RJ's Inspiration #022 🍶

RJ's Inspiration

weekly viz to inspire you too

🍶 DIETARY LIFE RULES (飲食養生鑑)
Above is a portion of a woodblock pictorial diagram from around 1850 associated with Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞). It uses a cutaway look inside a drinking man to show what our organs do.

Fantastically, the organ functions are illustrated with familiar city and household scenes. The print was designed for popular audiences. Its images and text not only explain the organs, but also advise against gluttonous behavior. According to Sotheby's, "In the centre of the heart a scholar samurai is presiding over the life process with two piles of books in front of him." See the full print and learn more about it at the Lyon Collection (link).

When I discovered this print at the recent San Francisco Map Fair I immediately thought of Fritz Kahn. He was a German Jewish physician who became famous for pictorial diagrams of human anatomy. Compare Kahn's MAN AS INDUSTRIAL PALACE (link) to DIETARY LIFE RULES.

Finally, the gifts from Utagawa Kunisada do not end with this print. The drinker has a female companion in the corresponding sister print RULES OF SEXUAL LIFE. It features a courtesan smoking a pipe. See her and more woodblock diagrams in this blogpost about Japanese design: link.

🌲 PACIFIC NORTHWEST
I am traveling to Tacoma and Vancouver later this month for NACIS and IEEE VIS. Please let me know if there's a good way for us to see each other there!

👉 ARE YOU ENJOYING THIS SERIES?
Please reply directly to share your favorite viz, offer any advice for how this newsletter experiment can be improved, or say hello. -RJ