of short sketches, influenced by Kanazoshi and haikai poetry, pionered by Ihara Saikaku. These were books about the floating world written in a very detached, non-didactic style. 
• Saikaku - began as a very talented, unconventional haikai poet and later turned his attention to literature, famous for his witty style of writing. His works include "life of an amorous man". (modern retelling of Genji monogatari - at the end old man leaves on a boat in search of the land of women)
• Alot of Tokugawa literature was illustrated with ukiyo-e prints. 
• Matsuo Basho - poet who played around with classical poetry tradition. He rejected traditional waka poetry aesthetics, instead he turned these on their head and used different forms. 

Tokugawa art

Ukiyo

The Ukiyo was the floating world - the ever changing world of the pleasure quarter in Tokugawa Japan. As Japan was closed in the Edo period, artists and writers had to look in on their own culture and new forms of art and literature were created that were influenced by the Floating world. Popular actors and courtesans were printedand written about.

Not sure about this bit below.

A key feature of the new pop culture was it's realsim. Artists and autors did not romanticise their subjects, rather they portrayed them realistically, perhaps to give those consuming this culture the most realistic picture of the floating world as possible.

The concept of が vs ぞく is basically high culture vs popular culture. The Tokugawa period saw huge growths in froms of ぞく arts and literature (うきよ-ぞし、かぶき、うきよ-えetc), as art and literature became available to the masses. Prior to the Tokugawa period, documented culture was in the form of が literature and art, characterised by its focus on the court and restricted accessibility. The samurai classes continued the patronise が art and literature during th Edo period but the explosion of ぞく culture is one of the most important features of this period.