Chats on Japanese Prints
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Title: Chats on Japanese Prints
Author: Arthur Davison Ficke
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Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS ***
BOOKS FOR COLLECTORS
_With Frontispieces and many Illustrations._
CHATS ON ENGLISH CHINA.
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON OLD FURNITURE.
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON OLD PRINTS.
(How to collect and value Old Engravings.)
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON COSTUME.
By G. Woolliscroft Rhead.
CHATS ON OLD LACE AND NEEDLEWORK.
By E. L. Lowes.
CHATS ON ORIENTAL CHINA.
By J. F. Blacker.
CHATS ON OLD MINIATURES.
By J. J. Foster, F.S.A.
CHATS ON ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
(Companion volume to "Chats on English China.")
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON AUTOGRAPHS.
By A. M. Broadley.
CHATS ON PEWTER.
By H. J. L. J. Massé, M.A.
CHATS ON POSTAGE STAMPS.
By Fred. J. Melville.
CHATS ON OLD JEWELLERY AND TRINKETS.
By MacIver Percival.
CHATS ON COTTAGE AND FARMHOUSE FURNITURE.
(Companion volume to "Chats on Old Furniture.")
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON OLD COINS
By Fred. W. Burgess.
CHATS ON OLD COPPER AND BRASS.
By Fred. W. Burgess.
CHATS ON HOUSEHOLD CURIOS.
By Fred. W. Burgess.
CHATS ON OLD SILVER.
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS.
By Arthur Davison Ficke.
CHATS ON MILITARY CURIOS.
By Stanley C. Johnson.
CHATS ON OLD CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON ROYAL COPENHAGEN PORCELAIN.
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON OLD SHEFFIELD PLATE.
(Companion volume to "Chats on Old Silver.")
By Arthur Hayden.
BYE PATHS OF CURIO COLLECTING.
By Arthur Hayden.
With Frontispiece and 72 Full page Illustrations. 9s. net.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.
NEW YORK: F. A. STOKES COMPANY.
CHATS ON
JAPANESE
PRINTS
[Illustration: HIROSHIGE: THE BOW-MOON.
Size 15 × 7. Signed Hiroshige, hitsu.
_Frontispiece._]
CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS
BY ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE
WITH 56 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A COLOURED FRONTISPIECE
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
* * * * *
_First published in 1915_
_Second Impression, 1916_
_Third Impression, 1917_
_Fourth Impression, 1922_
(_All rights reserved_)
* * * * *
TO
FREDERICK WILLIAM GOOKIN
AND
HOWARD MANSFIELD
CUSTODIANS, APPRAISERS, AND LOVERS OF BEAUTY
As chosen guests we may partake
Of this strange hostel's ancient wine.
For thirst no common drink can slake
Tapsters of lineage divine
Here pour sweet anodyne.
The hurly-burly of the road,
The turmoil of the carters' feet,
Intrude not to this still abode
Where travellers from the world-ends meet,
And find the gathering sweet.
Hence may perhaps some secret gleam
Follow along our onward way,
From evening feast with lords of dream,
As we go forth into the grey
To-morrow's cloudy day.
PREFACE
For assistance of many kinds in preparing this book the thanks of the
author are gratefully offered to Mr. Frederick William Gookin, Mr.
Howard Mansfield, Mr. William S. Spaulding, Mr. John T. Spaulding, Mr.
Judson D. Metzgar, Mr. Charles H. Chandler, Mr. John Stewart Happer,
Col. Henry Appleton, Mrs. Arthur Aldis, Mr. Ernest Oberholtzer, and Mr.
Charles August Ficke. Though many obligations must perforce go
unacknowledged, it would be improper to fail to state indebtedness to
the writings of Von Seidlitz, Bing, Huish, Anderson, Strange, Binyon,
Gookin, Kurth, Morrison, Happer, Koechlin, Vignier, Succo, Field, De
Goncourt, Okakura, Edmunds, Perzynski, Wright, Fenollosa, and De Becker.
Many collectors have kindly allowed their prints to be used for
illustration in this book. That all the examples are from American
collections is due to considerations of convenience, not to any notion
of their superiority. All prints not credited to another owner are from
the collection of the author. The other collections from which
illustrations are drawn are as follows:--
Spaulding (William S. and John T.), Boston, Massachusetts.
Gookin (Frederick W.), Chicago, Illinois.
Mansfield (Howard), New York.
Chandler (Charles H.), Evanston, Illinois.
Metzgar (Judson D.), Moline, Illinois.
Ainsworth (Miss Mary), Moline, Illinois.
Four of the poems herein printed appeared first in _The Little Review_.
A number of the others are from the author's book "Twelve Japanese
Painters." Most of the photographs here reproduced were prepared by Mr.
J. H. Paarman, Miss Sarah G. Foote-Sheldon, and Mr. J. D. Metzgar.
DAVENPORT, IOWA, U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE 11
GLOSSARY 19
CHAPTER
I. PRELIMINARY SURVEY 23
II. CONDITIONS PRECEDING THE RISE OF PRINT DESIGNING 47
III. THE FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 61
IV. THE SECOND PERIOD: THE EARLY POLYCHROME MASTERS 125
V. THE THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA AND HIS FOLLOWERS 205
VI. THE FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 255
VII. THE FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 347
VIII. THE COLLECTOR 401
INDEX 449
ILLUSTRATIONS
HIROSHIGE: THE BOW-MOON _Frontispiece_
PLATE PAGE
1. MORONOBU: A PAIR OF LOVERS 71
2. SUKENOBU: A YOUNG COURTESAN 77
3. KWAIGETSUDŌ: COURTESAN ARRANGING HER COIFFURE
(_Spaulding Collection_) 81
4. OKUMURA MASANOBU: COURTESANS AT TOILET 93
5. OKUMURA MASANOBU: STANDING WOMAN 97
6. OKUMURA MASANOBU: YOUNG NOBLEMAN PLAYING THE DRUM
(_Chandler Collection_) 101
7. TOYONOBU: TWO KOMUSO, REPRESENTED BY THE ACTORS SANOKAWA
ICHIMATSU AND ONOYE KIKUGORO (_Chandler Collection_) 109
8. TOYONOBU: GIRL OPENING AN UMBRELLA (_Metzgar Collection_) 113
TOYONOBU: WOMAN DRESSING 113
9. KIYOMITSU: THE ACTOR SEGAWA KIKUNOJO AS A WOMAN SMOKING 117
10. KIYOMITSU: WOMAN WITH BASKET HAT 121
KIYOMITSU: WOMAN COMING FROM BATH 121
11. HARUNOBU: YOUNG GIRL IN WIND (_Gookin Collection_) 137
12. HARUNOBU: LADY TALKING WITH FAN-VENDOR (_Chandler Collection_) 141
13. HARUNOBU: GIRL VIEWING MOON AND BLOSSOMS
(_Chandler Collection_) 145
14. HARUNOBU: COURTESAN DETAINING A PASSING SAMURAI 149
15. HARUNOBU: SHIRAI GOMPACHI DISGUISED AS A KOMUSO 153
HARUNOBU: GIRL PLAYING WITH KITTEN 153
16. KORIUSAI: MOTHER AND BOY 161
KORIUSAI: TWO LOVERS IN THE FIELDS; SPRING CUCKOO 161
17. KORIUSAI: TWO LADIES 165
KORIUSAI: A GAME OF TAG 165
18. SHIGEMASA: TWO LADIES 169
KORIUSAI: A COURTESAN 169
19. SHUNSHO: AN ACTOR OF THE ISHIKAWA SCHOOL IN TRAGIC RÔLE 175
20. SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA MATSUYE AS A WOMAN IN WHITE 179
21. SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA NOSHIO IN FEMALE RÔLE
(_Gookin Collection_) 183
22. BUNCHO: COURTESAN AND HER ATTENDANT IN SNOWSTORM
(_Mansfield Collection_) 187
23. SHUNYEI: AN ACTOR 191
24. SHUNKO: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA MONNOSUKE IN CHARACTER 195
25. KIYONAGA: THE COURTESAN HANA-ŌJI WITH ATTENDANTS 211
26. KIYONAGA: LADY WITH TWO ATTENDANTS (_Gookin Collection_) 215
27. KIYONAGA: THE COURTESAN SHIZUKA WITH ATTENDANTS IN THE
PEONY GARDEN AT ASAKUSA 219
28. KIYONAGA: TWO WOMEN AND A TEA-HOUSE WAITRESS BESIDE THE
SUMIDA RIVER (_Gookin Collection_) 223
29. KIYONAGA: YOSHITSUNE SERENADING THE LADY JORURIHIME
(_Spaulding Collection_) 227
30. KIYONAGA: GEISHA WITH SERVANT CARRYING LUTE-BOX 231
KIYONAGA: WOMAN PAINTING HER EYEBROWS 231
31. SHUNCHO: GROUP AT A TEMPLE GATE (_Mansfield Collection_) 235
32. SHUNCHO: TWO LADIES UNDER UMBRELLA 239
SHUNCHO: THE COURTESAN HANA-ŌJI; THE SUMIDA RIVER SEEN
THROUGH THE WINDOW 239
33. SHUNCHO: TWO LADIES IN A BOAT ON THE SUMIDA RIVER 243
YEISHO: TWO COURTESANS AFTER THE BATH 243
34. KITAO MASANOBU: THE CUCKOO (_Spaulding Collection_) 251
35. YEISHI: THREE LADIES BY THE SEASHORE 267
36. YEISHI: LADY WITH TOBACCO-PIPE 271
37. YEISHI: INTERIOR OPENING ON TO THE SEASHORE
(_Metzgar Collection_) 275
38. UTAMARO: OKITA OF NANIWAYA, A TEA-HOUSE WAITRESS
(_Chandler Collection_) 283
39. UTAMARO: TWO COURTESANS 287
40. UTAMARO: WOMAN SEATED ON A VERANDA 291
41. UTAMARO: A YOUTHFUL PRINCE AND LADIES 295
42. SHARAKU: THE ACTOR ARASHI RYUZŌ IN THE RÔLE OF ONE
OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN (_Spaulding Collection_) 301
43. SHARAKU: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA DANJURO IN THE RÔLE OF MORONAO 309
44. SHARAKU: THE ACTOR KOSAGAWA TSUNEYO AS A WOMAN IN
THE DRAMA OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN (_Ainsworth Collection_) 313
45. CHOKI: COURTESAN AND ATTENDANT 321
SHUNMAN: TWO LADIES UNDER A MAPLE-TREE 321
46. CHOKI: A COURTESAN AND HER LOVER 325
CHOKI: A GEISHA AND HER SERVANT CARRYING LUTE-BOX 325
47. TOYOKUNI: LADIES AND CHERRY BLOSSOMS IN THE WIND
(_Metzgar Collection_) 333
48. TOYOHIRO: A DAIMYO'S KITE-PARTY 341
49. HOKUSAI: FUJI, SEEN ACROSS THE TAMA RIVER, PROVINCE OF MUSASHI 361
50. HOKUSAI: FUJI, SEEN FROM THE PASS OF MISHIMA, PROVINCE OF KAHI 367
51. HOKUSAI: THE MONKEY BRIDGE; TWILIGHT AND RISING MOON 371
52. HIROSHIGE: HOMING GEESE AT KATADA; TWILIGHT 377
53. HIROSHIGE: THE SEVEN RI FERRY, KUWANA, AT THE MOUTH
OF THE KISO RIVER; SUNSET 383
54. HIROSHIGE: THE VILLAGE OF THE FUJI KAWA; EVENING SNOW 387
55. HIROSHIGE: THE OMMAYA EMBANKMENT, ON THE SUMIDA RIVER
AT ASAKUSA; EVENING 391
56. HIROSHIGE: BIRD AND FLOWERS 395
GLOSSARY
BENI.--A delicate pink or red pigment of vegetable origin.
BENI-YE.--A print in which _beni_ is the chief colour used. The term
is generally employed to describe all those two-colour prints which
immediately preceded the invention of polychrome printing.
CHUBAN.--A vertical print, size about 11 × 8, sometimes called the
"medium size" sheet.
DIPTYCH.--A composition consisting of two sheets.
GAUFFRAGE.--Printing by pressure alone, without the use of a
pigment, producing an embossed effect on the paper.
HASHIRA-YE.--A very tall narrow print, size about 28 × 5, used to
hang on the wooden pillars of a Japanese house; a pillar-print.
HASHIRAKAKE.--See _hashira-ye_.
HOSO-YE.--A small vertical print, size about 12 × 6.
KAKEMONO.--A painting mounted on a margin of brocade; hung by its
top when in use, and rolled up when not in use.
KAKEMONO-YE.--A very tall wide print, size about 28 × 10.
KEY-BLOCK.--The engraved wooden plate from which the black outlines
of the print were produced.
KIRA-YE.--A print with mica background.
KOBAN.--A vertical print slightly smaller than the _Chuban_ (q.v.).
KURENAI-YE.--A hand-coloured print in which _beni_ is chiefly used.
MON.--The heraldic insignia used by actors and others as
coat-of-arms; generally worn on their sleeves.
NAGAYE.--See _hashira-ye_.
NISHIKI-YE.--Brocade picture--a term used at first to describe the
brilliant colour-inventions of Harunobu, but now loosely applied to
all polychrome prints.
OBAN.--A large vertical print, about 15 × 10--the normal full-size
upright sheet.
OTSU-YE.--A rough broadsheet painting, of small size, on paper; the
precursor of the print.
PENTAPTYCH.--A composition consisting of five sheets.
PILLAR-PRINT.--See _hashira-ye_.
SUMI.--Black Chinese ink.
SUMI-YE.--A print in black and white only.
SURIMONO.--A print, generally of small size and on thick soft paper,
intended as a festival greeting or memento of some social occasion.
TAN.--A brick-red or orange colour, consisting of red oxide of lead.
TAN-YE.--A print in which _tan_ is the only or chief colour used.
Such prints, in which the _tan_ was applied by hand, were among the
earliest productions.
TRIPTYCH.--A composition consisting of three sheets.
UCHIWA-YE.--A print in the shape of a fan.
URUSHI.--Lacquer.
URUSHI-YE.--A print in which lacquer is used to heighten the colour.
The term is generally employed to describe only the early
hand-coloured prints in which lacquer, colours, and metallic dust
were applied to the printed black outline.
YOKOYE.--A large horizontal print, about 10 × 15--the normal
full-size landscape sheet.
I
PRELIMINARY
SURVEY
THE GENERAL NATURE
OF JAPANESE PRINTS
GROWTH OF INTEREST
IN THEM
THE TECHNIQUE OF
THEIR PRODUCTION
THEIR ÆSTHETIC
CHARACTERISTICS
Bring forth, my friend, these faded sheets
Whose charm our laboured utterance flies.
Perhaps our later search repeats
The groping of those scholars' eyes
Who, ere the dawned Renaissant day,
With duskèd sight and doubtful hand,
Bent o'er the pages of some grey
Greek text they could not understand;
Drawn by the sense that there concealed
Lay key to spacious realms unknown;
Held by the need that be revealed
Forgotten worlds to light their own.
CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARY SURVEY
The general nature of Japanese prints--Growth of interest in
them--The technique of their production--Their æsthetic
characteristics.
That sublimated pleasure which is the seal of all the arts reaches its
purest condition when evoked by a work in which the æsthetic quality is
not too closely mingled with the every-day human. Poetry, because of its
close human ties, is to a certain extent a corrupt art; its medium is
that base speech which we use for communicating information, and few are
the readers whose minds can absolve words from the work-a-day obligation
of conveying, first of all, mere tidings. Music, on the other hand,
employing a medium wholly sacred to its own uses, starts with no such
handicap; its succession of notes awakens in the listener no expectation
of an eventual body of facts to carry home. Between the two extremes lie
the graphic arts. These are perhaps most fortunate when they deal with
material not familiar to the spectator, for it is then that he most
readily accepts them as designs and harmonies, without looking to them
for a literal record of things only too well known to him.
The graphic art of an alien race has therefore an initial strength of
purely æsthetic appeal that a native art often lacks. It moves free from
the demands with which unconsciously we approach the art of our own
people. It stands as an undiscovered world, of which nothing can
logically be expected. The spectator who turns to it at all must come
prepared to take it on its own terms. If it allures him, it will do so
by virtue of those qualities of harmony, rhythm, and vision which in
these strange surroundings are more perceptible to him than in the art
of his own race, where so many adventitious associations operate to
distract him. Like a man whom Mayfair bewilders with its fashions, he
may find that fundamental verity, that humanity which he seeks only
among the Gipsy beggars.
Perhaps this theory best explains the impulse that has of late led many
lovers of beauty to turn to the arts of Persia, China, and Japan for
their keenest pleasure. Here, in unfamiliar environment, the fundamental
powers of design stand forth free. Here the beautiful is discoverable
for its own sake, liberated from the oppression of utility.
Toward Japan this impulse has in our own day been strongly directed. The
handicrafts of the Japanese people have charmed the Western world,
possibly to an undue extent. On the other hand, the great classical
schools of Japanese painting have unfortunately been difficult of
access. But between the two, half craft and half art, lies the Japanese
colour-print--a finer product than mere dexterous artizan work, and more
accessible than the paintings of the classic masters. In the print many
a Western mind has found its clearest intimation of the universal
principles of beauty.
During a period of a little more than a hundred years, roughly delimited
by 1742 and 1858, there were produced in Japan large numbers of
wood-engravings, printed in colours; these have of late come to occupy
an almost unique place in the esteem of European art-lovers. So great is
the importance now attached to these works that the Japanese public of
earlier days, for whose delectation they were designed, would be
astounded could they witness it. Just as obscure Greek potters moulded
for common use vases that are to-day treasured in the museums as
paradigms of beauty, so the coloured broadsheets, whose immediate
purpose was to give pleasure to the crowds of the Japanese capital, have
taken in the course of years a distinguished rank among the beautiful
things of all time.
The day is passing when the love of these sheets can be looked upon as
the badge of a cult, the secret delight of far-searching worshippers of
the strange and exotic. Even did the collector desire, he could not long
hide this light under a bushel; and the Japanese print is swiftly
becoming a general treasure. This is proper and natural. An
understanding of the origin of this form of art makes its present
popularity in Europe seem like the felicitous rounding of a circle begun
on the other side of the world.
It was in Yedo, the teeming capital of Japan, that the art of the
colour-print flourished; and the patron sought by the artists was
primarily the common man. No art more purely national or more
definitely popular and exoterical in its inception has ever existed. The
subjects of the prints are alone enough to make this fact evident. In
them appear the forms and faces of the popular actors in their admired
rôles, fashionable courtesans decked in all the splendour of their
unhappy but far-famed days and nights, legendary heroes, dancers,
wrestlers, and popular entertainers. In the matter of landscape, the
scenes shown are the festival-crowded temples of Yedo, the sunlit
tea-gardens and gay midnight boating-parties of the Sumida River, the
great highroads of national travel, the famous spots of popular
recreation. Only rarely are there episodes from aristocratic life; and
the occasional occurrence of these has precisely the significance of a
photograph of a royal house-party shown in a penny paper. The Yoshiwara,
as the licensed quarter of Yedo is called, appears in these prints more
often than do the garden-parties of noble ladies; the vulgar theatre is
shown, but not the classic Nō drama of the aristocracy; it is a Japanese
Montmartre, not a Japanese Faubourg St. Germain, that is revealed. The
artist's sense of beauty subdues these riotous pleasures of the populace
to the severe demands of a beautiful pattern; but it is a whimsical
vulgar world, a world of the people, a world of passing gaiety, that he
portrays.
The purposes of these pictures were various. "To some extent," says Mr.
Frederick W. Gookin, "they were used as advertisements. Incidentally
they served as fashion plates. Some were regularly published and sold
in shops. Others were designed expressly upon orders from patrons, to
whom the entire edition, sometimes a very small one, was delivered. The
number struck from any block or set of blocks varied widely. Of the more
popular prints many editions were printed, each one, as might be
expected, inferior to those that preceded it.... Most of the prints were
sold at the time of publication for a few _sen_. The finer ones brought
relatively higher prices, and such prints as the great triptychs and
still larger compositions by Kiyonaga, Yeishi, Toyokuni, Utamaro, and
other leading artists could never have been very cheap. In general,
however, the price was small, and they were regarded as ephemeral
things. Many were used to ornament the small screens that served to
protect kitchen fires from the wind, and in this use were inevitably
soiled and browned by smoke. Others, mounted upon the sliding partitions
of the houses, perished in the fires by which the Japanese cities have
been devastated; or, if in houses that chanced safely to run the
gauntlet of fires, typhoons, cloudbursts, and other mishaps, their
colours faded, and their surfaces were rubbed until little more than dim
outlines were left."
The plebeian origin of the prints explains why the cultivated Japanese
have not, as a rule, looked upon them with much enthusiasm. Only now,
when the greatest print treasures have gone out of Japan, are a few
Japanese collectors beginning to buy back at high prices works which
they allowed to leave the country for a song. The admiration of Europe
and America has awakened them to a realization of the distinction of
the prints, in spite of the undistinguished nature of their subjects;
and the day will come when the Japanese themselves will be the most
formidable bidders at the sales of great Western collections.
