Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and
punctuation remains unchanged.
Italics are represented thus _italic_.
Each of the illustrations is accompanied by a fac-simile of the
artist’s signature.
[Illustration: Surimono: A Crow Stealing a Sword. This sword is a
famous heirloom of the ancient house of Genji, described in the old
romance known as “Genji Monogatari.” By Hokusai.]
[Illustration: Biwa, the Beautiful Lake, so named from its resemblance
in form to the Four-stringed Lute. By Hiroshige.]
IMPRESSIONS
OF UKIYO-YE
THE SCHOOL OF
THE JAPANESE COLOUR-PRINT
ARTISTS
BY
DORA AMSDEN
_The things of Heaven
and of Buddha: The Life of Men
and Women._
_From the Mang-wa of Hokusai._
[Illustration: Symbol]
PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY
SAN FRANCISCO AND NEW YORK
_Copyright 1905
by_ PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY
REVISED EDITION
The Tomoye Press
TO
MY BROTHER AND BEST FRIEND
CHARLES WATSON JACKSON
Contents.
_Page_
The Rise of Ukiyo-ye (The Floating World) 1
Genroku (The Golden Era of Romance and Art) 13
The School of Torii (The Printers Branch of Ukiyo-ye) 25
Utamaro (Le Fondateur de L’École de la Vie) 35
The Romance of Hokusai (Master of Ukiyo-ye) 47
Hiroshige (Landscape Painter and Apostle of Impressionism) 57
Analytical Comparisons between the Masters of Ukiyo-ye 69
Hints to Collectors of Ukiyo-ye Gems 77
Bibliography, for Use of Students 78
Fac-similes of the Most Famous Signatures of the Ukiyo-ye Artists 80
Index 83
Illustrations.
Hiroshige I—Biwa, the Beautiful Lake, named after the
four-stringed Lute _Frontispiece_
Suzuki Harunobu—An Illustration from the “Occupations of
Women” _Opposite Page_ 22
Kiyonaga—Under the Cherry Blooms “ 30
Toyokuni—The Actor Kikugoro “ 34
[A]Utamaro—While Mother Sleeps “ 40
Hokusai—Two Ladies “ 48
Hok’kei—A River Scene “ 52
Hiroshige—Wistaria Viewing at Kameido “ 58
Yeishi—Two Ladies “ 70
Shunko—An actor in the Miyako Dance “ 72
Kitugawa Yeizan—The Snowstorm “ 74
Hokusai—One of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji “ 76
Hokusai—Surimono: A Crow Stealing a Sword _First Fly-leaf_
Yanagawa Shigenobu—The Ride of the Warrior
Miura Kenisuke _Last Fly-leaf_
[Footnote A: From the Happer Collection.]
IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE
The Rise of Ukiyo-ye.
The Floating World.
The Art of Ukiyo-ye is a “spiritual rendering of the realism and
naturalness of the daily life, intercourse with nature, and imaginings,
of a lively impressionable race, in the full tide of a passionate
craving for art.” This characterization of Jarves sums up forcibly the
motive of the masters of Ukiyo-ye, the Popular School of Japanese Art,
so poetically interpreted “The Floating World.”
To the Passionate Pilgrim, and devotee of nature and art, who has
visited the enchanted Orient, it is unnecessary to prepare the way for
the proper understanding of Ukiyo-ye. This joyous idealist trusts less
to dogma than to impressions. “I know nothing of Art, but I know what
I like,” is the language of sincerity, sincerity which does not take
a stand upon creed or tradition, nor upon cut and dried principles
and conventions. It is truly said that “they alone can pretend to
fathom the depth of feeling and beauty in an alien art, who resolutely
determine to scrutinize it from the point of view of an inhabitant of
the place of its birth.”
To the born cosmopolite, who assimilates alien ideas by instinct,
or the gauging power of his sub-conscious intelligence, the feat is
easy, but to the less intuitively gifted, it is necessary to serve a
novitiate, in order to appreciate “a wholly recalcitrant element like
Japanese Art, which at once demands attention, and defies judgment upon
accepted theories.” These sketches are not an individual expression,
but an endeavour to give in condensed form the opinions of those
qualified by study and research to speak with authority upon the form
of Japanese Art, which in its most concrete development the Ukiyo-ye
print is now claiming the attention of the art world.
