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.

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

ILLUSTRATIONS

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The importance of the school terminated with Kiyonaga, or at latest with Kiyomine.

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.

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.

OKUMURA MASANOBU: COURTESANS AT TOILET.
Black and white. 10 × 15. Unsigned.

Plate 4.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.