The interest of Western collectors in Japanese prints is of
comparatively recent origin. As late as 1861 it was possible for a
writer on Japan to regard them with blank indifference. There is a rare
little book by Captain Sherard Osborne, printed in that year in London,
called "Japanese Fragments." It contains six hand-coloured reproductions
of prints and a number of uncoloured cuts, all from prints which Captain
Osborne had purchased in Japan. In the following words he makes
reference to Hiroshige, who is now generally ranked as one of the
supreme landscape artists of all time: "Even the humble artists of that
land have become votaries of the beautiful, and in such efforts as the
one annexed strive to do justice to the scenery. Their appreciation of
the picturesque is far in advance, good souls, of their power of pencil,
but our embryo Turner (i.e. Hiroshige) has striven hard ..." etc. In
1861, perhaps, few people would have believed it possible that to-day
many serious judges might question whether any product of European art
has ever matched the designs of these "humble artists."
The earliest of European collectors was, according to Mr. Edward F.
Strange, a certain M. Isaac Titsingh, who died in Paris in 1812. M.
Titsingh had for fourteen years served the Dutch East India Company in
Nagasaki; and among his effects were "nine engravings printed in
colours." Doubtless he had acquired them merely as curiosities, without
any perception of their artistic importance. Mr. Strange notes that four
prints were reproduced in Oliphant's "Account of the Mission of Lord
Elgin to China and Japan" (1859); and, as we have seen, Osborne devoted
some desultory attention to prints in 1861. These are, perhaps, the
chief evidences of early European interest.
Subsequently such events as the International Exhibition in London,
1862, the Paris Exposition of 1867 and that of 1878, and the Centennial
Exhibition in Philadelphia, 1876, served to bring a few prints to the
notice of Western amateurs. Particularly in Paris was intense interest
in them aroused among painters and literary men. From 1889 to 1891, S.
Bing was bringing out in Paris his magazine _Le Japon Artistique_, whose
pages contain many fine reproductions of notable prints. In 1891, Edmond
de Goncourt issued his volume on Utamaro. Other books followed rapidly.
In 1895, Professor Anderson issued his small but important monograph on
"Japanese Wood Engraving." In 1896, Fenollosa's epoch-making catalogue,
"Masters of Ukioye," was published in New York, establishing for the
first time the foundations of all our present knowledge of this field,
and pronouncing judgments from which the consensus of later opinion has,
in the main, never departed. The same year brought forth de Goncourt's
"Hokusai." Mr. Strange's "Japanese Colour Prints" appeared in 1897. In
the same year, Von Seidlitz issued his "Geschichte des japanischen
Farbenholzschnittes" (published in England as "A History of Japanese
Colour Prints" in 1900), which remains to-day the most comprehensive and
accurate single treatise on the subject.
Of recent years, the growth of interest and the increase of books has
been rapid. Eager collectors have scoured the world to bring to light
new masterpieces; Japan has been ransacked so thoroughly that the
would-be purchaser can perhaps more wisely go to London or Paris or New
York than to Tokyo or Kyoto in his search for prizes; and the places of
honour accorded these sheets in the portfolios of discriminating
collectors and great museums leaves no doubt as to the esteem with which
they are regarded. Values have been multiplied by tens and hundreds, so
that to-day the supreme rarities among prints are beyond the reach of
the ordinary purchaser.
All this is due neither to accident nor to any strange freak of
whimsical tastes. It has come about because the prints are in fact
artistic treasures. Commonplace and trivial as the subjects of most of
them are, they rise by virtue of the quality of their execution to a
very high point--masterpieces of composition, triumphs of colour,
monuments of the power of human genius to impose its sense of rhythm,
form, and harmony on the appearances of the seen world.
But as is true in the case of any art, the content of the colour-prints
is not to be grasped at a first glance by the casual passer-by.
Familiarity with the aims selected, the conventions employed, and the
achievements possible is necessary before the specific charm of these
works makes itself manifest. It is the experience of most print-lovers
that, starting with perhaps a mere casual liking for a certain landscape
design, they progress gradually, in the course of years, to an
unmeasured delight in the whole body of prints, and eventually find in
them a unique source of repose and exaltation.
There are certain peculiarities, common not only to prints but to
Japanese art as a whole, that require a special effort of the Western
mind before they become acceptable. The first and most vital of these is
the absence of realism. "Throughout the course of Asian painting,"
writes Mr. Laurence Binyon, "the idea that art is the imitation of
Nature is unknown, or known only as a despised and fugitive heresy.... A
Chinese critic of the sixth century, who was also an artist, published a
theory of æsthetic principles which became a classic and received
universal acceptance, expressing as it did the deeply rooted instincts
of the race. In this theory, it is rhythm that holds the paramount
place; not, be it observed, imitation of Nature, or fidelity to Nature,
which the general instinct of the Western races makes the root-concern
of art. In this theory every work of art is thought of as an incarnation
of the genius of rhythm manifesting the living spirit of things with a
clearer beauty and intenser power than the gross impediments of complex
matter allow to be transmitted to our senses in the visible world around
us. A picture is conceived as a sort of apparition from a more real
world of essential life."
It will, therefore, be vain to expect in Japanese designs any production
that will astonish the spectator by its life-likeness, its fidelity to
an actual scene. Eastern art has never attempted to compete with the
work of photography. Its function is the function which the European
public grants to poets but not always to painters--the seeking out of
subtle and invisible relations in things, the perception of harmonies
and rhythms not heard by the common ear, the interpretation of life in
terms of a finer and more beautiful order than practical life has ever
known.
All Asian art has recognized for centuries the fact that vision and
imagination are the faculties by which the painter as well as the poet
must grapple with reality. In the words of Mr. Binyon once more--"It is
always the essential character and genius of the element that is sought
for and insisted on: the weight and mass of water falling, the sinuous,
swift curves of a stream evading obstacles in its way, the burst of foam
against a rock, the toppling crest of a slowly arching billow; and all
in a rhythm of pure lines. But the same principles, the same treatment,
are applied to other subjects. If it be a hermit sage in his mountain
retreat, the artist's efforts will be concentrated on the expression,
not only in the sage's features, but in his whole form, of the rapt
intensity of contemplation; toward this effect every line of drapery and
of surrounding rock or tree will conspire, by force of repetition or of
contrast. If it be a warrior in action, the artist will ensure that we
feel the tension of nerve, the heat of blood in the muscles, the
watchfulness of the eye, the fury of determination. That birds shall be
seen to be, above all things, winged creatures rejoicing in their
flight; that flowers shall be, above all things, sensitive blossoms
unfolding on pliant, up-growing stems; that the tiger shall be an
embodiment of force, boundless in capacity for spring and fury--this is
the ceaseless aim of these artists, from which no splendour of colour,
no richness of texture, no accident of shape diverts them. The more to
concentrate on this seizure of the inherent life in what they draw, they
will obliterate or ignore at will half or all of the surrounding objects
with which the Western painter feels bound to fill his background. By
isolation and the mere use of empty space they will give to a clump of
narcissus by a rock, or a solitary quail, or a mallow plant quivering in
the wind, a sense of grandeur and a hint of the infinity of life."
This almost symbolic quality is the chief element of the pleasure to be
derived from Japanese art. Japanese designs are metaphors; they depict
not any object, but remote and greater powers to which the object is
related. Often the artist produces his effect by the exaggeration of
certain aspects, or by expressing particular qualities in the terms of
some kindred thing. If his subject happens to be an actor in some great
and tragic rôle, he will not hesitate to prolong the lines of the
drapery unconscionably, to give the effect of solemn dignity, slow
movement, and monumental isolation. Westerners may smile at the
distortion of such a figure; but they must acknowledge that an
atmosphere of lofty and special destiny surrounds the form, precisely
because the artist has dared to use these devices. The Japanese artist
will draw a woman as if she were a lily, a man as if he were a tempest,
a tree as if it were a writhing snake, a mountain as if it were a
towering giant. This is the very essence of poetical imagination; and
the result of it is to endow a picture with obscure suggestions and
overtones of infinite power. Symbols of existence beyond themselves,
these designs are charged with an almost mystical command upon the
emotions of the spectator. Western art has employed such a method
comparatively little in painting. In poetry it appears frequently. The
poet, when he wishes to convey the impression of a beautiful woman, does
not set out her features and her stature and all the details of her
aspect. He tries to awaken some realization of her by a bold and
fantastic leap of the imagination straight to the heart of the
matter--he makes her a perfume, a light, a music, a memory of goddesses.
The prosaic mind will never greatly care for work produced in accordance
with this principle; the conventions will seem distortions, the
imaginative generalizations will seem inaccuracies, and the transcending
of reality to shape a more universal and significant statement will
appear nothing more than ineptitude in grappling with fact. But to the
poetical mind, all these things will come with a unique and irresistible
fascination; and far more delightful than the novelty and interest of
the scenes represented will be the manner of their representation. As
one enters into the spirit of these paintings and prints, it is as if
one saw the world from a new angle, or had acquired the power to
assemble into new intellectual combinations those sensory impressions
which our own art has taught us to combine in a manner now grown a
little dull and stereotyped.
Japanese art has certain conventions that are highly individual. Some of
these may trouble and repel the Western eye. For example, the Japanese
artist draws his figures without shadows, and makes no attempt to
represent the play of light and shade over them. The scene is painted as
if in a clear, cold vacuum, where the diffusion of illumination is
almost perfectly uniform. In the Japanese view, a shadow is something
ephemeral and transitory--a mere accident and illusion, and as such
unworthy of perpetuation in art. The pattern of the object itself, freed
from this momentary tyranny, should be the sole theme of the artist.
Similarly, high-lights or chiaroscuro are not attempted; nor is
modelling by means of these employed. A universal flatness is the
result--a result deliberately aimed at.
Most of the European ideas of perspective are ignored in these works. In
accordance with the ancient Chinese canon--based upon an imaginative and
not upon a visual perception--the linear perspective of the Japanese
exactly reverses that of Western painting. In their system, parallel
lines converge as they approach the spectator. Different planes of
distance may be suggested merely by placing the remote plane higher up
in the picture; and sometimes no attempt is made to diminish the size
of the figures in the upper plane. These devices may seem very naïve to
the European. But in aerial perspective--the power to give to objects a
colouring appropriate to their relative distance from the eye--the
Japanese indisputably employ the utmost subtlety. When these artists
differ from European custom, it is not because of ignorance, but because
their way seems to them the more expressive--the better adapted to the
creation of those peculiar impressions of beauty which are their aim.
The longer one examines the products of these alien theories of drawing,
the less certain one is likely to be of the superiority of our more
scientific Western conventions.
In all Japanese art, the element of pure brushwork is of greater
importance than in the art of Europe. The people, trained from childhood
in the handling of the brush as a pencil for the drawing of the complex
forms of written characters, acquire a facility and accuracy unknown in
other lands. Fine caligraphy is esteemed an art in itself. And the
Japanese painter, whose life is devoted to further exercises with the
brush, may achieve a unique degree of skill. His power to sweep, guide,
and modulate the width and intensity of his line is developed into a
sixth sense. He can make his brush-stroke smooth-flowing as a
violin-note, or splintered as a broken branch, or wavering like the flow
of a river, or coldly hard and sharp as flint; sometimes it has the edge
of a knife; at other times it dies away into imperceptible gradations;
its blacks are dazzling in their intensity, its greys are like veils of
mist. The mystery of the expression of pure personality in art is
nowhere more strikingly exemplified than here. To the accustomed eye the
line-work of the Japanese artist is vibrant with intimate connection
between hand and spirit. This command of the brush, so perfect that the
passion of the artist's soul flows out through it, is one of the vital
characteristics of Japanese painting.
The colour-print is one small and peculiar division of the larger field
of Japanese pictorial design; besides being subject to the general laws
of Japanese æsthetics, it is distinguished by certain special
characteristics that grow out of the nature of the technique employed.
Of this technique, Mr. F. W. Gookin gives an illuminating exposition:--
"None but the most primitive methods--or what from our point of view may
seem such--were employed. The most wonderful among all the prints is but
a 'rubbing' or impression taken by hand from wood blocks. The artist
having drawn the design with the point of a brush in outline upon thin
paper, it was handed over to the engraver, who began his part of the
work by pasting the design face downward upon a flat block of wood,
usually cherry, sawn plank-wise as in the case of the blocks used by
European wood-engravers in the time of Dürer. The paper was then
carefully scraped at the back until the design showed through distinctly
in every part. Next, the wood was carefully cut away, leaving the lines
in relief, care being taken to preserve faithfully every feature of the
brush strokes with which the drawing was executed. A number of
impressions were then taken in Chinese ink from this 'key block' and
handed to the artist to fill in with colour. This ingenious plan, which
is manifestly an outgrowth of the early custom of colouring the
ink-prints (sumi-ē) by hand, and which perhaps would never have been
thought of had not the colour itself been an afterthought, enabled the
artist to try many experiments in colour arrangement with a minimum
amount of labour. The colour scheme and ornamentation of the surfaces
having been determined, the engraver made as many subsidiary blocks as
were required, the parts meant to take the colour being left raised and
the rest cut away. Accurate register was secured by the simplest of
devices. A right-angled mark engraved at the lower right-hand corner of
the original block, and a straight mark in exact line with its lower arm
at the left, were repeated upon each subsequent block, and in printing,
the sheets were laid down so that their lower and right-hand edges
corresponded with the marks so made. The defective register which may be
observed in many prints was caused by unequal shrinking or swelling of
the blocks. In consequence of this, late impressions are often inferior
to the early ones, even though printed with the same care, and from
blocks that had worn very little. The alignment will usually be found to
be exact upon one side of the print, but to get further out of register
as the other side is approached.
"The printing was done on moist paper with Chinese ink and colour
applied to the blocks with flat brushes. A little rice paste was usually
mixed with the pigments to keep them from running, and to increase
their brightness. Sometimes dry rice flour was dusted over the blocks
after they were charged. To this method of charging the blocks much of
the beauty of the result may be attributed. The colour could be
modified, graded, or changed at will, the blocks covered entirely or
partially. Hard, mechanical accuracy was avoided. Impressions differed
even when the printer's aim was uniformity. Sometimes in inking the 'key
block,' which was usually the last one impressed, some of the lines
would fail to receive the pigment, or would be overcharged. This was
especially liable to happen when the blocks were worn and the edges of
the lines became rounded. A little more or a little less pigment
sometimes made a decided difference in the tone of the print, and, it
may be noted, has not infrequently determined the nature and extent of
the discoloration wrought by time.
"In printing, a sheet of paper was laid upon the block and the printer
rubbed off the impression, using for the purpose a kind of pad called a
baren. This was applied to the back of the paper and manipulated with a
circular movement of the hand. By varying the degree of pressure the
colour could be forced deep into the paper, or left upon the outer
fibres only, so that the whiteness of those below the surface would
shine through, giving the peculiar effect of light which is seen at its
best in some of the surimono (prints designed for distribution at New
Year's or other particular occasion) by Hokusai. Uninked blocks were
used for embossing portions of the designs. The skill of the printer was
a large factor in producing the best results. Even the brilliancy of
the colour resulted largely from his manipulations of the pigments and
various little tricks in their application. The first impressions were
not the best, some forty or fifty having to be pulled before the blocks
would take the colour properly. Many kinds of paper were used. For the
best of the old prints it was thick, spongy in texture, and of an almost
ivory tone. The finest specimens were printed under the direct personal
supervision of the artists who designed them. Every detail was looked
after with the utmost care. No pains were spared in mixing the tints, in
charging the blocks, in laying on the paper so as to secure perfect
register, in regulating the pressure so as to get the best possible
impressions. Experiments were often tried by varying the colour schemes.
Prints of important series, as for example Hokusai's famous 'Thirty-six
Views of Fuji,' are met with in widely divergent colourings."
The results produced by this technique, as it was employed in the great
period of the art, have no parallel. When Dürer, in the fifteenth
century, brought wood and steel engraving to such brilliant perfection,
he determined the future history of European engraving, fixing the line
of greatest development in the region of black-and-white, where, except
for sporadic excursions of debatable merit, it has continued ever since.
Fortunately, in Japan, colour and line did not part company, but in
combination progressed toward a unique triumph.
A print produced by this technique is simply a sheet of paper upon
which are impressed, by means of hand-charged wood blocks, a series of
patches of colour that combine into a design. In general, each of these
patches is flat and unshaded; its edges are sharp, definite, bounded by
a line as distinct as the line of the lead used in stained glass. In the
print, as in the stained-glass window, only major lines and important
colour-masses can be shown; thus elimination of the incidental and
selection of what is vital are imperatively demanded of the designer.
Salient curves and expressive outlines are the essential requisite. One
reason why these prints seem classic is that they are purged of the
thousand unimportant and meaningless gradations of tone that are easy to
use in a painting and impossible here. Singular purity and loftiness of
effect is the result, together with a certain abstract aloofness from
reality that has a high æsthetic value.
Into the drawing of these few lines, and into the construction of these
few flat colour-spaces, went all the artist's sense of proportion and
rhythm, grace and dignity, movement and tone. On the flat wall of his
printed sheet he devised a pattern that should weave, out of figures and
objects, a decorative design upon whose harmonious mosaic the eye would
willingly linger. There he played his music to allure and beguile and
absorb the spectator.
Like his fellow-painters of all Asia, the print-designer did not feel
that literal accuracy greatly concerned him. If the figures moved with a
stately godlike grace in rhythmic procession, what matter if they were
taller or shorter than real beings? If their faces were expressive of a
noble calm or a sublime fury, why ask for a detailed mirroring of a real
face? If the landscape was beautiful, was it important that the real
scene could never look exactly thus?
As an example of the curious conventions that dominate this art, the
observer will note the way in which heads are drawn by these artists.
With very rare exceptions, the angle from which all the heads are seen
is the same. In the print, as in the Egyptian wall-carvings, the head is
held in a poise dictated by a traditional formula. The face is turned
half-way between profile and full-face; the nose approaches but does not
intersect the line of the cheek; the outline of the nose is shown, and
also the broad sweep of the brow, while at the same time both eyes are
visible. For two centuries, with only occasional variations, this
formula for drawing the face persisted; and in the submission to this
wisely chosen type--admirably adapted as it was to exhibit most
expressively the whole map of the features--is revealed something of
that willingness to accept discipline, style, and conventionalization
which in these artists went side by side with so much originality.
A magic world--a pure creation of the imagination in its search for
beauty! This convention in the drawing of the faces has much to do with
the unreal quality we find there. Something in the repetition and
uniformity of the heads produces a delicate visionary impression, a
trance-like mood--as does the rhythm of poetry or music. Under its
spell the emotion of the spectator comes forth free from its daily
bonds and preoccupations, in the liberation that only art can give.
To these regions of pure æsthetic experience the amateur turns with
delight--not only as an escape from practical life, but as an escape
from much that is known to the Western world as art. The childish mind
loves pictures that tell a story; but the more sophisticated
intelligence goes to a work of art for those elements which lie far
beyond the region of episodic narration--elements that are allied to the
principles of geometry, the laws of motion, the excursions of pure
music, the visions of religious faith. Though these manifestations are
difficult to correlate, they all arise from one fountainhead; and the
best of the Japanese prints lie very close to the source of the
stream.
II
CONDITIONS
PRECEDING THE RISE
OF PRINT-DESIGNING:
THE BIRTH OF
THE UKIOYE SCHOOL
CHAPTER II
CONDITIONS PRECEDING THE RISE OF PRINT-DESIGNING: THE BIRTH OF THE
UKIOYE SCHOOL
At the outset of the seventeenth century was inaugurated the Tokugawa
Dynasty of Shoguns or military dictators, by the victories of the great
warrior and statesman Iyeyasu over rival factions. Upon acquiring the
Shogunate--a position which had for long eclipsed the power of the
Emperor--Iyeyasu laid a wise but iron hand upon Japan, forcing all
departments of industry, society, and even art into rigid forms whose
pattern was laid down by his far-seeing mind. The same policy guided his
successors of the Tokugawa Dynasty; so that during the whole period of
print production Japan was a land of gorgeous feudal splendour,
regulated by inflexible rules of conduct and manners that amounted
almost to caste regulations.
That subtle interpreter of the ideals of the East, the late Kakuzo
Okakura, thus analyses the state of society at that time: "The
Tokugawas," he writes, "in their eagerness for consolidation and
discipline, crushed out the vital spark from art and life.... In their
prime of power, the whole of society--and art was not exempt--was cast
in a single mould. The spirit which secluded Japan from all foreign
intercourse, and regulated every daily routine, from that of the daimyo
to that of the lowest peasant, narrowed and cramped artistic
creativeness also. The Kano academies of painting--filled with the
disciplinary instincts of Iyeyasu--of which four were under the direct
patronage of the Shogun and sixteen under the Tokugawa Government, were
constituted on the plan of regular feudal tenures. Each academy had its
hereditary lord, who followed his profession, and, whether or not he was
an indifferent artist, had under him students who flocked from various
parts of the country, and who were, in their turn, official painters to
different daimyos in the provinces. After graduating at Yedo (Tokyo), it
was _de rigueur_ for these students, returning to the country, to
conduct their work there on the methods, and according to the models
given them during their instruction. The students who were not vassals
of daimyos were, in a sense, hereditary fiefs of the Kano lords. Each
had to pursue the course of studies laid down by Tannyu and Tsunenobu,
and each painted and drew certain subjects in a certain manner. From
this routine, departure meant ostracism, which would reduce the artist
to the position of a common craftsman."