The development of colour printing is, however, only the objective
symbol of Ukiyo-ye, for, as our Western oracle, Professor Fenollosa,
said, “The true history of Ukiyo-ye, although including prints as one
of its most fascinating diversions, is not a history of the technical
art of printing, rather an æsthetic history of a peculiar kind of
design.”
The temptation to make use of one more quotation, in concluding these
introductory remarks, is irresistible, for in it Walter Pater sets
his seal upon art as a legitimate pursuit, no matter what form it
takes, though irreconcilable with preconceived ideas and traditions.
“The legitimate contention is not of one age or school of art against
another, but of all successive schools alike, against the stupidity
which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to
form.”
As the Popular School (Ukiyo-ye) was the outcome of over a thousand
years of growth, it is necessary to glance back along the centuries in
order to understand and follow the processes of its development.
Though the origin of painting in Japan is shrouded in obscurity, and
veiled in tradition, there is no doubt that China and Corea were the
direct sources from which she derived her art; whilst more indirectly
she was influenced by Persia and India,—the sacred fount of oriental
art,—as of religion, which ever went hand in hand.
In China, the Ming dynasty gave birth to an original style, which for
centuries dominated the art of Japan; the sweeping calligraphic strokes
of Hokusai mark the sway of hereditary influence, and his wood-cutters,
trained to follow the graceful, fluent lines of his purely Japanese
work, were staggered by his sudden flights into angular realism.
The Chinese and Buddhist schools of art dated from the sixth century,
and in Japan the Emperor Heizei founded an imperial academy in 808.
This academy, and the school of Yamato, founded by Motomitsu in the
eleventh century, led up to the celebrated school of Tosa, which with
Kano, its august and aristocratic rival, held undisputed supremacy for
centuries, until challenged by plebeian Ukiyo-ye, the school of the
common people of Japan.
Tosa has been characterized as the “manifestation of ardent faith,
through the purity of an ethereal style.” Tosa represented the taste
of the court of Kyoto, and was relegated to the service of the
aristocracy; it reflected the esoteric mystery of Shinto and the
hallowed entourage of the divinely descended Mikado. The ceremonial
of the court, its fêtes and religious solemnities,—dances attended
by daimios, in robes of state falling in full harmonious folds,—were
depicted with consummate elegance and delicacy of touch, which
betrayed familiarity with the occult methods of Persian miniature
painting. The Tosa artists used very fine, pointed brushes, and set
off the brilliance of their colouring with resplendent backgrounds
in gold leaf, and it is to Tosa we owe the intricate designs, almost
microscopic in detail, which are to be seen upon the most beautiful
specimens of gold lacquer work; and screens, which for richness have
never been surpassed.
Japanese Art was ever dominated by the priestly hierarchy, and also by
temporal rulers, and of this the school of Tosa was a noted example, as
it received its title from the painter-prince, Tsunetaka, who, besides
being the originator of an artistic centre, held the position of
vice-governor of the province of Tosa. From its incipience, Tosa owed
its prestige to the Mikado and his nobles, as later Kano became the
official school of the usurping Shoguns. Thus the religious, political
and artistic history of Japan were ever closely allied. The Tosa style
was combated by the influx of Chinese influence, culminating in the
fourteenth century, in the rival school of Kano. The school of Kano
owed its origin to China. At the close of the fourteenth century the
Chinese Buddhist priest, Josetsu, left his own country for Japan, and
bringing with him Chinese tradition, he founded a new dynasty whose
descendants still represent the most illustrious school of painting in
Japan. The Kano school to this day continues to be the stronghold of
classicism, which in Japan signifies principally adherence to Chinese
models, a traditional technique, and avoidance of subjects which
represent every-day life. The Chinese calligraphic stroke lay at the
root of the technique of Kano, and the Japanese brush owed its facility
elementarily to the art of writing. Dexterous handling of the brush is
necessary to produce these bold, incisive strokes, and the signs of the
alphabet require little expansion to resolve themselves into draped
forms, and as easily they can be decomposed into their abstract element.
Walter Crane inculcates the wisdom of this method for preliminary
practice with the brush in his valuable study, “Line and Form,” but
the Chinese and Japanese ideographs give a far wider scope to initial
brush work.