Yet it would convey a wrong impression of the Tokugawa period to suggest
that bureaucratic tightness of regime was its sole or most vital
characteristic. The age was marked as strongly by its expansive powers
as by the restraints that attempted to direct them. For in this epoch,
the common people, set apart in a class distinct from the warriors and
aristocracy, rose to a vigour and cultivation that was almost a new
thing in Japanese history. "It was," writes Fenollosa, "like the rise of
the industrial classes in the free cities of Europe in those middle
centuries when the old feudal system was breaking up. There, too, could
be seen armoured lords of castles flourishing side by side with burghers
and guilders. It is the same duality which forms the keynote of Tokugawa
culture taken as a whole.... The keynote of Tokugawa life and art is
their broad division into two main streams--the aristocratic and the
plebeian. These two flowed on side by side with comparatively little
intermingling. On the one side select companies of gentlemen and ladies
congregated in gorgeous castles and yashikis, daimyos and samurai,
exercising, studying their own and China's past, weaving martial codes
of honour, surrounding themselves with wonderful utensils of lacquer,
porcelain, embroidery, and cunningly wrought bronze; and on the other
side great cities like Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto, and Yedo, swarming with
manufacturers, artizans, and merchants, sharing little in the castle
privileges, but devising for themselves methods of self-expression in
local government, schools, science, literature, and art."
Examining into the history of Japanese colour-prints, one must leave
entirely aside the interesting and sometimes sublime art of the
cultivated and aristocratic classes and their tradition-hallowed
schools of painting. The prints were solely the product of the popular
school; they were in a way allied to those delicate Japanese
handicrafts, such as bronze and lacquer, which are characteristically
the output of the common people.
The Tokugawa regime was one of national peace. The country, long
disturbed by both internal and external wars, settled down at last under
the strong Tokugawa banner to two centuries and a half of tranquillity.
The vital activity of this time was not diffused and scattered over the
whole country, but was chiefly centred upon one spot, the ancient
"Capital of the East," Yedo, now called Tokyo. Here, under the dominance
of the great Iyeyasu, the life of the empire was brought to a focus.
Iyeyasu forced all the great nobles, living customarily on their estates
scattered throughout the empire, to come to Yedo and remain there in
residence for at least half of each year, in order that he might keep
his hand upon them and prevent them from springing up to rival power.
The natural effect of this regulation was to give Yedo a supreme
importance in the realm, and to cultivate in Yedo the growth of every
form of popular activity. There, in the metropolitan centre, all the
agencies of pleasure burst into luxurious bloom; the tea-houses, the
theatres, the riverside gardens, and the Yoshiwara or courtesans'
quarter, all took on a new and alluring splendour; and Yedo became the
great city and the great art centre of Japan.
At this time, aristocratic art, in the hands of the later generations of
the Kano School of painters, was not only largely inaccessible to the
common people, but was also no longer in its prime. The giants of the
Kano School were long since dead. In the place of their vigorous
inspiration only superficiality and formalism remained. Long since dead
was that lofty idealistic art, best known to us in the work of Sesshu,
which had distinguished the preceding Ashikaga Period--an art which, to
quote Mr. Laurence Binyon, "deals little in human figures and has no
concern with the physical beauty of men and women, contenting itself
mainly with the contemplation of wide prospects over lake and mountain,
mist and torrent, or a spray of sensitive blossoms trembling in the
air." Yet even though the earlier greatness of the aristocratic schools
of painting was passing or had passed in this seventeenth and eighteenth
century epoch, still the authority derived by the Kano painters from
their connection with the court of the Shogun gave them dictatorship
over matters of art; and their academy imposed its technique upon all
aspirants for the favour of the aristocracy. The rival school of the
Tosas, associated closely with the court of the Emperor in Kyoto, was no
less careful of tradition and discipline. Thus the moribund art of the
upper classes stood alone like a little island, shut out from the art of
the people, unable to influence it or to be influenced by it.
Therefore Japan, at the time when the popular school came into
existence, was in a curious state: subject to a strict disciplinary
system that kept the common people and the aristocracy apart; enjoying
a period of peace and a centralization of resources that gave the common
people in their isolation a favourable opportunity to develop a culture
of their own; and suffering from a growing degeneracy in the classical
schools of painting that might be counted on to drive at least an
occasional aristocratic artist out into the ranks of the people were any
interesting opportunity offered there.
At this juncture, early in the seventeenth century, there arose in Yedo
a new movement which later was to produce the colour-print.
This new movement was called the Ukioye School. The real gap between it
and the older classical schools has been by many writers grossly
exaggerated. One might well gather from them that the Ukioye artists
were the first in all Japanese art to draw subjects selected from real
life and to paint with vivid humanism. This is by no means the fact. All
the subjects treated by the Ukioye painters had been at some time used
by the painters of the older schools; and certainly the usual subject of
the Kano or Tosa painter was as real and vivid to him as were any of the
themes of the popular artists to these creators. Each painted his
customary environment--what was closest to his experience and dearest to
his æsthetic perceptions: on the one hand, traditionary and religious
figures, scenes from poetry, reflections of Chinese or old Japanese art;
and on the other hand, the pulsing life of Yedo streets, the tea-gardens
of the Sumida River, the theatres, and the brilliant houses of pleasure.
Yet having suggested that the gap between the two was not immeasurable,
we may grant that it was nevertheless real. Ukioye concerned itself with
contemporary plebeian life, its shows and festivals and favourites of
the hour, to an extent alien to the more restrained and almost monastic
tradition of the older art. Ukioye means "Passing-world Picture"; there
is implied in the word a reproach and an accusation of triviality. It
suggests values not recognized by that orthodox Buddhistic attitude of
contemplation which regards life as a show of shadows, a region of
temporal desire and illusion and misery, a vigil to be endured only by
keeping fixedly before the vision pictures of the desireless calm of
Nirvana. But no such profound philosophy of despair and abnegation as
this could find real root in the hearts of a lively populace like that
of Japan; in that nation, the lonely minds of sequestered aristocrats
alone could give it more than nominal habitation. The Ukioye School,
since it was a popular school, remained as unshadowed by Buddhism as
modern French poster-art is by Christianity; and the distance between
the spiritual attitudes of Giotto and Aubrey Beardsley is no greater
than that between the attitudes of Kanaoka and Utamaro. All that aureole
of moral idealism which hallowed the classical Japanese art was
abandoned by the popular school for a frank acceptance of the joy of the
world and its enthralling lures.
The style adopted by the new school in portraying the life of the
multitude allowed itself a certain keen realism, often tinged with
humour and sometimes with mild obscenity. This realism appears only
occasionally, and it is generally so completely subordinated to the
decorative impulse that realism is the last word by which a Western
observer would describe it. Only by way of contrasting it with the
idealism of the older schools can one thus classify the arbitrary
attitudes, mask-like faces, and fanciful colour schemes of Ukioye. This
arbitrariness indicates another characteristic of the new manner. It was
a flippant style which took nothing seriously except itself. Its
technique departed from the sacred traditions of Kano and Tosa brushwork
and the inheritance of Chinese painting canons. It developed a novel use
of clear, hard outline, unrestrained sweep, brilliantly fresh colour,
and strong contrast, that relied on no precedent for their appeal and
awakened no sanctioning echo from the classic masters.
Not unnaturally the aristocracy were repelled by the plebeian and vulgar
nature of the subjects of the new school. Their sensibilities were
injured by the throwing overboard of traditions of style that stretched
back through many centuries to the founders of the art in China, and by
the genuine lack of distinction in the spiritual attitude and outlook of
many of these new painters. The modern European, bred of a different
artistic lineage, may regard these objections as negligible; but he must
remember that it is perhaps his own ignorance of Japanese classics that
makes him so tolerant; and he may properly hesitate to condemn hastily
the aristocratic Japanese opinion.
The aristocratic opinion is readily comprehensible. The Ukioye School
without doubt lacks that almost religious idealism by which the earlier
Japanese schools of painting attained a subtlety perhaps excessively
rarefied, an allusiveness almost too remote, a sublimation of intangible
spiritual values that very nearly reaches the vanishing-point. No such
serene cultivation of feeling is to be found in the Ukioye painters.
"Great art is that before which we long to die," says Okakura; and the
overstrained intensity of his words conveys to the Westerner some
conception of the passionate spirituality which the cultivated Japanese
desires and finds in the works of the older painters. The Japanese
connoisseur misses in Ukioye that exaltation which, in the creations of
Sesshu or Yeitoku or Kanaoka, leads him up to heights whence he surveys
mountain and lake lying like a visionary incantation before him, or
feels the giant loneliness of pines upon a snowy crest, or enters into
the ineffable spirit of the white goddess Kwannon meditating in a
measureless void of clouds and streams.
These things are not to be found in Ukioye--these ultimate reaches of
the Oriental spirit; but there is here a more human and lovable beauty,
and a power of design no less notable than that of the aristocratic
masters.
It must be granted that the colour-prints of this school constitute the
fullest and most characteristic expression ever given to the temper of
the Japanese people. Asia--the region of measureless, overwhelming
spaces, innumerable lives, and immemorial antiquity--Asia speaks in the
older paintings; but in the amiable prints, the one voice is the
defined, circumscribed, and beguiling voice of Japan. The colour-print
constitutes almost the only purely Japanese art, and the only graphic
record of popular Japanese life. Therefore it may be regarded as the
most definitely national of all the forms of expression used by the
Japanese--an art which they alone in the history of the world have
brought to perfection.
The beginnings of the Ukioye School antedated by many years the
beginnings of colour-printing. Iwasa Matabei, the founder of the school,
was born in 1578 and died in 1650. At first it was the aristocracy that
applauded this pioneer, who was not yet alienated from them; then some
vital element in Matabei's manner kindled enthusiasm outside this
circumscribed region and set in motion the forces which eventually
resulted in a popular school of art.
After Matabei, the Ukioye School did not take any immediate turn toward
notable development. In fact, it is doubtful whether its importance
could have been far-reaching had its activity been always, as in its
earliest days, confined to painting. It was, however, the destiny of the
school to come into a relation with the hitherto undeveloped art of
wood-engraving; and its alliance with this popular medium increased a
thousand-fold the breadth of its appeal and the force of its sway.
The art of wood-engraving in Japan originated some time between the
twelfth and fourteenth centuries. Legend associates the first use of it
with the great priest Nichiren, who lived from 1222 to 1282. Ryokin,
also a priest, produced a woodcut which is dated 1325. No date earlier
than this last can be fixed upon with any confidence. The few specimens
of early woodcuts that have survived are pious Buddhistic
representations of religious paintings or statues, which were probably
sold to pilgrims as mementoes of their visit to some famous shrine. In
artistic merit these earliest woodcuts have no interest; their
importance is entirely historical.
By the end of the sixteenth century the process of wood-engraving had
come into use as a means of illustrating books. From this time on,
mythological, romantic, and legendary works, such as the "Ise
Monogatari," were frequently so embellished. Most of the designs were
very crude, and the cutting of the wood blocks displayed only elementary
skill. These early books were in no way connected with the Ukioye
School, which they in fact antedated; they were wholly the product of
the old classical tradition. Contemporaneously with them were produced
fairly vigorous but clumsy broadsides, representing historical scenes.
Occasionally a few spots of coarse colour were applied by hand to these
designs.
By the middle of the seventeenth century there began to appear
illustrated books in which the rudimentary elements of artistic
pictorial feeling are visible. A few have a slight Ukioye cast. Not
until the last quarter of the century, however, did wood-engraving
achieve the dignity of a fine art and the scope of a popular method of
expression. That it then did so was due to the genius of Moronobu, an
Ukioye painter, the first of the great print-designers.
III
THE FIRST
PERIOD:
THE PRIMITIVES
FROM MORONOBU
TO THE INVENTION
OF POLYCHROME PRINTING
(1660-1764)
CHAPTER III
THE FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES
FROM MORONOBU TO THE INVENTION OF POLYCHROME PRINTING (1660-1764).
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS.
The Primitive Period, first of those epochs into which the history of
Japanese prints may be roughly divided, begins about 1660 with the
appearance of the work of Moronobu. The period ends a century later
when, after many experiments, the technique of the art had been
developed from the black-and-white print to the full complexity of
multi-colour printing.
The commonly accepted name of "the Primitives" requires some explanation
when applied to these artists lest it create the impression that we are
dealing with designers in whose works are to be found the naïve efforts
of unsophisticated and groping minds. Nothing could be farther from the
truth. Thousands of years of artistic experience and tradition lay back
of these productions; and the level of æsthetic sophistication implied
in them was high. The word Primitive applies to these men only in so
far as they were workers in the technique of wood-engraving. As
producers of prints they were indeed pioneers and experimenters; but as
designers they were part of a long succession that had reached full
maturity centuries earlier.
Whether it be that a new technical form, like an unexplored country,
tends to exclude from entrance all but bold and vigorous spirits, or
whether it be that the stimulus of difficulty and discovery inspirits
the adventurer with keener powers, these Primitives were as a group
surpassed by none of their successors in force and lofty feeling. They
seized the freshly available medium with an exuberance of vitality that
had not yet lost itself in the deserts of a fully mastered technique.
"These Primitives," says Von Seidlitz, "are now held in far higher
esteem than formerly. We recognize in them not only forerunners, but men
of heroic race, who, without being able to claim the highest honours
paid to the gods, still exhibit a power, a freshness, and a grace that
are hardly met with in the same degree in later times. Despite the
imperfections that necessarily attach to their works, despite their lack
of external correctness, their limitations to few and generally crude
materials, and their conventionalism, there clings to their work a charm
such as belongs to the works neither of the most brilliant nor of the
pronouncedly naturalistic periods. For, in the singleness of their
efforts to make their drawing as expressive as possible, without regard
to any special kind of beauty or truth, these Primitives discover a
power of idealization and a stylistic skill which, at a later period
and with increased knowledge, are quite unthinkable."
To the new Ukioye School these Primitives gave the first great opening
for popularity. Their broadsides and albums disseminated among the
millions of Yedo the product of the new and vigorous art-impulse. They
were the river-streams through which the lake reservoirs of Ukioye art
returned to the sea of popular life whence the waters had come.
Fenollosa's picture of the popular life during a portion of this
Primitive Period, the Genroku Era (1688-1703), is not without its
significance in this connection. "This was the day when population and
arts had largely been transferred to Yedo, and both people and samurai
were becoming conscious of themselves. The populace of the new great
city, already interested in the gay pleasures of the tea-houses and the
dancing-girls' quarter, were just elaborating a new organ for
expression, namely the vulgar theatre, with plays and acting adapted to
their intelligence. They had just caught hold, too, of the device of the
sensational novel. Now here was an army of young samurai growing up in
the neighbouring squares, who were just on the _qui vive_ to slip out
into these nests of popular fun. For the time being, freedom for both
sides was in the air. Anybody could say or do what he pleased. Fashions
and costumes were extravagant. Everybody joined good-naturedly in the
street dances. It was like a world of college boys out on a lark; to
speak more exactly, it had much resemblance to the gay, roistering,
unconscious mingling of lords and people in the Elizabethan days of
Shakespeare, before the duality of puritan and cavalier divided them."
The subjects depicted by the Primitive artists for the pleasure of this
populace are drawn from the flourishing life thus described. First and
foremost, the stage is represented; and the greatest prints of this
period are, as a rule, the single figures of actors portrayed in their
rôles. But social and domestic scenes also find place here; and all the
play of fashion and recreation, the occupations and amusements of the
ladies, the boating-parties and tea-house scenes, the street and the
festival, appear in brilliant succession.
In the general style of their designs the Primitives were all controlled
by one fundamental aim--that of decoration. This dominating quality
appears most clearly in the large actor-prints which we associate with
the names of Kwaigetsudō, Kiyonobu, Masanobu, and Toyonobu. To an extent
greater than the artists of any succeeding period they eschewed
minuteness of detail and accuracy of representation, sacrificing these
things for the sake of achieving broad decorative effects combined with
vigorous movement. A certain unique simplicity and grandeur in the
spacial and linear conceptions of these men gives to the whole Primitive
Period a Titanic character that distinguishes it. In the best works of
this time the stylistic finish of the drawing is masterful. It
translates motion into sweeping caligraphic lines, and creates imposing
calm by the poise and balance of severe black-and-white masses. Just as
in opera the flow of music induces in the auditor a state of
semi-trance that makes him oblivious to the patent absurdities and
unrealities of the action, so in these pictures the rhythmic flow of the
composition lifts the consciousness of the spectator to a plane where it
ceases to take note of the incorrect report of Nature and loses itself
in the enjoyment of the noble decorative conceptions that actuate the
creating hand.
A profound formalism dominates these works. The figures are purely
one-dimensional; the picture is a flat pattern of lights and darks
bounded by the sharp outline of great curves. In the actor-pieces no
real portraiture of the actor as an individual is essayed; the artist's
aim is rather to convey some sense of the dynamic power of the rôle in
which the actor appears. He succeeds so well that his pictures, though
not representations of individuals, stand as abstract symbols of grace
or of power.
Historically, one of the chief interests in this period centres upon the
notable developments in technique. Wood-engraving was, as we have seen,
already known when the period opened; but it had not yet been subjected
to the purposes of the artist. Confined almost exclusively to crude book
illustrations, it had as little artistic significance as the cheap
hand-painted sketches called _otsu-ye_, which, produced by hundreds,
were sold for the amusement of the populace.
With the advent of the gifted Moronobu, the book-illustration was
transformed into an important and beautiful creation. Going further,
Moronobu and his successors produced single-sheet prints of large size,
in black and white only, that served all the purposes of paintings and
were capable of being reproduced without limit. These black-and-white
prints were called _sumi-ye_ (Plate 1). Books and albums by him appeared
at various earlier dates, but the first of his single-sheet prints was
issued about 1670.
The second step in development came with the realization that the
brilliant colour of the older _otsu-ye_ could easily be imparted to the
new prints. So some of the sheets of Moronobu and his contemporaries
were coloured by hand with orange, yellow, green, brown, and blue,
somewhat after the manner used by the painters of the classical Kano
School. In the actor-prints there began to appear, shortly after 1700,
solid masses of orange-red pigment. These sheets were called _tan-ye_,
from the _tan_ or red lead used in them. About 1710 citrine and yellow
were used in connection with the _tan_ (Plate 2). By 1715 or a little
later, _beni_, a delicate red colour of vegetable origin, was
discovered, and almost entirely replaced the cruder _tan_. Prints thus
coloured were called _kurenai-ye_.
About 1720 it was found that the intensity of the colouring could be
enhanced by the addition of lacquer. Red, yellow, blue, green, brown,
and violet were used in brilliant combination; and their tone was
heightened by painting glossy black lacquer on the black portions of the
picture, and sprinkling some of the colours with sparkling powdered gold
or mother-of-pearl. Such prints were called _urushi-ye_, or
lacquer-prints (Plate 5).
These various methods of hand-colouring prevailed up to about the year
1742. At this time, a method was perfected by which two colour-blocks
could be used in printing; and the true colour-print came into
existence. Masanobu is generally credited with being the inventor of the
new technique. The first colours employed were green and the red known
as _beni_; and from this the prints derived their common name of
_beni-ye_ (Plate 6). Later many varieties of colour were tried. To some
print-lovers, these two-colour prints seem unequalled in beauty.
About 1755 a method was devised by which a third colour-block could be
employed, and blue was the colour at first selected to accompany the
original green and red. Then blue, red, and yellow were used, and other
variations; and in the hands of such men as Toyonobu and Kiyomitsu, rich
decorative effects resulted (Plate 7).
To the end of the period hand-colouring was still occasionally used for
large and important pieces such as pillar-prints; but the old method
lost ground steadily, and the day of the polychrome-print was at hand.
To give in more detail the history of this period, the strict
chronological method must be abandoned; and each of the important
artists must be taken up in turn as an independent creator.
MORONOBU.
Hishikawa Moronobu, born probably in 1625, was the son of a famous
embroiderer and textile designer who lived in the province of Awa.
Moronobu worked at the trade of his father during his youth, obtaining
thus a training in decorative invention that is traceable in all his
later work. Upon the death of his father, he came to Yedo and took up
the study of painting under the masters of the Tosa and Kano Schools.
Gradually, however, the Ukioye style, introduced by Matabei some years
before, became his chosen province; and from painting he turned to the
designing of woodcuts for book illustrations and broadsheets. Later in
life he became a monk; and died probably in 1695, though some
authorities say 1714.
[Illustration: HISHIKAWA MORONOBU.]
Moronobu's importance in the history of Japanese prints is twofold. He
inspirited the Ukioye School with a new vitality; and he turned
wood-engraving into an art.
The Ukioye movement, when Moronobu appeared, was still indeterminate. A
great personality was needed to crystallize the vague tendencies then in
solution. This Moronobu accomplished; and the far-reaching effect of his
work was due to the fact that he did not confine his work to painting,
but took up the hitherto unexplored field of woodcuts. As we have seen
in the previous chapter, there had been produced up to Moronobu's time
no illustrated book that could lay claim to artistic value. The little
that had been done in this field was crude artizan work without
charm. Now Moronobu seized this medium and transformed it. Into his
woodcuts he poured that powerful sense of design which he so notably
possessed, creating real pictures of striking decorative beauty. These
books and prints, widely circulated, carried to the eyes of the masses a
new and delightful diversion, spreading far and near the contagious
fascination of this lively Ukioye manner of drawing and awakening in the
populace a thirst for more of these productions. Matabei had devised the
new popular style, but it was Moronobu who threw open the gates of this
region to the people.
[Illustration: MORONOBU: A PAIR OF LOVERS.
Black and white. Size 9 × 13½. Unsigned.
_Plate 1._]
Moronobu's first books appeared about 1660, and from that date to the
time of his retirement he brought out more than a hundred books and
albums and an unknown number of broadsheets. In all of these his
vigorous, genial personality and his strong sense of decoration make
themselves felt. Such a print as the album-sheet reproduced in Plate 1
exhibits his characteristic simplicity of sweeping line, the masterly
use he makes of black and white contrasts, and the vivid force of his
rendering of movement. The firm lines live; the composition is grouped
to form a harmonious picture; a dominating sense of form has entered
here to transform the chaotic raggedness of his predecessors' attempts.
Distorted as these figures may appear to unaccustomed Western eyes, they
have unmistakable style and their bold command of expression is the
first great landmark in Japanese print history.
All of Moronobu's work was printed in black and white only, but
occasionally the sheets were roughly coloured by hand after they had
been printed. His designs have little detail; as a rule the scene
surrounding his main figures is barely suggested by a few lines; and the
figures themselves are hardly more than intense shorthand notations of a
theme. But how much life he gives them! No wonder that the populace
loved his work, and that his many pupils bore away with them to their
own productions the impress of his strong personality and animated
style.
Certain of Moronobu's large single-sheet compositions (such as the Lady
Standing Under a Cherry Tree, in the Buckingham Collection, Chicago, or
the noble Figure of a Woman in the Morse Collection, Evanston), display
so fine a power of composition and so unsurpassable a mastery of
rhythmic line that there can be no hesitancy in judging him, quite apart
from his historical significance, to be an artist of the first order.
Nothing that he ever did was undistinguished.
The collector will not find it easy to procure adequate specimens of
this artist's work. Moronobu's large single sheets are unobtainable
to-day; they could never have been numerous, and the few that have
survived the vicissitudes of almost three centuries are now in the hands
of museums or collectors who will never part with them. Even his smaller
single sheets are uncommon. His work is seldom signed.
FOLLOWERS OF MORONOBU.
The powerful impetus of Moronobu's art communicated itself to many
pupils.
MOROFUSA was the eldest son of Moronobu; he collaborated with his
father, and produced designs that are in exact imitation of his father's
style. His work comprises book illustrations and some large single
sheets, and is very rare.
Additional pupils or contemporaries were: Moromasa, Moronaga, Morikuni,
Masanojo, Moroshige, Morobei, Masataka, Osawa, Morotsugi, Moromori,
Hishikawa Masanobu, Tomofusa, Shimbei, Toshiyuki, Furuyama, Morotane,
Ryujo, Hasegawa Toun, Ishikawa Riusen, Ishikawa Riushu, Wowo, Kawashima
Shigenobu, Kichi, Yoshimura Katsumasa, and Tsukioka Tange. Many of these
are obscure figures, of whose work little is known. Most of them were
chiefly book-illustrators.
[Illustration: NISHIKAWA SUKENOBU.]
SUKENOBU.
The name of Nishikawa Sukenobu brings to mind that long procession of
charming girl figures which year by year came from his hand--figures
whose sweet monotonous faces and delicately poised bodies move with a
pure grace that is perpetually delighting. Lacking the powerful
decorative sense of Moronobu, whose lead he in general followed, and
never attempting the massive blacks of the master's dashing
brush-stroke, Sukenobu yet achieved effects that are more gracious and
appealing than those of his great predecessor. Nothing could surpass
the delicate harmony of line in such a design as the one reproduced in
Plate 2; the willowyness of the young body, the naïve innocence of the
head, the movement and rhythm of the flowing garments, are admirably
depicted. This was Sukenobu's characteristic note; he lingers in one's
memory by virtue of it and none other; he was the least versatile of
artists.
He lived between the years 1671 and 1751. During the period of his
activity his popularity must have been enormous. The single-sheet prints
which he produced were not many, and only a small proportion of these
have come down to us. His main work was in the field of illustrated
books and albums. More than forty of these are known to-day. They
contain chiefly scenes from the lives of women and figures of young
girls. Most of them date from 1713 to 1750. They constitute Sukenobu's
claim to rank as Moronobu's most important successor in the field of
book-illustration. Generally they are printed in black and white only; a
few are embellished with colour added by hand. It is not always possible
to tell whether this colouring was done when the books were published or
whether it was the work of some subsequent owner of the volume.
The delicacy of Sukenobu's designs, and the absence of those peculiar
mannerisms and exaggerations which characterize much of the work of this
period, serve to make him, of all the Primitives, perhaps the most
comprehensible and pleasing to the European taste. To the Japanese
connoisseur he recommends himself because of the refinement of his
work both in subject and in manner, and because of a certain classic
dignity that pervades it.
[Illustration: SUKENOBU: A YOUNG COURTESAN.
Black outlines, with hand-colouring of pale green, orange, and white.
Size 9½ × 6. Unsigned.
_Plate 2._]
The collector will do well to bear in mind that the books of Sukenobu
were frequently reprinted long after his death; and these later
impressions, lacking the original sharpness of line and intensity of
tone in the blacks, are not desirable acquisitions. The original
editions of his books are still to be found occasionally. His
single-sheet prints are, however, of great rarity.
KWAIGETSUDŌ.
In the period immediately succeeding Moronobu--the early years of the
eighteenth century--the work which of all others stands out with a
unique and colossal grandeur is that of Kwaigetsudō.
Kwaigetsudō has long been a puzzle to the student. The original idea
held by Fenollosa and other authorities, that all the prints signed
Kwaigetsudō were by one man, has been abandoned; and the theory now
prevails that there existed a group of artists, headed by a dominant
master named Kwaigetsudō, and that all of these artists produced prints
signed with his name together with their own. The most perplexing
problem has been to determine which of the print-makers was the original
master and which were his disciples. Dr. Kurth confidently states that
Kwaigetsudō Norishige, was the original master. On the other hand, Mr.
Arthur Morrison has recently expressed the opinion that the original
Kwaigetsudō was solely a painter, who produced no prints whatsoever. His
studio name was Kwaigetsudō Ando; his personal name was Okazawa
Genshichi; he was a late contemporary of Moronobu, and worked in Yedo
from about 1704 to 1714, when he was banished to the island of Oshima in
consequence of his participation in a scandal involving a gay banquet
party at a theatre tea-house attended by certain Court ladies. Later he
was pardoned, but did not resume his work. According to this theory all
the prints were the work of his followers, who signed the name
Kwaigetsudō with various additions. This view is probably the correct
one.
The names of the Kwaigetsudō group of print-designers that have so far
come to light are--
KWAIGETSUDŌ ANCHI (or YASUTOMO);
KWAIGETSUDŌ DOHAN (or NORISHIGE);
KWAIGETSUDŌ DOSHU (or NORIHIDE);
KWAIGETSUDŌ DOSHIN (or NORITATSU).
The Kwaigetsudō work is perhaps the most powerful and imposing in the
whole range of Japanese prints. The sheets, of large size, generally
represent the single figure of a standing woman clad in flowing robes.
So much for the theme; it is nothing. But the treatment consists of a
storm of brush-strokes whose power of movement is like that of writhing
natural forces; out of this seething whirl of lines is built up the
structure of the monumental figure.
[Illustration: KWAIGETSUDŌ: COURTESAN ARRANGING HER COIFFURE.
Black and white. Size 24½ × 12.
_Signed Nippon Kigwa Kwaigetsu Matsuyo Norishige._
Spaulding Collection.
_Plate 3._]
The Kwaigetsudō reproduced in Plate 3 exhibits these qualities. The body
is merely suggested, but with complete effectiveness, under the great
swirls of the robes. The dominance of the main curves, the vigour of
the blacks, and the importunate life that vitalizes every touch and
line, give Kwaigetsudō a place as high as the greatest contemporaries or
successors.
All the Kwaigetsudō work was printed in black and white; sometimes the
print was hand-coloured by the application of spots of _tan_, or red
lead. Excellent full-size reproductions of several of them are
obtainable. With these reproductions the ordinary collector will be
obliged to content himself, for the whole number of Kwaigetsudō prints
in existence can scarcely be more than a score or two. They are perhaps
the rarest of all prints.
THE FIRST KIYONOBU.
_Kiyonobu Speaks._
The actor on his little stage
Struts with a mimic rage.
Across my page
My passion in his form shall tower from age to age.
What he so crudely dreams
In vague and fitful gleams--
The crowd esteems.
Well! let the future judge if his or mine this seems--
This calm Titanic mould
Stalking in colours bold
Fold upon fold--
This lord of dark, this dream I dreamed of old!
With Kiyonobu begins that school of painters, the Torii, which was to
take the initiative during the first half of the eighteenth century in
developing the actor-portrait to a very high level, and which still
later was to have the honour of claiming as its head Kiyonaga, in whom
the whole art culminated. It may be convenient to list here the
successive leaders of the school, who were in their turn entitled to the
name of _the_ Torii, and whom we shall take up in their order.
Torii I Kiyonobu I (1664-1729)
Torii II Kiyomasu (1679-1763)
Torii III Kiyomitsu (1735-1785)
Torii IV Kiyonaga (1742-1815)
Torii V Kiyomine (1786-1868)
Torii VI Kiyofusa (1832-1892)
The importance of the school terminated with Kiyonaga, or at latest with
Kiyomine.
[Illustration: TORII KIYONOBU.]
Kiyonobu I, the founder of the Torii line, was born in 1664 and died in
1729. It is said that he was first a resident of Osaka, and then of
Kyoto; and that he finally came to Yedo about the beginning of the gay
and brilliant Genroku Period, 1688-1703. Thus he must have been in Yedo
a few years before the death of Moronobu in 1795, and it is evident that
he studied the Moronobu style. Kiyonobu's father is variously reported
to have been either an actor or a painter of theatrical sign-posters; at
any rate his connection with the theatre was a close one. This
circumstance doubtless determined the line of the son's activity in
designing. About 1700 Kiyonobu produced the first single-sheet
actor-print in black and white only. From this it was only a step to the
production of _tan-ye_, which he probably invented--actor-sheets simply
but brilliantly coloured by the application of orange to certain
portions of the picture. In this manner he issued both _hoso-ye_ (that
is, sheets about 12 inches high and 6 inches wide) and sheets of larger
size, perhaps the most striking being actor-portraits, sometimes several
feet in height, which enjoyed an immense popularity. By about 1715 he
had taken up a more delicate kind of hand-colouring known as
_kurenai-ye_, which some writers think he himself devised. A few years
later he adopted the _urushi-ye_ technique, increasing the number of
colours and using lacquer to heighten the brilliancy of the effect.
Kiyonobu's subjects comprised a few landscapes of no great interest, and
figures of several types. His _forte_ was the representation of actors
and heroes of history. His bold and gigantic style of drawing lends some
probability to the story that he was, when he first came to Yedo, a
painter of huge theatrical sign-boards or posters for the exteriors of
theatres. The same manner that would be appropriate for these is found
in his prints--arresting, forceful, highly exaggerated. His designs must
be regarded as establishing for all later times the general type to be
used in actor-portraits. This constitutes his greatest historical
importance.
The prints which appear to be Kiyonobu's earliest are marked by an
extraordinary development of line, handled in great sweeping strokes.
The brushwork is indicated with much dash and _bravura_, in the manner
of the painter as distinct from the print-designer. A hasty glance might
lead one to mistake some of these early compositions for the work of a
Kwaigetsudō, though they are, as a rule, more uncouth.
Although power of line always remains one of Kiyonobu's characteristics,
there appears in his later work a certain insistence on spaces, a
treatment of the surface of the print as if it were a placque into which
were to be inlaid large flat masses of a different substance. The robes
are broken up into definite segments with sharp boundaries like parts of
a picture puzzle, instead of remaining a surface on which to display the
splintering vigour of brush-strokes. This second style is admirably
adapted to the technique of wood-engraving.
The geometrical quality of some of Kiyonobu's designs is striking. There
are several of his large _tan-ye_ in which the whole print is nothing
more than a series of great circles, brought into relation with each
other, as part of the decoration of the drapery, by wild and whirling
brush-strokes.
The work of Kiyonobu varies greatly in attractiveness. Some of his
prints have more force than beauty; and it requires little effort to
understand the contempt of the aristocracy for these crude
manifestations of the mob's taste. Yet even in these grosser designs
Kiyonobu realizes the power and passion of the dramatic rôle which he
depicts, achieving an effect of tragic rage that is no less intense and
impressive because of its lack of subtlety. Most of his prints suggest
the shout and roar of bombast: this is precisely what they were meant to
convey. But there are a few of another type, that embody the masterful
power of line of the first Torii, joined with a simplicity and
refinement of design which his work frequently lacked, or which, if
present, is disguised from us by the repellent violence of the figure
portrayed. One must see Kiyonobu's rarest and greatest prints in order
to realize why he is regarded as so great an artist.
I have written of Kiyonobu as if he presented no difficulties; but such
is not the case. A stumbling-block for the student is created by the
fact that there exist many two-colour prints signed Kiyonobu. It is
recorded that Kiyonobu died in 1729, many years before the date fixed
upon by Fenollosa and most other authorities as the date of the
invention of colour-printing. If we are to believe that the numerous
colour-prints signed Kiyonobu are by the first Torii, we must either put
back the date of the invention of colour-printing to an extent that is
improbable in view of other facts, or we must abandon the recorded date
of Kiyonobu's death and regard his life as having extended well beyond
the middle of the eighteenth century. Formerly this difficulty was not
appreciated, and all work signed Kiyonobu was confidently attributed to
the first Torii; but at present it is generally regarded as likely that
there was a second Kiyonobu who produced all the two-colour prints
signed with that name. Whether he produced any hand-coloured prints is
uncertain. This Kiyonobu II theory has met with scepticism in certain
quarters, and some students prefer to accept the alternative of one of
the two other possible solutions of the puzzle. Certain differences in
style between the hand-coloured and the two-colour work confirm the
Kiyonobu II theory to such an extent that I have felt constrained to
adopt it here. It may be disproved eventually, but it is the best
solution available at present. I shall therefore take up Kiyonobu II as
a separate artist, without again drawing attention to the unsettled
state of the relation between him and Kiyonobu I.
[Illustration: TORII KIYOMASU.]
KIYOMASU.
Kiyomasu, the second head of the Torii School, has been variously
regarded as the brother or the son of the first Torii. The question of
this exact relationship is a matter scarcely worth all the words that
have been wasted upon it. What is important is the well-known fact that
the two kinsmen worked side by side in the same studio for many years
producing work of precisely the same type. The most experienced judges
would find it impossible in some cases to distinguish between their
productions.
Kiyomasu was born about 1679; some authorities say 1685; but if it is
true, as Von Seidlitz states, that there exists a play-bill by him which
is dated 1693, the earlier of the two dates is the only possible one.
Since Kiyonobu was born in 1664, the theory that they were brothers is
the more probable. Kiyomasu's chief work was done contemporaneously with
Kiyonobu's, in black and white, _tan-ye_, and _urushi-ye_; but later he
produced some prints in two colours. His subjects were chiefly women and
actors; he executed a few small landscapes and some fine representations
of birds. His work must have continued some years after 1743, but
appears to have terminated a considerable time before his death in 1763
or 1764.
A more prolific artist than the first Torii, Kiyomasu was in some
particulars an equally distinguished one. Possibly his originality was
less marked in that he merely followed the actor type which had already
been created by Kiyonobu; but in the power of his draughtsmanship,
reminding one again and again of a tempered Kwaigetsudō, he is no
secondary figure. Nothing can surpass the vigour of linework in some of
his large figure prints--great curves made with a heavily charged brush,
expressing with notable simplicity the beauty of flowing drapery. His
masterpiece is undoubtedly that superb figure in black and white of the
actor Kanto Koroku (in the Buckingham Collection, Chicago), drawn in the
Moronobu-Kwaigetsudō manner, which is reproduced in Fenollosa's "Epochs
of Chinese and Japanese Art" with the erroneous attribution of Kiyonobu.
This print is a triumph. Nothing finer was designed by all the
succeeding generations of artists.
THE SECOND KIYONOBU.
Kiyonobu II, who signed all his work simply Kiyonobu, was a son of
Kiyomasu, and probably a nephew of Kiyonobu I. His whole name was Torii
Kiyonobu Shirō. He appears to have worked chiefly from about 1740 to
about 1756, the period of the predominance of the two-colour print. All
two-colour prints signed Kiyonobu are by this artist and not by the
first Torii, who died before the process was invented. Kiyonobu II is
regarded by many collectors as the best representative of the two-colour
technique. His figures have a delicacy and grace that is alien to the
work of his two predecessors in the Torii School; and his handling of
the green and rose designs of these prints is charming. The great
insistent colour masses and monumental figures of his predecessors
undergo a change in his hands to a more detailed division of colours and
a slightening of the forms of the bodies and limbs. Also the old
passionate vigour of brushwork disappears in the new technique--a loss
that seems a grave one.
Most writers speak of Kiyonobu II as a two-colour artist only. It is,
however, fairly established that at least one of the _urushi-ye_ signed
Kiyonobu is by Kiyonobu II. That he did a few three-colour prints is
certain. His work, like that of all these early men, is rare. It is
particularly difficult to find examples of his _beni-ye_ that are in
good condition, since the rose-colour has in most cases entirely faded.
OTHER FOLLOWERS OF KIYONOBU.
KIYOTADA was one of the best known and one of the most brilliant of the
numerous followers of the great Torii pioneers. He is said to have been
a pupil of Kiyonobu I. His period of production began not far from 1715,
and ended before the invention of two-colour printing. His prints are
all _tan-ye_ or _urushi-ye_, some of them slightly like Okumura Masanobu
in style. Certain of his _hoso-ye_ have fascinating curves and superb
colour--red, yellow, green, pink, and black, woven together into rich
combinations.
KIYOSHIGE produced very fine actor-portraits coloured by hand, which
remind one distinctly of Kiyonobu I in his later period. Large masses of
colour are used by him with powerful decorative effect; and the
geometrical designs of his textiles are sometimes striking. Kiyoshige's
work has a strong yet graceful quality that makes him worthy of more
attention than he has hitherto received. He lived to produce some
two-colour prints. Dr. Kurth believes him to have been the first to use
the pillar-print form for actor-portraits. His working period was from
about 1720 to about 1759.
HANEGAWA CHINCHŌ was an eccentric and interesting figure, who, though a
pupil of Kiyonobu I, appears to have been more closely related to the
Kwaigetsudō School than to the Torii. Born about 1680 he, by birth a
Samurai, became a Ronin, and entered the studio of Kiyonobu. He was
erratic, proud, and isolated. In spite of his pressing poverty, he
worked at print-designing only when it pleased him to do so, which was
seldom; and though he lived until 1754, his output was small. He was a
poet and an aristocrat. His single-sheet prints have a curious esoteric
quality--strange, stiff, beautiful curves that are not quite like the
work of any other designer. Chinchō's work is of extraordinary rarity;
there can scarcely be more than a score of his prints in existence.
HANEKAWA-WAGEN is represented by two prints in the Buckingham
Collection. Nothing is known of him.
KIYOTOMO, whose work appears to fall entirely within the period of
hand-coloured prints, produced excellent actor designs, in some of which
the line-work reminds one slightly of Kwaigetsudō. The influence of
Kiyomasu appears in some of his _urushi-ye_. His prints are
distinguished by their vigour and are found but seldom.
SANSEIDO TANAKA MASUNOBU produced hand-coloured and two-colour prints in
the Torii manner. A print by him dated 1746 is known, but most of his
work precedes 1740. He is not to be confused with the Masunobu who was
Harunobu's pupil.
KIYOSOMO is said to have been a distinguished pupil of Kiyonobu I,
influenced also by Okumura Masanobu.
Other men of this period, closely connected with the Torii School, were:
Kiyoake, Kondo Sukegoro Kiyoharu, Katsukawa Terushige, Nishikawa
Terunobu, Nishikawa Omume, Fujikawa Yoshinobu, Tamura Yoshinobu, Tamura
Sadanobu, Kichikawa Katsumasa, Kiyomizu Mazunobu, Shimizu Mitsunobu,
Kondo Kiyonobu, Kondo Katsunobu, Kiyorō, Tadaharu, and Nakaji Sadatoshi.
[Illustration: OKUMURA MASANOBU: COURTESANS AT TOILET.
Black and white. 10 × 15. Unsigned.
_Plate 4._]
[Illustration: OKUMURA MASANOBU.]
OKUMURA MASANOBU.
_A Figure._
Garbed in flowing folds of light,
Azure, emerald, rose, and white,
Watchest thou across the night.
Crowned with splendour is thine head;
All the princes great and dead
Round thy limbs their state have shed--
Calm, immutable to stand,
Gracious head and poisèd hand,
O'er the years that flow like sand.
Okumura Masanobu may be termed the central figure of this period: not
only does he tower among the greatest men of the time, but around him
revolve the changes in technique, full of far-reaching consequences,
which came into being with his invention of two-colour printing.
Furthermore, he takes on an additional historical importance as the
founder of the Okumura School, which continued parallel with the Torii
School, and whose productions are characterized by a finer development
of grace and elegance than is to be found in the output of the rival
line.
Masanobu was born about 1685, and lived until about 1764--a life of very
nearly eighty years, full of varied achievements. During the course of
his career he used many names, among which Genpachi, Hōgetsudō,
Tanchōsai, Bunkaku, and Kammyō are the most frequent. Little is known of
his life except that he began as a bookseller in Yedo. He is reputed to
have been a pupil of Kiyonobu, but Mr. Arthur Morrison believes this to
be an error, and thinks that Masanobu was an independent artist educated
in no one of the Yedo schools. Whichever account may be correct, it is
at least certain that Masanobu shows in his work few traces of
resemblance to the first of the Torii masters. It is equally clear that
he was early and strongly influenced by the work of Moronobu, who died
when Masanobu was only ten years old, but whose designs were of course
still widely known. It is said that soon after 1707 Masanobu founded a
publishing establishment in connection with his book-shop, issuing
prints as well as books. This must have afforded him great opportunities
for experiments in technique, and may have been no small factor in
making possible the remarkable advances for which he was responsible.
[Illustration: OKUMURA MASANOBU: STANDING WOMAN.
Black outlines, with hand-colouring of black lacquer, orange, yellow,
and gold powder. Size 13½ × 6. Signed _Yamato no Gwako, Okumura
Masanobu, hitsu_.
_Plate 5._]
[Illustration: HŌGETSUDŌ.]
Masanobu's earliest works were book-illustrations and albums, which
closely follow the manner of Moronobu. Plate 4 reproduces one of
these. Parallel with them he produced a number of _tan-ye_, the large
single-sheet prints in black and white, which, after printing, were
coloured by hand with orange pigment. These probably date from before
1720, although exactness cannot be hoped for. About 1720 he began to do
work in a medium which he is said to have invented--the _urushi-ye_, or
lacquer-prints, in which the lacquer gives a new richness and luminosity
to the various colours. An example of these appears in Plate 5. The
device of heightening the effect by applying gold powder to certain
portions of the design was also employed by him. A play of light that is
extraordinarily fascinating often marks his combinations of colours. By
about 1742 a new technical advance, the most vital in the whole history
of the art, came into existence; and Masanobu is generally credited with
its invention. This was the employment of two blocks beside the black
key-block to print two other colours upon the paper. The importance of
this step was immeasurable: when it was taken the doom of the
hand-coloured print was sealed, and the way to still further development
lay open. At first the colours used by Masanobu in his two-colour works
were a delicate apple-green and the equally delicate rose called _beni_,
from which the name _beni-ye_ came to be applied to all the two-colour
prints of this period. A print of this type appears in Plate 6. The
combination of these two colours is singularly lovely, and the fresh
charm of these sheets has led some collectors to prize them as the most
beautiful products of the art.
Certainly Masanobu's mastery of the problem of producing a rich and
vivacious colour-composition by the use of only two colours is
noteworthy. By varying the size and shape of his colour masses, and by a
judicious use of the white of the paper and the black of the key-block,
he produces an effect of such colour-fullness that it requires a
distinct effort of the mind to convince oneself that these prints are
designs in two tones only, and not full-colour prints. Masanobu lived
long enough to produce some three-colour prints, when these were devised
about 1755, but the effects he obtained in them were possibly less
fascinating than those of his earlier process.
It can probably never be proven that Masanobu was, in fact, the inventor
of all the devices that were attributed to him--the lacquer-print, the
_beni_ print, the use of gold powder, and the first actual prints in
colour. Certainly some of them may be credited to him; but any one
familiar with the growth of hero-legends knows how a great name attracts
to itself in popular report achievements that were really the fruit of
scattered lesser men. To the list of Masanobu's probable inventions must
be added the pillar-print, that remarkable type, about 4 to 6 inches
wide and 25 to 40 inches high, which was to be an important form of
design from this date on. It is possible that we must also attribute to
him the invention of the mica background--that silver surface of
powdered mica which give a curious and beautiful tone to the figures
outlined against it.
[Illustration: OKUMURA MASANOBU: YOUNG NOBLEMAN PLAYING THE DRUM.
Printed in black, green, and rose. Size 12 × 6. Signed _Hogetsudo
Okumura Masanobu, hitsu_. Chandler Collection.
_Plate 6._]
Of Masanobu as a designer it is difficult to speak with moderation.
Through his work runs that sweeping power of line which he derived from
his study of Moronobu, and, in addition, an elegance and suave grace
that is the expression of his innate grace of spirit. The grandeur of
certain others of the Primitives is austere and harsh, but Masanobu is
always mellow and harmonious. His figures, more finely proportioned than
most of the figures of the period, sway in easy motion--a mixture of
sweetness and distinction characterizes the poised heads, superb bodies,
and ample draperies of his women, while every resource of compact and
dignified design is expended upon the impressive figures of his men. A
certain large geniality, a wide, sunlighted warmth of conception, runs
through his work. The dramatic distortions of his Torii predecessors and
contemporaries are melted in him, as towering but uncouth icebergs melt
in the sun of kindlier latitudes. At times his line-work has a force
that seems derived from the Kwaigetsudō tradition; more often it is
imbued with a gentler rhythm no less expressive of strength. In his
finest designs he achieves notable balance of line, and a massing of
colour beside which, as Fenollosa remarks, "even the facades of Greek
temples were possibly cold and half-charged in comparison."
Women, out-of-door scenes, and a few actors, constitute the main
subjects of Masanobu's work. As a portraitist, his few productions, such
as the well-known humorous pillar-print of the story-teller Koshi
Shikoden, give him rank as the greatest of his time. The landscape
backgrounds in some of his smaller prints are a delightful innovation,
executed with delicate power of suggesting by a few strokes the whole
circle of a natural setting. The quiet charm of these landscapes
surrounds with an atmosphere of felicity the beautiful figures that move
through them.
A full and brilliant life stirs in all Masanobu's work. At no other
period in the history of Ukioye was such effective use made of the
patterns of draperies. The elaborate fashions of the brocades worn in
this day lent themselves to the decorative needs of the larger prints;
and frequently we find the figures clothed in a riot of striking
textiles--flowers, trees, birds, ships, geometrical shapes--all mingled
in the weave of the cloth, and arranged by the print-designer into a
combination that is tumultuous without confusion and glowing without
garishness. Masanobu's pictures seem the overflow of his spirit's
wealth; they never have the ascetic and rarefied quality that sometimes
appears in the work of even great artists.
Masanobu's work is scarce. His larger and more important prints very
rarely appear outside of the great collections.
PUPILS OF OKUMURA MASANOBU.
OKUMURA TOSHINOBU, a son of Masanobu who died young, was the best as
well as the most famous of Masanobu's pupils. He gave promise of
becoming one of the notable print-designers, and even in his short
career produced work of high quality. Born about 1709, his period of
production covered the years of the lacquer-prints, and ended before
1743. His _urushi-ye_, lithe in design and powerful in colouring,
constitute almost his whole known work.
Okumura Masafusa, Shuseido, Hanekawa Chiucho Motonobu, and Mangetsudō
may be mentioned as other and less important pupils of Masanobu.
NISHIMURA SHIGENOBU.
Nishimura Shigenobu is an artist about whom there is great confusion. He
is variously called the father, the son, or the pupil of the
better-known artist Shigenaga: the first of these alternatives is the
most probable. Nothing is known of Shigenobu's life, and very little of
his work is extant. Kurth says that Shigenobu founded the Nishimura
School, and worked in the manner of the earliest Torii. Von Seidlitz
believes that he did some work in the Kwaigetsudō manner. Fenollosa
dates his work 1720-40, and thinks that he worked first like the Torii,
then like Masanobu. At present it seems impossible to gather further
information about this interesting artist.
SHIGENAGA.
Nishimura Shigenaga was at one time regarded as the inventor of the
two-colour process; but now that the weight of opinion attributes this
invention to Masanobu, Shigenaga remains a figure whose importance is
hardly diminished. He must still be regarded as perhaps the most notable
master of the Nishimura School, both as a designer and as the teacher
of a group of pupils whose brilliancy is equalled by the disciples of no
other artist.
Shigenaga was born in 1697 and lived until 1756. He used the names
Senkwadō and Magosaburō as well as his own. Little is known of him
personally, except that he was probably the son of Shigenobu.
[Illustration: NISHIMURA SHIGENAGA.]
His work began with black-and-white prints in the manner of Kiyonobu;
these were already something of an anachronism at the date when he
commenced his designing. He then turned to _urushi-ye_, and produced
some beautiful examples. About 1742, when the two-colour process was
invented, he made himself one of the most successful masters of it. Dr.
Anderson reproduces, as the frontispiece of his "Japanese
Wood-Engraving," a fine example of Shigenaga's work in this technique,
but erroneously dates it as 1725--more than fifteen years too early.
Shigenaga also did fine work in the three-colour process, of which he
may possibly have been the inventor. His designs comprise not only women
and actors, but also landscapes, flowers, animals, and birds. His
versatility is one of his most striking characteristics.
It was from the style of Masanobu that Shigenaga drew his most lasting
stimulus; and among his sheets we shall find many a figure worthy to
stand beside his master's serene creations. Dr. Kurth calls him a
"faded or weakened Masanobu"; but this term can be applied with justice
to only a portion of Shigenaga's work. His productions are uneven; part
are indeed somewhat tame; but certain of his designs rise to a high
level. His finest works, which are rare, are his figures of graceful
women in the Masanobu manner. But he was no mere imitator. The Masanobu
poise, the Masanobu flow and patterning of garments he did, it is true,
adopt; but with how fresh and sensitive a life does he infuse them!
Shigenaga's pupils comprise most of the great men of the succeeding
generation Toyonobu, Harunobu, Koriusai, Shigemasa, Toyoharu, and many
others learned from him the elements of their art. Thus Shigenaga may be
regarded as the most important bridge between the Primitives and the
later men, passing over to them the traditions of the older schools
together with the stimulus of that fresh, inventive, and assimilative
spirit which was peculiarly his own.
PUPILS OF SHIGENAGA.
Among the less important pupils or associates of Shigenaga may be named
the following artists:--
TSUNEGAWA SHIGENOBU produced work much like Shigenaga's; in the few
prints of his which I have seen there is grace and ease, but not great
strength. His work appears to have been mainly in _urushi-ye_. Mr.
Gookin believes this name to be merely the early name of Nishimura
Shigenobu.
YŌSENDŌ YASUNOBU or ANSHIN, by whom a fine lacquer-print with strong
blacks is in the Spaulding Collection, may, with some hesitancy, be
classed here. Mr. Gookin thinks this signature may be merely one of the
studio names of some more famous artist.
NAGAHIDE, dated by Strange about 1760, appears to belong to this group.
The Harmsworth Collection, London, contains a print by him representing
famous theatrical characters depicted by geisha, the colours partly
printed and partly applied by hand.
HARUTOSHI is known to me only by one pillar-print, in the manner of
Shigenaga's actors. It is doubtful where he should be classified.
AKIYAMA SADAHARU, HIROSE SHIGENOBU, and RYŪKWADO ICHIICHIDO SHIGENOBU
were obscure pupils of Shigenaga.
YAMAMOTO YOSHINOBU is said by Fenollosa to have been a pupil of
Shigenaga, and possibly the same as KOMAI YOSHINOBU, who is treated
later under Harunobu. Dr. Kurth thinks him a member of a Yamamoto
School, which comprised also YAMAMOTO DENROKU, YAMAMOTO SHIGENOBU,
YAMAMOTO SHIGEFUSA, YAMAMOTO FUJINOBU, YAMAMOTO SHIGEHARU, TOMIKAWA
GINSETSU also known as FUSANOBU, YAMAMOTO MARUYA KYŪYEIMON, YAMAMOTO
KUZAYEIMON, and YAMAMOTO RIHEI.
[Illustration: TOYONOBU: TWO KOMUSO, REPRESENTED BY THE ACTORS SANOKAWA
ICHIMATSU AND ONOYE KIKUGORO.
Printed in black and three colours. Size 15 × 10. Signed _Tanjodo,
Ishikawa Shuha Toyonobu ga_. Chandler Collection.
_Plate 7._]
TOYONOBU.
_A Pillar Print._
O lady of the long robes, the slow folds flowing--
Lady of the white breast, the dark and lofty head--
Dwells there any wonder, the way that thou art going--
Or goest thou toward the dead?
So calm thy solemn steps, so slow the long lines sweeping
Of garments pale and ghostly, of limbs as grave as sleep--
I know not if thou, spectre, hast love or death in keeping,
Or goest toward which deep.
Thou layest thy robes aside with gesture large and flowing.
Is it for love or sleep--is it for life or death?
I would my feet might follow the path that thou art going,
And thy breath be my breath.
Ishikawa Toyonobu, who not many years ago was regarded as an artist of
secondary importance, has of late, thanks to fresh discoveries, come to
be esteemed by competent observers as one of the giants of the line--one
of those masters among the Primitives whose dignity of composition makes
all but a handful of his successors appear petty beside him.
[Illustration: ISHIKAWA TOYONOBU.]
This important artist, who sometimes signed himself Shuha, was, like so
many other of the better men of his time, a pupil of Shigenaga. In his
early work we find him influenced by the suave and noble figures of
Okumura Masanobu more than by the figures of his direct master. Born in
1711, Toyonobu lived until 1785; and the long space of his life thus
extended beyond the period of the Primitives and into the period of
polychrome printing. Nevertheless his real activity terminated with the
end of the Primitive Period. His earliest work was in black-and-white
or hand-coloured; from this he passed on to two-colour prints, a manner
in which he produced many _hoso-ye_ of flawless grace; and then into
three-colour prints, in which his most important work was accomplished,
and "whose classic master," as Kurth says, "he may be called." Between
1755 and 1764, the great period of the three-colour print, Toyonobu
stood almost unmatched in the field. A fine example of his work appears
in Plate 7. After 1764 the ascendancy of Harunobu eclipsed Toyonobu;
even the classic style of the older master could not match the brilliant
and popular innovations of Harunobu's "brocade pictures." He was
therefore driven to take up the technique of full-colour printing. In
one print he gives us figures like those of Koriusai; in another he
follows Harunobu with the most complete exactness. Though forced to the
wall, the old giant could still fight his rivals, and with their own
weapons.
The works of Toyonobu's prime--particularly his pillar-prints--produce a
singular impression of lofty greatness. His line-arrangements have
always a magical serenity and balance, and the repose of his
compositions is equalled only by their strength. In these tall figures,
where hauntingly lovely lines never degenerate into mere sweetness,
there is a combination of rigour with suavity, of force with grace, that
makes him forever memorable. His masterful precision, and the curiously
"towering" effect which his figures produce, as in the Girl with the
Umbrella reproduced in Plate 8, serve to mark him as one of the
important representatives of the grand style in design.
[Illustration: TOYONOBU: GIRL OPENING AN UMBRELLA.
Black outlines, with hand-colouring. Size 27 × 6. Signed _Tanjodo
Ishikawa Shuha Toyonobu zu_. Metzgar Collection.
TOYONOBU: WOMAN DRESSING.
Printed in black and three colours. Size 27 × 4. Signed _Ishikawa
Toyonobu hitsu_.
_Plate 8._]
Perhaps more than any other artist of the Ukioye School, Toyonobu
devoted himself to the drawing of the nude. These rare works are among
the finest of his productions, and are so distinctly an exception to the
general practice of Japanese artists that they call for special remark.
Certain other painters also produced a few such pictures, but they must
all be regarded as sporadic phenomena running counter to the
characteristic Japanese feeling. The national temper recognizes feminine
beauty in art only when clothed; and it is due solely to the profounder
perception of a few great artists that any such designs have come down
to us. One is moved to speculation over this curious fact, particularly
when one considers that the sight of the body, at least among the lower
classes, must have been almost as common in Japan at this time as it was
in Greece during the great period of Athenian art. But very different
was the reaction produced upon the two races by this familiarity. In the
Greeks, it encouraged an art whose prime aim was to give expression to
those harmonies and hints of perfection that lie hidden in the
imperfections of each individual body; so that we have from the Greeks
those syntheses and idealizations of the human form which still haunt us
like faint memories of the gods. But in the Japanese mind, the sense of
the individual defects seems to have overpowered the impulse to creative
idealism; and the people, as a race, turned from the nude figure to the
more easily manipulated beauties of flowing robes and gorgeous patterns,
translating Nature into images of an alien richness, and love into
hyperboles of public splendour. That part of Nature which lay outside
themselves they could indeed cope with, as the lofty visions of
landscape which they have transcribed testify; but with a few
exceptions, such as Toyonobu and Kiyomitsu and Kiyonaga, they dared not
attempt the final venture of rationalizing the uses and aspects of the
body. And it is because of an inadequacy whose source and root spring
from this attitude that posterity will perhaps rank this art below the
art of Greece, adjudging even the matchless subtlety and refinement of
these designs to be no adequate compensation for the absence of that
frank Greek courage which attempted to clarify and ennoble the
fundamental conditions of the existence of man.
Toyonobu, great artist that he was, overstepped the national barrier and
came very near to surpassing the finest achievements of Greek art.
[Illustration: KIYOMITSU: THE ACTOR SEGAWA KIKUNOJO AS A WOMAN SMOKING.
Printed in black and three colours. Size 11½ × 5½. Signed _Torii
Kiyomitsu ga_.
_Plate 9._]
KIYOMITSU.
_Pillar Print of a Woman._
A place for giant heads to take their rest
Seems her pale breast.
Her sweeping robe trails like the cloud and wind
Storms leave behind.
The ice of the year, and its Aprilian part,
Sleep in her heart.
Therefore small marvel that her footsteps be
Like strides of Destiny!
_Pillar Print of a Man._
Out of spaces hazed with greyness, out of years whose veils are grey,
With the slow majestic footsteps of a lord of far-away,
Comes a form that out of glooming
Rises from some old entombing
To confront once more the day.
And with splendid gesture dwarfing the confusion of our hands,
With his ancient calm rebuking the unrest of vain demands,
He with solemn footsteps slowly
Passes: and his garments holy
Leave the scent of holy lands.
[Illustration: TORII KIYOMITSU.]
Kiyomitsu took his place as the third great head of the Torii line,
succeeding his father Kiyomasu. In subject and in manner, it is the
Torii tradition that he carries on. We know nothing of his life, save
that he was born in 1735 and died in 1785. His work falls almost
entirely within the class of two- and three-colour prints. I know of
only one hand-coloured print by him; but as his dates denote, he lived
far into the period of polychrome printing, and was a partaker in
Harunobu's experiments in colour. Von Seidlitz is wrong in saying that
no polychrome prints by Kiyomitsu are known; a few exist and are very
beautiful. He did little work after 1765, and is to be regarded as most
characteristically an artist of the Primitive Period--in fact one of the
greatest. Certainly between 1755 and 1764, no one but Toyonobu could
rival him; and these two may be ranked the supreme designers of the
three-colour epoch.
The outstanding feature of Kiyomitsu's work is its formalism. Whatever
he touches is compressed to a pattern, and rendered into bold
hieroglyphics of sweeping curves. His line is simple, powerfully
dominated by a circular movement that is singularly and inexplicably
delightful. His colours, even while they remain only two or three in
number, never lack variety and strong decorative effect. The slightness
of the use which he makes of black is noteworthy; he compensates for its
absence by choosing heavy opaque colours of rich tone. Some authorities
regard him as the first to employ a third colour-block.
Kiyomitsu's work is markedly stylistic--even dominated by a certain
mannerism; one comes to recognize almost infallibly the formula he uses,
and to regard as an old friend that peculiar swirl of drapery, swing of
body, and artificial poise of head which appear, as in Plate 9, like an
accepted convention throughout the larger number of his designs. The
convention is an agreeable and highly æsthetic one, based on fundamental
curves of great beauty. But the invariability with which he employs this
formula gives Dr. Kurth some excuse for regarding him as a monotonous
and over-estimated artist. Had we only Kiyomitsu's _hoso-ye_ prints, it
might be possible to agree with Dr. Kurth; for these figures, enchanting
and full of elegance as they are, certainly are dominated by a sameness
of manner such as one finds in no other series of _hoso-ye_. But the
truth of Dr. Kurth's depreciations must be questioned if one turns to
the pillar-prints, which constitute the real glory of Kiyomitsu's
career. The two reproduced in Plate 10 exhibit his power. Kiyomitsu may
be regarded as one of the half-dozen greatest masters of the
pillar-print shape of composition. Much of his finest work is in this
form. Here his somewhat tight curves lengthen out into flowing beauty;
and the dignity always inherent in his drawing appears at its best.
[Illustration: KIYOMITSU: WOMAN WITH BASKET HAT.
Black and three colours. Size 28 × 4. Signed _Torii Kiyomitsu ga_.
KIYOMITSU: WOMAN COMING FROM BATH.
Black and three colours. Size 27 × 4. Signed _Torii Kiyomitsu ga_.
_Plate 10._]
Kiyomitsu's rare nudes take a place close beside those of Toyonobu. They
have a keen poetic charm; and though their vigour is less marked than
that of Toyonobu's, their grace and elegance of movement is at least as
striking.
The collector may find it useful to remember that long after Kiyomitsu's
death, Kiyomine and Kiyofusa sometimes used the great name of Kiyomitsu
as a signature to their own works. Only an inexperienced observer could
mistake these late and decadent productions for the work of the original
master.
KIYOHIRO.
Torii Kiyohiro has been rated by some writers as more highly gifted than
Kiyomitsu. This praise appears absurdly extravagant; yet in disputing
such a claim, one must admit the great charm of Kiyohiro's work. He is
said to have been a pupil of Kiyonobu II; his career runs parallel with
that of Kiyomitsu, and he seems frequently to imitate that artist. The
period of his greatest prominence was between 1745 and 1758; his work is
all in two or three colours. A delicate draughtsman, his figures have
marked grace of poise and firmness of design. His mannerism is less
stereotyped than Kiyomitsu's; some of his prints have great beauty, but
he never reaches certain heights which Kiyomitsu attained. Prints by him
are uncommon.
[Illustration: TORII KIYOHIRO.]
KIYOTSUNE.
Torii Kiyotsune produced delicate and distinguished prints in two or
three colours, much like those of Kiyomitsu. Most of his figures are
characterized by a curious slenderness and exquisiteness; but they are
somewhat lacking in vigour. After 1764 he fell under the influence of
Harunobu and adopted full-colour printing, still retaining, however,
that very individual type of face--a little scornful, a little
fastidious in expression--which marks his designs. His work is rare.
PUPILS OF KIYOMITSU AND TOYONOBU.
Among the pupils of Kiyomitsu may be noted Torii Kiyosato, Torii
Kiyoharu, Morotada, Kiyotoshi, Torii Kiyomoto, and Torii Kiyohide. Their
work was almost contemporaneous with that of the master.
Amano Toyonaga, Ishikawa Toyomasu, and Ishikawa Toyokuma were probably
pupils of Toyonobu.
IV
THE SECOND
PERIOD:
THE EARLY
POLYCHROME
MASTERS
FROM THE INVENTION
OF POLYCHROME PRINTING
TO THE RETIREMENT
OF SHUNSHO
(1764-80)
CHAPTER IV
THE SECOND PERIOD: THE EARLY POLYCHROME MASTERS
FROM THE INVENTION OF POLYCHROME PRINTING TO THE RETIREMENT OF
SHUNSHO (1764-80)
The transition from primitive to sophisticated art is very like the
progression of a race from its heroic youth to its elaborately gifted
maturity. Life grows more complex, the material riches and the machinery
of living become more diversified; but it is still to the early days
that one looks for the strongest development of personality and the most
daring achievement in the face of great difficulties. Sophistication, in
the history of an art as of a race, brings refinements and nuances
unknown to the pioneers; but it cannot intensify and may often encumber
the spiritual force and essential genius of the creators. The great
individuals of the earlier time developed all that was essential as far
as it could be developed; the later enlargement of scope is in the
direction of the material and the accidental. In the Primitives we find
the full stature of the spirit; in the art of later days, with all its
parade of processes, we shall hardly find more.
In the First Period the initial impulse of print-designing manifested
itself in work that was powerful and beautiful, but of simple technique.
In the Second Period the barriers that confined the Primitives were
swept away by new possibilities of expression. The three-colour prints
gave place to prints in which an unlimited number of blocks could be
employed; and this enlargement of the artist's resources produced a new
and splendid blossoming. In this Second Period the art seemed to
hesitate midway between the forces of the primitive inspiration, which
was one of pure and stately decoration, and the more naturalistic forces
that were making ready for the Third Period, with its fuller rendering
of the lights and spaces of life. The presence of both groups of forces
makes this Second Period possibly the most interesting of all.
The specific characteristics of the period are sharply marked. They
consist, first of all, in technical advances--the mastery of full-colour
printing and the realization through this process of the marvellous
colour-dreams of the great masters. But beyond the technical advances
there is a change in spiritual attitude; the artist, heretofore content
to create a pure decoration, a masterful mosaic that expressed his
æsthetic ideals, now begins to adopt a more personal attitude in his
treatment of the forces and spectacles of daily existence. True, he
disposes these elements arbitrarily; the picture he creates is a world
of imagination; but as compared with the Primitives, he tells us more
of his experience and is closer to our own. Even his most fanciful
designs bring to us some remote and abstract echo of known voices. Lyric
joy speaks through Harunobu, dramatic terror through Shunsho, splendour
through Koriusai, mystery through Buncho; and though the medium be a
symbol, and its connection with reality as remote as that of music, yet
by the vividness of the emotion evoked in us we may judge of the
definiteness of the artist's motive, and realize through colour and line
an intangible human voice.
The stream of art history here flowed in two main channels. One was the
Katsukawa School, headed by Shunsho, which like the older Torii School
devoted itself chiefly to the representation of actors. The other was
the school of Harunobu, whose gracious designs of women were the most
novel productions of the period. A third school was founded by Toyoharu
and a fourth by Shigemasa; but the real importance of these two schools
developed only in a later epoch. During this period the great Torii
School may be said to have remained dormant; it was to awaken in the
Third Period to a new splendour in Kiyonaga.
There is a passage from a contemporary record that throws light on the
temper of the people and the artists at this time. I have freely
translated it, with the courteous permission of Dr. Julius Kurth
(Kurth's "Harunobu," R. Piper & Co., Munich), from his German rendering
of a unique manuscript book in his possession, which appears to have
been written by the poet Yukura Sanjin, and illustrated by Harunobu in
1769. The book is a whimsical, devil-may-care production of the lightest
sort; but from its pages the glitter and surge and laughter of Yedo
holiday life rise with a far-away yet curiously distinct echo.
AN EXTRACT FROM "THE STORY OF THE HONEY-SWEETMEAT VENDOR, DOHEI."
"Dohei hails from Oshu. Upon his head he wears a cap; and his mouth
sends up a song when in the Capital of the East he vends his
honey-sweetmeats. His cape is of tiger-skin, and bears a suspicious
resemblance to the loin-apron of the Devil. His umbrella is of
scarlet crêpe, and recalls the plumed spears of the festival-guards.
As his coat of arms he chose a Devil's head and a skeleton; upon his
outer robe he wrote the sign, 'Dohei, Dohei.' While you buy his
honey-sweetmeats, he sings a song of a new style, and ends it with
the refrain, 'Dohei, Dohei!' Therefore the name of Dohei has become
known everywhere. Even the smallest children all sing this song in
chorus over and over a thousand times. If he sells his
honey-sweetmeats in the Eastern part of the city, the people in the
Western streets are furious; if he sells them in the Southern
quarter, the people in the Northern streets are furious. For then
they want to know why he came to them so late.
"If on the three hundred and sixty days of the year one goes, day in
and day out, through all the eight hundred and eight streets, one
finds a tavern at every five paces; and it is as if this city had
been changed into a pond of rice-wine. One cannot take ten steps
without coming upon a shop in which whole mountains of rice-cakes
and other confections are offered. If one hears in the distance an
almost heavenly music, it is the song of a lady to the strum of a
guitar. If there is a rattling like peals of thunder, it is the
ox-carts on the side streets. People with coiffures shaped like the
leaf of the ginko-tree roll up their outer robes and jostle shoulder
to shoulder. Ladies with girdles of spun gold and long-sleeved
girlish dresses sway their hips; and their garments, coloured like
the graining of wood, flow as do torrents of Spring. Their hats of
green paper resemble a clump of trees in Summer. And as they wander
along, the hems of their robes flutter open, and the blood-red silk
linings gleam like maple foliage--though it is not yet Autumn! The
festive white material of their inner robes shines like snow--though
it is not yet Winter! If it were, they would be muffled to their
very noses with crêpe veils. They have arranged their hair as if
surmounted by a cap, like tiers of little chrysanthemums. At their
thighs sparkle tobacco-wallets ornamented with silver and gold.
"The black-and-white prints of earlier days are antiquated now, and
the only thing people care for is the newly-devised gorgeousness of
the Eastern Brocade Pictures. Musical plays are no longer to be
seen; instead, you go to the music-girls and the dancing-girls in
the taverns. The young people want lively entertainment, and visit
the wine-shops. Out of a vase in which, according to the ancient
custom, flowers were formerly placed, lots are now drawn to fix
upon the day for a party; while according to the fashionable
arrangement of flowers in the hanging jars, the flowers look like
arrows from a bow. The vendors of fritters call out, 'Celebrated
Pasties! Celebrated Pasties!' and boast upon the brilliant paper
signs of the just-opened booths, 'Headquarters! Headquarters!'
Handkerchiefs at four coppers apiece hang at the loins of the
servants of Samurais. The song of the New Year's dancers rings out
among people who hitherto had sung only folk-songs. The caligraphist
studies the Nagao style; the poet learns by heart the poems of the
Chinese epoch, and the minstrel the style of the Manyo anthology. To
obtain new remedies for his stock the doctor draws upon the old
school for all kinds of herbs, and cures eyes and noses with
them--just as pumpkins are perfected into melons. Often the priest
of Buddha wanders, an object of derision, through the streets in the
darkness of night in search of a girl. To be sure, he is a very
learned man; but what leads more easily to dangerous labyrinths than
love?
"The theatres in the Sakai Street give performances continuously.
The reconstruction of the Yoshiwara is to be finished in a few days,
and people come and go there only to drink and to sing. They draw
water from the floods of the Sumida River, but it will not be
drained dry! They view again and again the flowers of the Asuka
River, but these also are without end! The Shenshuraku Theatre
enlivens the public, and upon the Banzairaku stage man's life is
idealized. So all are happy--like green firs that become thicker
and thicker and put forth new needles."
Into this crowded world of exuberant life came Harunobu and his
contemporaries--into this underworld, if you will, but an underworld
more beautiful and sun-drenched than any known to our great Western
cities. Instead of the bar in the slum they had the tea-house on the
river-bank; instead of the prize-fight they had the cherry festival; for
them, vice put on robes of a certain stately beauty; their stage was
marked by the same ennobling absence of realism that distinguished the
stage of the Greeks. The holiday spirit of the hour seems more
spontaneous than ours; their hearts seem less troubled by spiritual
confusions. And manifestly their underworld knew beauty and brought
forth an art that is now a universal human treasure; while our
underworld has been, with the rarest of exceptions, wholly sterile.
One of the most important of the underworld institutions which the
prints of this period depict is the theatre. Though Harunobu turned
aside from it, his great contemporary Shunsho and the whole body of
Shunsho's followers found most of their material there.
The popular theatre had sprung into importance in the days of Moronobu.
Previous to that time, the classic lyric drama of the aristocracy,
called the Nō, had flourished in the secluded palaces of great nobles;
but the mob was obliged to divert itself with nothing more interesting
than jugglers and street performers. Therefore when the theatre first
came into being, in the river-bed of Kyoto, it achieved great
popularity; and when later it was transferred to Yedo, it rose during
the Genroku Period (1688-1703) to a position of passionate favour. It
appears never to have had a very savoury moral odour; and before long it
became associated with so much corruptness that it presented a serious
problem for the Tokugawa rulers. In 1643, as a corrective measure, they
had decreed the exclusion of female actors from the stage. From this
time on, only men trod the Japanese boards; the female rôles were taken
by male actors whose skill in this impersonation is said to have been
extraordinary.
The status of a great actor in the hearts of the people was not very
different from that of a successful prize-fighter among us to-day. He
was a popular idol; his movements were the subject of the eager
curiosity of the gaping multitude; but his social rank was of the
lowest. The prints of a later date show us pictures of actors with their
gay companions on boating-parties or tea-house picnics, surrounded by
inquisitive throngs of spectators. Famous and greatly sought after as
these actors were, they occupied positions of even less esteem than the
English players in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Nothing so well
illustrates their ostracism from any kind of society as the words used
by one of the greatest of actor-painters, Shunsho, in the preface to a
book of drawings representing actors: "To be sure, I love the theatre,
and greatly enjoy being a spectator, _but I have no connection with the
actors themselves, and do not know them in private life_." Even
Shunsho, who had created the heroic designs of these men in their great
rôles, dared not acknowledge himself as their familiar.
When they appeared on the stage, the faces of the actors were frequently
painted with startling streaks of red and white, an effect reproduced in
some of the prints. The elaborate robes worn when they represented
heroic figures of bygone ages formed superb material for the designs of
the artists. The Japanese stage of to-day probably does not differ very
much from what it was in Shunsho's time; and we still see on it that
florid elaboration of gesture, bombastic delivery, and intensification
of facial expression which the prints have perpetuated.
The actors were divided into clans or schools; the name of a famous head
of a clan would be handed down for generations from master to pupil.
Thus there were many of the name of Danjuro, Hanshiro, and Kikunojo in
succession, who were not related to each other by blood. Certain clans
such as the Kikunojo specialized exclusively in women's rôles. Each clan
had its _mon_ or crest, worn on the sleeve, and each actor had a
personal _mon_; in the prints these generally appear. In Plate 20, for
example, the circle with eight crossed arrow-buts indicates the _mon_ of
Nakamura Matsuye; in other prints, the three great concentric squares of
Danjuro, the trisected concentric circles of Hanshiro, or the iris
within a circle of Kikunojo (Plate 9), are easily identified.
In the hands of Shunsho and his followers the figures of these actors
were used as the material for brilliant designs. For the moment,
however, we must return to the foremost artist of this period--one who
never loved the actors--Harunobu.
HARUNOBU.
_Figure of a Girl._
Ye winds that somewhere in the West--
In gulfs of sunset, isles of rest--
Rise dewy from prenatal sleep
To strew with little waves the deep--
Surely it is your breath that stirs
These fluttering gauzy robes of hers!
Come whence ye may, I marvel not
That ye are lured to seek this spot;
Your tenuous scarcely breathèd powers
Sway not the sturdier garden flowers,
And had unmanifest gone by
Save that she feels them visibly.
O little winds, her little hands
In time with tunes from fairy-lands
Are moving; and her bended head
Knows nothing of the long years sped
Since heaven more near to earth was hung,
And gods lived, and the world was young.
Her inner robe of tenderest fawn
In cool, faint fountains of the dawn
Was dyed; and her long outer dress
Borrows its luminous loveliness
From some clear bowl with water filled
In which one drop of wine was spilled.
Peace folds her in its deeps profound;
Her shy glance lifts not from the ground;
And through this garden's still retreat
She moves with tripping silver feet
Whose trancèd grace, where'er she strays,
Turns all the days to holy days.
Come! let us softly steal away.
For what can we, whose hearts are grey,
Bring to her dreaming paradise?
A chill shall mock her from our eyes;
A cloud shall dim this radiant air:
Come! for our world is otherwhere.
But O ye little winds that blow
From golden islands long ago
Lost to our searching in the deep
Of dreams between the shores of sleep--
Ye shall her happy playmates be,
Fluttering her robes invisibly.
[Illustration: HARUNOBU: YOUNG GIRL IN WIND.
Polychrome, from eight blocks. Size 11 × 8. Signed _Susuki Harunobu ga_.
Gookin Collection.
_Plate 11._]
[Illustration: SUSUKI HARUNOBU.]
The few available fragments of information about the life of Susuki
Harunobu can be briefly stated. Born between 1725 and 1730, he lived in
Yedo all his life in a house near the river. In 1764 he perfected a new
and epoch-making treatment of colour-print technique, and died in 1770,
not much more than forty years of age. We may, where so little is known,
willingly follow Dr. Kurth in his ingenious tracing of a romantic link
between Harunobu and the hamlet of Kasamori, whose pine-trees, red
temple-torii, and beautiful tea-house waitress O-Sen haunt his work
recurrently; but we must be content to regard this as at least half
fancy. Harunobu's direct teacher was Shigenaga, and he was influenced
early by Toyonobu; but it was to Sukenobu and Kiyomitsu that he turned
for the inspiration of those characteristic figures which he created
during the six great years of his real activity.
Harunobu's work before the year 1764 is relatively unimportant. It
consists of prints of actors and legendary subjects, printed in two or
three colours; a few of his _hoso-ye_ prints of this period have
charming delicacy of line and colour, and at least one of his actor
pillar-prints is a work of notable dignity; but upon the whole his work
is not very individual. Any one of a dozen of Shigenaga's pupils might
have done almost as well. Before 1764 these men were all his equals;
after 1764 he took a step which few could keep pace with and which none
could outstrip.
In 1764 he brought forth that synthesis of the resources of his art
which was to shake the Ukioye world. Whether he was the actual inventor
of polychrome printing is not certain; some authorities attribute the
invention to an engraver named Kinroku; but it is very clear that
Harunobu was the first to seize upon and realize the possibilities of
the discovery. Some technical hindrance, such as the difficulty of
securing perfect register from many blocks on the wet stretching sheets,
had prevented the earlier completion of the process; and it is possible
that it was a printer who discovered the simple device needed to
overcome the difficulty. This, however, is a matter of mere mechanics
and has no bearing upon the question of the real glory of Harunobu. What
is important is that he seized the new technique and made out of it an
instrument responsive to every subtlest breath of his beauty-haunted
spirit.
[Illustration: HARUNOBU: LADY TALKING WITH FAN-VENDOR.
Polychrome. Size 11 × 7½. Signed _Harunobu ga_. Chandler Collection.
_Plate 12._]
The old three-colour prints had achieved fine effects by means of
powerfully conceived but essentially simple mosaics of colour. Now
Harunobu turned the three-stringed lute into the violin, capable of
expressing the most delicate modulations of tone. Beginning with
combinations of only four or five colours, he gradually increased the
number of blocks used. It is certain that he used eight blocks on at
least one 1765 calendar print. In the end he had at his command a
palette which, by the use of no less than twelve or fifteen blocks, and
with the limitless number of shades obtainable by superimposing one
colour upon another, made the whole rainbow his. Constant experiment
marked his further progress. We have, for example, one print which he
originally printed from eight blocks, and later varied by increasing the
blocks to ten, and still later to thirteen. From year to year an ever
fresh succession of complex colour-harmonies emanated from his fertile
brain.
Until the invention of polychrome printing, Harunobu had not adequately
expressed himself; now, having found his true instrument, he played
divinely. The year 1765 was a Jubilee year, celebrating the
nine-hundredth anniversary of the entrance of Sugawara Michigane, the
great statesman, painter, and humanist, to the Court of the Emperor.
This circumstance, in connection with the desire of literary men to
present to their friends specimens of the new prints as New Year cards,
led Harunobu to produce a number of dated calendar-prints of this
year--a fortunate occurrence which has been of great aid to students of
his work. The theory that these dated prints are the expression of
Harunobu's naïve exultation over the new discovery is now generally
discredited. Since the calendars are dated 1765, Mr. Gookin's suggestion
that they were probably made in the last months of 1764 seems
reasonable; and this date must therefore be regarded as marking the
beginning of polychrome printing.
The brilliant new prints fittingly ushered in the festal year. And the
public was not too busy with its celebrations to take note of the
change. The new manner with its wealth of colour-beauty won instant
popularity; and under the name of "Brocade Pictures of the Eastern
Capital" grew to such fame that by 1767 prints in the old style were
almost driven out of the market, and Harunobu was unquestioned lord of
Ukioye.
It is not strange that in the glow of success and ambition he should
have put behind him his old actor-pictures. "I am a Japanese painter,"
he wrote proudly; "why should I paint the portraits of this vulgar
herd?" And at this moment feeling himself akin to the great classical
tradition whose refined beauties had been handed down from ancient China
mingled with the beauties of poets and sages, he determined that he
would lift from the Ukioye School the stigma of vulgarity which the
theatre had given it, and invest it with some of that gentle cultivation
which fills like light the old Chinese paintings of Ming gardens.
Therefore he turned his energies to the depiction of another world than
the theatre--the life of aristocratic ladies, of young lovers, of
those famed beauties who in humbler station were the flowers and
sunshine of the tea-house and the festival. Plate 14 portrays one of
these. His method of handling the figures--a peculiar mingling of
naïveté and sophistication, like that of a minstrel singing incredible
enchanted legends with complete seriousness--was a new and
never-recovered note in the history of Ukioye.
[Illustration: HARUNOBU: GIRL VIEWING MOON AND BLOSSOMS.
Size 11 × 8. Signed _Harunobu ga_. Chandler Collection.
_Plate 13._]
From this time on, during six years, Harunobu produced a series of
prints whose grace is unsurpassable. The firm and refined strokes of his
brush endowed with a fresh charm all that was lovely in the flowing
draperies and serene faces of the young girls of Japan. He was the
painter of youth. The type which he introduced was the slender and
gracious embodiment of youthful girlhood. And an indescribable delicacy
and purity of manner clothes as with clear light these girl-figures of
his. His draperies, as in Plate 11, are never drawn naturalistically,
but always with a certain conventionalization that produces folds and
swirls more abstractly beautiful than a literal rendering. He for the
first time in colour-printing made a practice of giving to his figures a
background that exhibited fully the scene of their daily lives. Instead
of the heroic figures of the Primitives, stalking through space in
colossal grandeur, he drew the familiar forms of everyday existence
nestling among their natural surroundings. The world he pictures is,
however, one of mortals who hardly know the burdens of mortality. Like
the women of Botticelli, they seem to poise in an atmosphere of more
rarefied loveliness than anything we know in reality. Rich as may have
been the beauty of the tea-house girl, O-Sen, whom Harunobu loved and
painted, and of the little seller of cosmetics, O-Fuji, who appears many
times in his pictures, they were but the starting-point, the exciting
agency, from which Harunobu passed on into a secret fanciful world of
his own to evoke his dream-maidens. Half of the charm of these figures,
such as the one in Plate 12, lies in this unreal and unhuman impression
they make; they are not Japanese women or any women, but living
fairy-tales, butterfly creatures out of nowhere. All that is joyous and
playful in the Japanese spirit lifts them on wings of fantasy into
regions of universal delight. They are the most fragrant flowers of
Japanese art.
It follows that Harunobu's subjects are almost always light and trivial
scenes--a girl playing with a cat, a young man and a maiden walking
amiably together, young girls engaged in some delicate occupation, or,
as in Plate 13, pausing in pensive reverie. A gentle joy pervades most
of them, or at least a gravity so light that it is nearer joy than
melancholy. Harunobu does not handle these scenes with any especial
insight into life; they are not windows through which we may look and
see the human souls of the people he portrays. They are nothing more
than gay, pleasing moments--records of fortunate hours--froth and foam
over the real deeps of life.
[Illustration: HARUNOBU: COURTESAN DETAINING A PASSING SAMURAI.
Size 11 × 8. Signed _Harunobu ga_.
_Plate 14._]
Yet as the spectator allows the pure and delicate atmosphere of one of
these creations to enter his spirit, he gradually becomes aware that not
this trivial scene, not this light episode, was Harunobu's real
theme; his real theme was the great harmonics of colour and line. Out of
colour and line his immeasurable genius evoked lofty improvisations. He
dedicated the fervour of his passion and his vision to the creation of
these orchestrations of tone, these modulated arabesques of contour.
Beyond his cheerful groups, beyond his felicitous arrangements, lies the
history of his prodigious essay to impose his sense of beauty upon one
section of chaos. Kurth is quite right when he calls him "the great
virtuoso of colour."
Most of Harunobu's prints are of small size, almost square. In this form
his refinement found its most perfect expression. If we would see an
aspect of Harunobu that is of more impressive proportions, and realize
that scope as well as daintiness was in him, we must turn to certain
rare pillar-prints which were done chiefly in the years immediately
preceding his untimely death. Here dignity combines with grace, and an
exalted sweep of composition adds nobility to that exquisite colour
which here no less than in his small prints finds place. Two of these
pillar-prints, reproduced in Plate 15, may serve to illustrate this last
phase of Harunobu's greatest triumph.
The first print is a soft grey and lavender study of a girl. Within the
long, narrow space, against a background of cool unbroken grey, rises
the figure, whose bent, pensive head looks down at the ball she is
dangling before a cat at her feet. Her hair, a mass of strong black
against the clear grey background, is drawn in a conventionalized manner
that is perhaps the noblest formula ever devised for the painting of
hair--as pure of line as a Greek helmet. Drooping from her slender
shoulders fall robes whose slow curves seem moulded by the touch of
faint and gentle airs that breathe around her. The long drapery is
interwoven with hints of mauve melting into rose--more like ghosts of
the palette than colours--and touches of translucent salmon and amber
and grey are repeated like an arabesque of lights down the folds. The
folds sweep in great restful curves like those of vines hanging in
festoons from summer branches. At the girl's girdle a strong note of
dull green strikes like a bass chord across the composition; and smaller
spots of the same colour carry this motive diminishingly down to the
bottom of the picture.
It is a sentiment, an emotion, a dream--as much an abstraction as a
musical composition. In the lines of the dress, in the poise of the
head, in the limpid tones of the whole picture, is secreted the
dwelling-place of a peace, a solemnity, an awe never to be forgotten. It
is reminiscent of the grandeur of the Primitives, but more etherialized;
and there lingers about it still, persisting from earlier times, the
penumbra of that hierarchal purity and spirituality peculiar to archaic
art. Like those strange and memorable archaic statues of the Priestesses
in the Museum of the Akropolis at Athens, like the frescoes of Giotto at
Assisi, it holds the secret of an untainted beauty that is lost to later
artists.
[Illustration: HARUNOBU: SHIRAI GOMPACHI DISGUISED AS A KOMUSO.
Size 27 × 4½. Signed _Susuki Harunobu ga_.
HARUNOBU: GIRL PLAYING WITH KITTEN.
Size 26 × 4½. Signed _Susuki Harunobu ga_.
_Plate 15._]
The second pillar-print is one which, following the opinion of Professor
Fenollosa and Mr. Gookin, may be regarded as one of the supreme triumphs
of Harunobu's career, and one of the greatest prints we know. It
represents Shirai Gompachi, the white-robed lover of the beautiful
Komurasaki, wandering in disguise with the basket-hat and flute of a
_komuso_ or dishonoured Samurai. There is no background; against the
clear white paper the long lines of the tall figure flow in curves of
jet black and purple-grey, with here and there lights of orange and
white. By a simplicity of selection that is more than Greek, Harunobu
has woven from these few curves an effect that is like an incantation.
It has in it the power to reach into the secret storehouses of the
spectator's emotion and awaken echoes from those intimations of eternal
perfection which haunt every heart. Fenollosa writes: "There is
something unearthly about its line themes, orchestrated in black and
ghost-tints, which lifts one to the infinities of Beethoven's purest
melodies. The dreamy clarinet-player seems to droop and melt away into
regions of sublimity where no earthly ear shall follow his dying chords.
Thus indeed we are glad at last to have Harunobu pass, transfigured,
from our vision."
_Pillar Print by Harunobu._
From an infinite distance, the ghostly music!
Few and slender the tones, of delicate silver,
As stars are broidered on the veil of evening....
He passes by, the flute and the dreaming player--
Slow are his steps, his eyes are gravely downcast;
His pale robes sway in long folds with his passing.
Out of the infinite distance, a ghostly music
Returns--in slender tones of delicate silver,
As stars are broidered on the veil of evening.
Certain puzzles for the collector and student arise in connection with
Harunobu.
This is the first knotty point. Shiba Kokan, a contemporary artist who
outlived Harunobu by forty-eight years, is obscurely connected with
Harunobu's work. "Look out when you buy Harunobu prints!" he writes in
his memoirs, published long after his death. "A great portion of the
most popular ones are skilfully forged, and the forger was I, Shiba
Kokan!" This warning holds good to-day, and in many cases no one can say
with confidence whether certain sheets are by Shiba Kokan or Harunobu.
Kokan claims, in particular, to have been the author of those with
transparent draperies, those done in the Chinese manner, and those in
which snow on bamboos is rendered by embossing without outline blocks.
All these and other characteristic beauties of Harunobu's work he would
annex, and it is doubtful if we shall ever know whether he is the
greatest liar or the greatest forger in history. Probably his statements
must be regarded as partly true. Until we know, however, every print
signed Harunobu is suspect; for if Shiba Kokan could deceive the public
of that day, we shall not be likely to detect his forgeries. There is
only one consolation for the collector: if the prints of Shiba Kokan,
signed Harunobu, are as beautiful as those of Harunobu, then not the
collector is the sufferer, but only the unfortunate person who tries to
write an accurate account of this hopeless entanglement.
Other forgers, contemporaneous or slightly later, probably took
advantage of Harunobu's popularity: coarse reprints from recut blocks
turn up frequently in the market; and, worst of all, very fine modern
forgeries and imitations of his work abound. These last two classes are
the only ones that need cause the collector anxiety; they should of
course be guarded against with the utmost care, for they are quite
worthless. Their impure and muddy colours generally betray them to the
practised eye. No means of detecting them is safe for the inexperienced
amateur except a minute comparison with an unquestioned original
impression of the same print. On the other hand, the contemporaneous
forgeries, if beautiful, are no inconsiderable treasures.
[Illustration: KYOSEN.]
The name Kyosen furnishes another puzzle. It is signed to prints
unmistakably by Harunobu, to prints unmistakably not by him, and to
prints which he also signs. The solution seems to be that Kyosen is
simply the name of the printer or engraver who did work for Harunobu and
for other designers. Kyosen himself sometimes designed prints, but in
such cases he signed distinctly as artist. The signature Kyosen does
not, therefore, indicate a separate artist, and its presence on
Harunobu's prints need not cause doubts as to Harunobu's authorship.
Senga, a printer, and Takahashi Gyokushi and Takahashi Rosen, engravers,
also signed certain of Harunobu's prints.
A further difficulty arises in the relation of Harunobu to Koriusai, an
artist whom we shall soon treat by himself. At times his work comes so
close to Harunobu's style that earlier authorities believed his name to
be merely a later signature of Harunobu. This position is now entirely
discredited, and it is agreed that Koriusai was a distinct person, a
friend and successor of Harunobu. But it is not so sure that Koriusai
may not have signed certain of his own designs with Harunobu's name
after Harunobu's death; the striking resemblances of some such sheets to
Koriusai's work makes one unwilling to regard the relation between the
two as settled. In the case of certain unsigned prints, it is impossible
to determine with assurance which of the two was the creator. As a rule,
however, the colour-schemes of the two are totally different, Koriusai
running characteristically to schemes in which blue and orange are
dominant. Dr. Kurth seems to think it barely possible that prints signed
"Koriu" may be by Harunobu; but this theory is untenable, both because
the internal evidence of the prints is against it, several of Koriusai's
most characteristic prints being thus signed, and because of the
difficulty of believing that Harunobu, the greatest of living Ukioye
artists, should at the height of his fame have signed to his work the
name of a younger and less noted contemporary.
Those prints in the Harunobu manner which are unsigned and unsealed also
offer perplexities, since we must look entirely to internal evidence to
discover whether they are by Harunobu.
Harunobu's work is among the most highly prized in the whole list. The
great collections have many of his prints, but in the market one finds
the fine ones to be limited in number. In his case, even more than in
the case of other artists, perfect condition is a vital requirement.
For, in the process of fading, his prints lose that delicate
colour-orchestration which is their supreme glory. The same changes in
tone that would hardly detract from the beauty of a fine Kiyomitsu might
easily rob a fine Harunobu of most of its significance. If one has once
seen the copies in such collections as that of Mr. Frederick W. Gookin,
of Chicago, Mr. Charles H. Chandler, of Evanston, Messrs. William S.
Spaulding and John T. Spaulding, of Boston, or Mr. Howard Mansfield of
New York, one loses all interest in the battered riff-raff of the
dealers' counters.
KORIUSAI.
_Koriusai speaks._
Let whoso will take sheets as wide
As some great wrestler's mountain-back
Space cannot hide
His lack.
Take thou the panel, being strong.
'Tis as a girl's arm fashioned right--
As slender and divinely long
And white.
That tall and narrow icy space
Gives scope for all the brush beseems.
And who shall ask a wider place
For dreams?
It is an isle amid the tide--
A chink wherethrough shines one lone star--
A cell where calms of heaven hide
Afar.
One chosen curve of beauty wooed
From out the harsh chaotic world
Shall there in solitude
Be furled.
The narrow door shall be so strait
Life cannot vex, with troubled din,
Beauty, beyond that secret gate
Shut in.
Lo! I will draw two lovers there,
Alone amid their April hours,
With lines as drooping and as fair
As flowers.
I will make Spring to circle them
Like a faint aureole of delight.
Their luminous youth and joy shall stem
The night.
And men shall say: Behold! he chose,
From Time's wild welter round him strown,
This hour; and paid for its repose
His own.
Koriusai's life is shrouded in those mists prevalent in the cases of
most Ukioye artists. It is known that he was a Samurai, or feudal
retainer of knightly rank; upon the death of his master, Tsuchiya, he
became, as was the custom, a ronin--that is, a retainer without a
lord--and established himself near the picturesque Ryogoku Bridge in
Yedo as a painter. He originally used the name Haruhiro. Shigenaga was
his first teacher, Harunobu his second; his work can safely be dated
between 1770 and 1781. By the end of this period Kiyonaga was beginning
to advance achievements that eclipsed Koriusai's. As Fenollosa points
out, it was Koriusai's misfortune to collide with Harunobu at the
beginning and with Kiyonaga at the end of his career; could we
obliterate those two, we might think of Koriusai as "the most beautiful
Ukioye designer."
[Illustration: KORIUSAI: MOTHER AND BOY.
Size 28 × 4½. Signed _Koriu ga_.
KORIUSAI: TWO LOVERS IN THE FIELDS--SPRING CUCKOO.
Size 27 × 4½. Signed _Koriusai ga_.
_Plate 16._]
Koriusai was already working in Harunobu's manner at the time of the
master's death; and afterward he continued Harunobu's experiments. His
characteristic device in colour is the predominance of a strong orange
pigment, based on lead, which when originally applied had the utmost
brilliance, but which now is frequently changed by chemical
decomposition into a rich mottled black. Combining this orange with a
blue of his own devising, he obtained novel and striking effects.
[Illustration: KORIUSAI.]
Koriusai's small prints have often a beauty almost equal to Harunobu's,
but they lack individuality of invention. They never surpass the
triumphs of the older master in this form. Koriusai seldom can catch
Harunobu's perfect grace and repose, his luminous atmosphere and subtle
colour. But in his large sheets he produced a few compositions whose
elaborate magnificence is a new and individual achievement. The styles
in hair-dressing which came into vogue at this time were no small
element in enabling him to create his stately figures; the wide lines of
the coiffure, more solid and massive than in Harunobu's day, lent itself
admirably to strong decorative treatment. In a series of large sheets
called "Designs of Spring Greenery," each picture representing an Oiran
and her two or more young attendants, some of the prints are disfigured
by the heaviness of the faces; but others, from which this exaggeration
is absent, are of almost unparalleled splendour in colour, even though
somewhat monotonous in their repetitions. One of this type, in the Morse
Collection, Evanston (described at No. 155 of Fenollosa's Ketcham
Catalogue) is surely one of the greatest prints in the world. Some of
Koriusai's designs of birds and other animals, occasionally printed with
mica backgrounds, are admirable compositions.
But Koriusai's distinctive glory lies in the sphere of pillar-prints, of
which five are reproduced in Plates 16, 17, and 18. This form of
composition is one of the most interesting and exacting to be found in
the art of any race; the tall sheet, generally about 28 inches high and
only 5 inches wide, furnishes a mere ribbon of space that taxes all the
resources of a designer. It is like a Greek frieze placed on end; but
whereas the frieze gives space for a multitude of processional figures,
and is essentially a stage for the depiction of a social pageant, this
slim panel demands the exclusion of all but a few significant lines. In
this particular it is the finest of art-forms. It exacts the
quintessence of selection--one narrow glimpse of some cross-section of
life. Its limitations are like those of the lyric, requiring a
concentrated and finely chosen vision.
[Illustration: KORIUSAI: TWO LADIES.
Size 29 × 5. Signed _Koriu ga_.
KORIUSAI: A GAME OF TAG.
Size 26 × 5. Signed _Koriusai ga_.
_Plate 17._]
The shape was first devised by Okumura Masanobu as a modification of the
wider and shorter sheets commonly used by the Primitives for their large
pictures. As is often the case in the evolution of a fine art-form,
it was not Masanobu's mere whim, but structural exigencies, that
prompted the invention, the need being to provide long narrow pictures
that could be hung upon the square wooden pillar of the Japanese house.
Kiyomitsu and Toyonobu used this shape admirably; and the final and most
perfect form for its dimensions was fixed and brought into general use
by Harunobu. It became a favourite shape among the greatest of the later
artists; and no small number of their supreme achievements are in this
form. To the modern European eye, no other seems so distinctively
characteristic of the special Japanese genius.
Pillar-prints are almost invariably works of the first
importance--_pièces de résistance_, deliberate and studied productions,
representing the best effort and highest powers of the artist. For they
were intended to be mounted and rolled, like _kakemono_; and the artist
could therefore foresee for them a degree of attention that he could
hardly expect in the case of the loose square sheets. The peculiar shape
is in itself so interesting and beautiful, and so ringing a challenge to
the powers of the designer, that in many cases the best work of the
artist is to be found only in this form.
Pillar-prints are to-day far rarer than prints of the square variety.
They were probably produced in editions of smaller numbers than the
square prints; and, further, the use to which they were put as hanging
pictures exposed them to hazardous vicissitudes and generally resulted
in eventual destruction.
Koriusai's variations on the limited themes whose treatment is possible
in this narrow space display daring, originality, and power of
concentrated selection. He is the supreme master of the pillar-print; no
one else has produced so many fine ones, and practically all his finest
work is in this form. The infinite variety of his designs and the
fertility of his invention make a series of his pillar-prints one of the
most absorbing features of a fine collection. In one print (Plate 17),
he dashes the intense black line of a screen down through the middle of
his picture and sets the delicate eddies of a child's and a young girl's
garments playing around its base. In a second (Plate 18), a girl in
robes of gorgeous colour stands like a calm peacock, with glowing orange
combs alight in her hair; while in a third (Plate 16), the whole space
waves and sings with the forms of grasses, a flying cuckoo, and a maiden
carried in the arms of her lover through fields of spring. And in a
fourth (Plate 17), he draws the figures of two women, one behind and a
little above the other, the one in the background luminous with soft
neutral tints, the one in the foreground robed in a black whose
intensity cuts sharply through the otherwise monotonous sweetness of the
picture. To the grace of Harunobu, Koriusai has here added a vigour all
his own, and a richness surpassing that of his teacher.
To-day Koriusai's small prints are rather rare, as are also the birds
and the large-size sheets. His pillar-prints, which are his greatest
works, were produced in such numbers that, contrary to the rule that
applies to the pillar-prints of all other designers, a good many of
them have survived. It is still possible to secure examples that are
among the foremost of all print treasures.
[Illustration: SHIGEMASA: TWO LADIES.
Size 28½ × 5. Unsigned.
KORIUSAI: A COURTESAN.
Size 27 × 4½. Signed _Koriusai ga_.
_Plate 18._]
OTHER FOLLOWERS OF HARUNOBU.
SUSUKI HARUSHIGE is reported to have been the son and pupil of Harunobu.
The few prints of his that are known have a grace of line that might
well be a son's heritage, if such things were inheritable. The unholy
rascal Shiba Kokan alleges that this name was one which he himself used,
as well as Harunobu's; it is reported, on the other hand, that it is
merely Koriusai's early name. It is probable that Kokan's statement must
be believed.
[Illustration: HARUSHIGE.]
SHIBA KOKAN has already been mentioned as the forger of Harunobu's work.
His ability needs no further recommendation when we admit that we cannot
with certainty tell his prints from Harunobu's. This is his chief title
to fame. He was born in 1747 and died in 1818. During his life he signed
many names to his work and attempted many manners. From the Dutch at
Nagasaki he learned something of the rules of European perspective, and
tried, in the eighties, with success but without much beauty, to carry
them over into Japanese art. In addition, he introduced shadows into
some of his compositions--a device alien to the whole spirit of Chinese
and Japanese painting. He was the first Japanese artist to attempt
copper-plate engraving. Queer renderings of European scenes by him
remain to us. In a hundred different spheres of art, invention, and
speculation he tried his hand. His intellectual curiosity in every field
reminds one of Leonardo da Vinci. He remains one of the most interesting
and puzzling figures of his time--an adventurer, a restless
experimenter, a forger and a man of extraordinary though chaotic genius.
A poem written when he was dying has a curious vibrancy: "Kokan now
dies, for he is very old; to the passing world he leaves a picture of
the world that passes."
KOMAI YOSHINOBU did work in the style of Harunobu during the seventies.
He furnishes another example of the obscurity that covers so much of
Japanese print history; for it is not known whether he was an
independent artist, or identical with Yamamoto Yoshinobu, who produced
two-colour prints in the fifties, or worse yet, an early signature of
Koriusai. The first theory is the most probable. His work is rare,
beautiful in colour, and well worthy of further research.
[Illustration: MASUNOBU.]
MASUNOBU, the second of that name, whose work, in clear, delicate colour
and charming arrangement, generally follows Harunobu's closely, is also
not definitely located. He appears to have been originally a pupil of
Shigenobu and Shigenaga. Most writers erroneously regard him as the same
man who, under the name of Sanseido Tanaka Masunobu, produced
two-colour prints in the forties, and hand coloured prints still
earlier.
One of the Second Masunobu's pillar-prints, representing a girl with an
open umbrella jumping from a balcony to meet a waiting lover, has a
unique and most charming individuality of poise and colouring. His
pillar-prints, of which about ten are known, are particularly fine.
UJIMASA, KAMEGAKI HOŌRIU, MURANOBU, TACHIBANA MINKO, BANTO, CHIRYU,
RYUSHI, KISEN, and SUIYO are rare men who worked contemporaneously with
Harunobu. The Hayashi Catalogue also names SHOHA, SOAN, SOGIKU, KOGAN
and SEIKO.
KUNINOBU is an artist of extreme rarity, whose few surviving prints show
distinction of line, based on the Harunobu manner. His work, done about
1775, stands out from the work of Harunobu's horde of followers; he was
evidently a noteworthy artist, of whom one wishes we knew more.
FUJINOBU worked in the manner of Harunobu in the early seventies. His
output was small, and little of his work survives. It may be that he was
the same individual as Yamamoto Fujinobu, who has already been mentioned
as Shigenaga's pupil.
KOMATSUKEN is a name signed to certain calendar-prints for the year
1765. The style is greatly like Harunobu's. His name may also be read
_Shoshoken_. Mr. Gookin thinks him to be identical with Fusanobu, who
has been previously mentioned.
HARUTSUGU and SUSUKI HARUJI, said by some to be the same person,
produced a few pleasing prints about 1770.
SHUNSHO.
_Portrait of an Actor in Tragic Rôle._
His soul is a sword;
His sword with the spirit's breath
Is bathed of its terrible lord,
In whose eyes is death.
And the massive control,
And the lighted implacable eye
Leash a fierce and exalted soul
Of dark destiny.
. . . . . .
With the strength of the hills--
Kiso's iron mountains of snow--
He waits: time brings and fulfills
The hour for the blow.
He waits; and the white
Full robes round his shoulders sway,
With woof of pale orange alight,
Pale green, pale grey.
Like a falcon, flown
To bleak mid-regions of sky,
He poises. One image alone
Holds his sinister eye--
A vision, a prey
Towards which he shall soon be hurled--
And his fury shall darken the day,
And his joy, the world.
. . . . . .
A music enfolds him
Like the thunders that are poured
Across heaven; it holds him
With the song of the sword.
It enthrals, it inspires,
And its zenith shall be
Lightning of unleashed desires
Crashing along the sea.
[Illustration: SHUNSHO: AN ACTOR OF THE ISHIKAWA SCHOOL IN TRAGIC RÔLE.
Size 12 × 6. Signed _Shunsho ga_.
_Plate 19._]
Those actor-types which Harunobu and his school so scornfully cast aside
became the chosen speciality of the greatest of his rivals and
contemporaries, Katsukawa Shunsho. As one examines sheet after sheet of
Shunsho's theatrical prints, Harunobu's contemptuous words concerning
"this vulgar herd," the actors, lose their significance; for here pass
in gorgeous procession a series of lofty, intense, and unforgettable
figures charged with the quintessence of heroic force.
[Illustration: KATSUKAWA SHUNSHO.]
The designer of these prints was born in 1726 and died about 1792--some
authorities say 1790. His period of greatest activity covered the years
1765 to 1780, thus including the working periods of both Harunobu and
Koriusai, and ending as Koriusai's did when in the eighties Kiyonaga's
star rose blindingly. He lived for a while at the house of his
publisher, Hayashi; sometimes in his early work he used in place of a
signature a seal shaped like a small covered jar with handles, on which
Hayashi's name is inscribed. The legend is that he was too poor to own a
seal in the early days of his struggle and so borrowed that of his
landlord!
Shunsho had no antecedent teachers among the print-designers. He sprang
instead from a school of painters who did not design for prints. These,
headed by Choshun and his son Katsukawa Shunsui, had since 1700 been
producing rich paintings of women in elaborate drapery. The Buckingham
Collection contains one print by Shunsui, but it is an almost unique
rarity. Shunsho, by a curious shift in the stream of art history, not
only took up prints, but even took up the department of prints least in
line with the tendencies of his own school, the department of
actor-representation, which was the speciality of Kiyomitsu and the old
Torii School, and which Harunobu's popular innovations had almost driven
out of fashion. To this work Shunsho brought the new technique of
Harunobu and great native individuality; and with the fresh armament of
full colour he defended magnificently the threatened stronghold of
actor-prints. His popularity became enormous. He grew quickly to the
stature of one of the great and far-reaching powers in Ukioye history.
Side by side with Harunobu, he in his separate field executed year by
year actor-portraits which by their vigour of line and brilliancy of
colour-combination take a place as high as that held by the works of his
rival.
No contrast could be more striking than that between them. The one is
all grace, the other all force; the one loves to linger in quiet
gardens, the other drags us up to the icy heights of tragic crisis.
Shunsho's sense of dramatic composition was keen; and, as we see in
Plate 19, his ferocious actor-faces peer out with a vivid menace, his
tense actor-limbs shake with a concentrated and imprisoned fury not the
less impressive because of its intentional exaggeration. They have not
Harunobu's unreality of perfect grace, but the utterly different
super-reality of magnified passion. In repose they are like statues; in
action they have the vigour of those natural forces--waves, river
currents, storms of thunder--which, as in the Shunsho print reproduced
on the cover of this volume,[Transcriber's Note: The edition used to
produce this etext did not include this print on the cover.] so often
form their backgrounds.
[Illustration: SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA MATSUYE AS A WOMAN IN WHITE.
Size 11 × 5½. Unsigned.
_Plate 20._]
Shunsho's figures of women--or rather his figures of men acting the
parts of women, according to the invariable custom of the Japanese stage
at this time--are less violent, but often as tense. Two of these appear
in Plates 20 and 21. In long sweeping robes of brilliant dye they move
with the step of a Clytemnestra, or poise in strange attitudes of
arrested motion not unworthy of an Antigone. All his figures are
dynamic--the storehouses of volcanic forces whose existence he suggests
by restless line-conflicts.
Shunsho's predecessors in actor representation had never equalled the
intensity of these figures and faces. Shunsho tears the heart out of a
rôle and holds it up for us to see. He gives the passion of the actor
such expression as would have been impossible to Kiyonobu, twisting the
face into a distorted and grandiose mask beside which the faces of the
Primitives seem wooden and meaningless.
The spectator whose æsthetic sense embraces only a love of tranquillity
will find no beauty in these disturbing faces and forms--unless perhaps
the beauty of pure colour is enough to beguile him. It may well do this;
few things have power to bring a richer sense of æsthetic satisfaction
than a succession of fine Shunshos, in each one of which a new
colour-arrangement unfolds new harmonies.
Shunsho's work includes a very great number of actor-prints in the
narrow upright _hoso-ye_ form and a few large square prints. He also
issued a series of small illustrations for the "Ise Monogatari," an old
romantic chronicle which furnished many favourite subjects to the
artists. These are quiet in design and soft in colour; to them the eye
may turn for rest if wearied by the straining actors. In collaboration
with Shigemasa he produced a set of ten small prints representing
sericulture, which have considerable charm. In 1776 the same pair of
artists brought out a series of book-illustrations called "Mirror of the
Beauties of the Green Houses," representing groups of courtesans
occupied with the various activities of daily life--in the street, the
house, the garden, and the temple. This book has been called the most
beautiful ever produced in Japan; when one examines its chief rival,
"The Mirror of the Beautiful Women of the Yoshiwara," by Kitao Masanobu,
one need have no hesitancy in giving Shunsho's and Shigemasa's the first
place. This means, very probably, the first place among the illustrated
books of the world. Its pages, printed in rose, purple, brown, yellow,
and grey, are rich and delicate. Sheets from all these books are often
found mounted as separate prints. Shunsho's few known pillar-prints are
generally magnificent.
[Illustration: SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA NOSHIO IN FEMALE RÔLE.
Size 12½ × 6. Signed _Shunsho ga_. Gookin Collection.
_Plate 21._]
Because of his enormous productiveness, Shunsho's work in _hoso-ye_ form
is common, frequently in fine condition. Most of the _hoso-ye_ prints
were originally issued in joined groups of three; the groups are
seldom found intact now. The grace of his women has made them more
generally popular than his impressive men, and they are consequently
harder to obtain. It must be noted that Shunsho's work is uneven, and
that the majority of the pieces offered are either tame and
uninteresting examples of pot-boiling or caricatures that lack the
intensity which lifts certain of the artist's most grotesque figures to
tragic heights. The matchless Shunsho collection of Mr. Frederick W.
Gookin is full of such prints as rarely come into the market to-day.
Occasionally the more distinguished ones are met with; and they are
treasures which the practised collector eagerly seizes. Fortunately
print dealers are not, as a rule, conscious of the greatness of the
difference, and they will frequently offer side by side a print that is
merely one of Shunsho's commonest pieces of hack-work and a print that
is one of the glories of the Ukioye School. On such occasions the
collector has the pleasure of profiting by his own discrimination.
Shunsho's large square prints and pillar-prints are of extreme rarity.
BUNCHO.
Connected by association with the school of Shunsho, yet lifted by his
originality to a place quite apart from it, is the artist Ippitsusai
Buncho. His master, a certain Ishikawa Kogen (or Yukimoto) of the
classical Kano School, seems to have meant little to him; from the
beginning of his production, about 1765, Shunsho's and Harunobu's
influence chiefly guided him. He and Shunsho jointly published in 1770
three volumes of actor-portraits enclosed in fans. Little is known of
his life except that he was originally a Samurai; he is said to have
turned from his original master to the Ukioye School and to have led a
life of dissipation until eventually his friends persuaded him to
abandon such things and procured for him the honorary title of Hokyo.
After this, we hear nothing of him. He died in 1796.
[Illustration: IPPITSUSAI BUNCHO.]
Buncho's work attracts the observer with a charm different from that of
any other Ukioye artist. A curious mannerism in his way of drawing faces
and a fascinating perverse grace in the attitudes of his figures mark
his prints. Practically all his work is in the _hoso-ye_ form. His
subjects are chiefly young male actors in the rôles of women. Harunobu's
influence, manifest in Plate 22, brought him grace but not sweetness.
There is an astringent quality in his work that prevents it from ever
being serene. His figures, whose line-work is the apotheosis of suavity
and studied refinement, are arched into slightly strained and tortured
attitudes; complex forces seem to dominate them like unseen winds;
consuming or delicate passions move obscurely through their limbs and
faces. Their heads poise at unnatural angles as if consciously turning
their indifferent eyes from the spectacle of common things toward a
secret and hypnotizing world of their own. These alien beings haunt one;
it seems as if they had some mystery to reveal, some disturbing wonder
to communicate could one but make them speak.
[Illustration: BUNCHO: COURTESAN AND HER ATTENDANT IN SNOWSTORM.
Size 12 × 5½. Signed _Ippitsusai Buncho ga_. Mansfield Collection.
_Plate 22._]
Part of Buncho's strangeness lies in the fact that he seeks for his
figures not a human but an abstract and geometrical grace. His famous
print, often reproduced, of the actor Segawa Kikunojo as a lady in white
carrying an orange umbrella beneath a willow-tree, is a study in the
harmonics of pure line; to this end every other element of
representation has been sacrificed. Line exists here not merely to bound
a form but for its own inherent beauty. Buncho is the greatest of all
masters of the geometry of lines and spaces; these have, as he arranges
them, the inevitability and clarity of a mathematical demonstration.
His use of colour is equally notable and strange. By employing tints
that are almost discords he produces arresting and fascinating effects.
His combinations of orange and slaty grey, or dull red and slaty blue
and pale yellow, or pink and purple, have an uncanny vibrancy that makes
them stand out in one's memory.
Buncho's strangeness has a further aspect. There is in him an intangible
spiritual abnormality. I am led to localize this in his portraits of the
actor Segawa Kikunojo, and to imagine a curious relation between the
two. Some of his portraits of this actor are the flower of his work. In
them appears a passionately rarefied beauty; they have an unusual pitch,
like the overstrained vibration of violin strings stirred by some heavy
blow. Segawa Kikunojo was the foremost woman-impersonator of his time.
His grace in such rôles is attested by prints from the hands of many
artists; but none rise to the unearthly beauty of Buncho's. Even if we
knew nothing of the life of the Japanese stage at this time, or of the
custom of actors like Segawa Kikunojo to dress and live like women when
off the stage, we might still be put on inquiry by the peculiar ethereal
quality of some of these portraits. For art whose initial impulse lies
in morbid regions often flies into regions of the most disembodied
spirituality for expression. Flowers of the morass frequently have a
pale delicacy that is alien to the flowers of the field.
It is, however, with a confession of fancifulness that I reconstruct the
following story to account for Buncho. He, a Samurai, was driven by keen
artistic sensibility to the study of painting under a classical master.
From this studio he was lured by the glitter and glamour of Ukioye into
the world of prints and actors, and sank into a slough of dissipation
above which gleamed the balefully beautiful star of Segawa Kikunojo.
Haunted by a perverse susceptibility, his tense-strung nerves vibrated
at that morbid touch into notes of such disembodied sweetness as the
world has scarcely known elsewhere; and at last he passed into
retirement and death, still the puppet of a disturbing illusion. He was
an unbalanced temperament, a dreamer of keen and attenuated beauty
that has nothing in common with the normal wholesome life of earth.
[Illustration: SHUNYEI: AN ACTOR.
Grey background. Size 14 × 9½. Signed _Shunyei ga_.
_Plate 23._]
His prints are exceedingly rare; many a good collection possesses not a
single fine specimen of his work. I had never seen or heard of a
pillar-print by him until very recently; but lately an interesting one
has been found in Japan.
SHUNYEI.
[Illustration: SHUNYEI.]
Shunsho's vigorous style had many followers, among whom Shunyei is
commonly regarded as the most important. He was born in 1767, and lived
until 1819. His teacher Shunsho's manner dominated his work from his
earliest years, though some late sheets exist in which he followed
Kiyonaga. It is believed that originally he used the name Shunjo; fine
work is extant with that signature. He had many pupils, and was himself
an able painter; but his ordinary work is largely derivative. At times,
however, his _hoso-ye_ actor-prints achieve an effect of great power by
the use of large masses of colour. He had a certain sharpness of
observation--a certain knack of catching in his portraits the
peculiarities of his models, that produces an effect less dignified but
more vivid than Shunsho's. A sense of humour glimmers through his
rendering of some of these keenly drawn and intimately characterized
actor-faces. Unmistakable as may be the features of a Danjuro or a
Hanshiro drawn by Shunsho, one nevertheless feels that the personality
of the actor has been largely dominated by Shunsho's supreme interest in
the passion or terror of the rôle; and though he pictured the face of
the actor, the spirit which he sought was wholly the spirit of the part.
Shunyei, on the other hand, often managed to retain the idiosyncrasies
of the sitter and his peculiar spiritual flavour; and though his works
are not often as beautiful as Shunsho's, they are frequently more human.
On the whole, we may say that Shunsho created generalized types, Shunyei
reproduced observed individuals.
Shunyei produced, besides the actors in _hoso-ye_ form by which he is
best known, a few large heads and full-length portraits of actors marked
by a strength of drawing and a breadth of characterization different
from his usual work. One of these is reproduced in Plate 23. On a grey
background, this powerfully designed figure stands out with gigantic
simplicity in masses of dull colour. The prints of this rare type are
perhaps Shunyei's best. Beside them must rank the large actor-heads,
interesting to the collector because of their relation to the work of
another great artist, Sharaku. It is still uncertain whether Sharaku or
Shunyei was the inventor of this type of large bust-portrait. Dr. Kurth
assumes, for the greater glory of Sharaku, that he was the precursor;
but the question cannot be regarded as settled.
[Illustration: SHUNKO: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA MONNOSUKE IN CHARACTER.
Size 13 × 6. Unsigned, but stamped with Jar Seal.
_Plate 24._]
SHUNKO.
The equal of Shunyei among Shunsho's other pupils is to be found in
Katsukawa Shunko. He was the spiritual image of his master, except that
he had not his master's full command of terror. His figures, as in Plate
24, poise or sway with gentler emotions; as a rule, they are agreeable
rather than impressive. One comes to recognize him frequently by the
peculiar suavity of his designs. It is true that he sometimes approaches
very near to Shunsho's power; but this is less characteristic and less
interesting than his quieter manner. It is unnecessary to treat of him
at great length, for most of his work is of a type whose main qualities
have been treated fully under Shunsho. It is not known when Shunko was
born; he died in 1827.
[Illustration: SHUNKO.]
It may be noted that he sometimes sealed his prints instead of signing
them, using a jar-shaped seal much like that which Shunsho had made
famous.
In the Spaulding Collection, Boston, is a remarkable full-size triptych
by Shunko, representing a party of actors picnicking in the country. The
style shows it to be greatly influenced by Kiyonaga; and the whole
composition of this beautiful piece is different from most of Shunsho's
work.
OTHER FOLLOWERS OF SHUNSHO AND HIS SCHOOL.
SHUNRI was another pupil of Shunsho; he appears to have been a competent
designer, but no great figure. SHUNTOKU, SHUNKI, SHUNKAKU, SHOYU,
SHUNYEN, SHUNKEN, and SHUNKYOKU may be described in the same words. Each
has perhaps produced a few beautiful works, but their originality is not
marked.
RANTOKUSAI SHUNDO, a gifted pupil of Shunsho, has left work so rare that
one cannot make any very definite statement about him. His few known
prints are admirable. One suspects that this signature is merely the
early name of some well-known artist.
SHUNSEI, SHUNRIN, SOBAI, and SHUNKIO are later artists; their importance
is small.
SHUNTEI, "owing partly to illness and partly to systematic indulgence in
drink" (Strange), and partly to complete lack of natural distinction,
produced nothing of interest; and his coarse battle-scenes may be
classed with the crude work characteristic of a later period. He worked
chiefly between 1800 and 1820.
KINCHO SEKIGA is said to have been a pupil of Buncho.
SHUNKO II was a pupil of Shunyei. His name is written in different
characters from that of the first Shunko. KICHOSAI SHUNKO also produced
actor-prints.
YUMISHO was a very rare pupil who adopted Kiyonaga's style in line-work.
The same may be said of YENSHI, some of whose work is very beautiful;
he appears to have come much under the influence of Yeishi. Several of
his triptychs are fine.
TOYOHARU.
Utagawa Toyoharu is a strangely equivocal figure in print history; his
fame is great, but no surviving print of his, so far as I have been able
to ascertain, is of a quality to justify fully his reputation. Born in
1733, he studied with Shigenaga and probably with Toyonobu, produced a
limited number of prints in the sixties and seventies, withdrew from
prints to painting when Kiyonaga's new style grew to splendour, and died
in 1814. He is said to have been a sensitive and delicately strung
individual who shrank from competition and worked obscurely. His
best-known work is a series of twelve designs for the various months
done in collaboration with Shunsho and Shigemasa; each print is divided
diagonally into two scenes--a device of unfortunate and ingenious
ugliness. The figures, however, have a certain delicate grace. His
pillar-prints, which are rare, have considerable beauty.
[Illustration: UTAGAWA TOYOHARU.]
Toyoharu has been called a greater artist than Shunsho. It may be true,
yet I am inclined to regard this view either as the result of his
painting and not his print-designing, or as part of a great Toyoharu
myth, for which the later success of his pupils is responsible. Certain
it is that of his surviving prints few are noteworthy, and that he was
greater as a painter and teacher than as a print-designer. We shall
remember him more as the instructor of Toyokuni and Toyohiro and as the
precursor of Hiroshige than for any of his own prints that remain to us.
As a figure-painter, he is known as the founder of the Utagawa School.
As a landscape-painter, he made successful use of European perspective,
which he probably learned from Dutch engravings, and was perhaps the
first Ukioye print-artist to return to the habit of the older schools
and treat landscape not as a mere setting but as a thing by itself. His
scenes are too stiff and too crowded with petty details to lay any real
claim to beauty. He used as the dominant note in many of them the orange
colour so dear to Koriusai; but no pigment can well be imagined that is
less fitted for landscape-rendering. Yet the historical importance of
these prints is great; for they are, so to speak, the grandparents of
the marvellous landscapes of Hiroshige.
UTAGAWA TOYONOBU is believed by some authorities to have been merely
Toyoharu's early name; others think him identical with Ishikawa
Toyonobu; and still others regard him as an independent artist who was a
pupil of Ishikawa Toyonobu, his greater namesake. The few prints we have
by him--I know of less than half a dozen--are not sufficient to enable
one to form an opinion as to this.
TOYOMARU and TOYOHISA were among Toyoharu's pupils.
SHIGEMASA.
[Illustration: KITAO SHIGEMASA.]
Kitao Shigemasa may be called the great chameleon of the Ukioye School:
a discriminating chameleon, who chose only the greatest artists of each
decade from whom to take his changing hue. As M. Raymond Koechlin
expresses it, "it was his destiny to reflect in his art the art of the
most original of his contemporaries." Born about 1740, he lived until
1819. His teacher was Shigenaga; this master died not long after
Shigemasa commenced work with him. Thus Shigemasa began painting early
enough to be influenced by the last of the Primitives; and his first
prints, dating from about 1764, are graceful three-colour renderings of
actor-themes in the manner of Kiyomitsu, and more brutal ones in the
manner of Kiyomasu. With the rise of Harunobu and the perfection of
polychrome printing, Shigemasa turned to that style; later he followed
Koriusai, in whose manner he produced some wonderfully beautiful large
sheets of women and some fine pillar-prints. Still later he followed the
style of Shunsho. Together with this artist he produced in 1786 a set of
ten small sheets representing the various stages of sericulture, in
which he surpasses his collaborator. The same two artists had earlier
collaborated, in 1776, to produce the famous illustrated book "Mirror of
the Beauties of the Green Houses." These illustrations are not signed;
but comparing them with Shigemasa's portion of the sericulture series,
which are signed separately by the two artists, we may well believe that
a large part of the peculiar grace of the "Green Houses" is Shigemasa's
and not Shunsho's contribution. With Shunsho and Toyoharu, he
collaborated in a series of designs for the twelve months, of which I
have already spoken under Toyoharu. Like so many other artists of this
period, Shigemasa gradually withdrew from work in the eighties before
the blaze of Kiyonaga's glory. Kiyonaga himself was perhaps influenced
by the older artist.
Shigemasa's draughtsmanship is the one quality that marks him through
all his changes; from first to last, it is superb. With a fine firmness
and ease he produces, as in Plate 18, designs in which restraint
combines with great expressiveness. His faces have repose and
distinction; his draperies are drawn with notable simplicity and
dignity; his cool and quiet colour is admirable. Through all his styles
runs a fastidious delicacy of feeling, and what Fenollosa terms "an even
master
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