The early artists of Kano reduced painting to an academic art, and
destroyed naturalism, until the genius of Masanobu, who gave his name
to the school, and still more, that of his son, Motonobu, the real
“Kano,” grafted on to Chinese models, and monotony of monochrome, a
warmth of colour and harmony of design which regenerated and revivified
the whole system. Kano yielded to Chinese influence, Tosa combated it,
and strove for a purely national art, Ukiyo-ye bridged the chasm, and
became the exponent of both schools, bringing about an expansion in art
which could never have been realized by these aristocratic rivals. The
vigour and force of the conquering Shoguns led Kano, while the lustre
of Tosa was an emanation from the sanctified and veiled Mikado.
The favourite subjects of the Kano painters were chiefly Chinese saints
and philosophers, mythological and legendary heroes, represented in
various attitudes with backgrounds of conventional clouds and mists,
interspersed with symbolical emblems. Many of the Kano saints and
heroes bear a striking resemblance to mediæval subjects, as they are
often represented rising from billowy cloud masses, robed in ethereal
draperies, and with heads encircled by the nimbus.
Beneath the brush of Motonobu, formal classicism melted. In this new
movement, says Kakuzo Okakura, “art fled from man to nature, and in the
purity of ink landscapes, in the graceful spray of bamboos and pines,
sought and found her asylum.”
Space will not permit a glance at the personnel of the many schools of
Japanese Art. A lengthy catalogue alone would be required to enumerate
the masters who inaugurated schools, for if an artist developed
exceptional talent in Japan, he immediately founded an individual
school, and it was incumbent upon his descendants for generations to
adhere rigidly to the principles he had inculcated, so becoming slaves
to traditional methods.
During the anarchy of the fourteenth century art stagnated in Japan,
but a revival, corresponding with our European Renaissance, followed.
The fifteenth century in Japan, as in Europe, was essentially the
age of revival. Wm. Anderson epitomizes in one pregnant phrase this
working power: “All ages of healthy human prosperity are more or less
revivals. A little study would probably show that the Ptolemaic era in
Egypt was a renaissance of the Theban age, in architecture as in other
respects, while the golden period of Augustus in Rome was largely a
Greek revival.” There seems ever to have been a reciprocal action in
Japanese Art. Tosa, famed for delicacy of touch, minutiæ of detail and
brilliance of colour, yielded to the black and white, vigorous force of
Kano. Kano again was modified by the glowing colouring introduced by
Kano Masanobu and Motonobu. Later we see the varied palette of Miyagawa
Choshun efface the monochromic simplicity of Moronobu, the ringleader
of the printers of Ukiyo-ye.
The leading light in art in the beginning of the fifteenth century was
Cho Densu, the Fra Angelico of Japan, who, a simple monk, serving in a
Kyoto temple, must in a trance of religious and artistic ecstasy have
beheld a spectrum of fadeless dyes, so wondrous were the colours he
lavished upon the draperies of his saints and sages. The splendour of
this beatific vision has never faded, for the masters who followed in
the footsteps of the inspired monk reverently preserved the secret of
these precious shades, till at last, in the form of the Ukiyo-ye print,
they were sown broadcast, and revolutionized the colour sense of the
art world.
It has been remarked that Japanese Art of the nineteenth century is
often nothing but a reproduction of the works of the ancient great
masters, and the methods and mannerisms of the fifteenth century
artists have ever served as examples for later students. The glory of
the fifteenth century was increased by Mitsunobu of Tosa, and above
all by the two great Kano artists, Masanobu and his son, Motonobu, who
received the title of “Hogen,” and is referred to as “Ko Hogen,” or the
ancient Hogen, of whom it has been remarked, “He filled the air with
luminous beams.”
By the close of the fifteenth century the principles of art in
Japan became definitely fixed, as, almost contemporaneously, Giotto
established a canon of art in Florence, which he, in turn, had received
from the Attic Greeks, through Cimabue, and which was condensed by
Ruskin into a grammar of art, under the term “Laws of Fésole.”
The two great schools, Tosa and Kano, flourished independently until
the middle of the eighteenth century, when the genius of the popular
artists, forming the school of Ukiyo-ye, gradually fused the traditions
of Tosa and Kano, absorbing the methods of these rival schools,—which,
differing in technique and motive, were united in their proud disdain
of the new art which dared to represent the manners and customs of the
common people. Harunobu and Hokusai, Kiyonaga and Hiroshige were the
crowning glory of all the schools,—the artists whose genius told the
story of their country, day by day, weaving a century of history into
one living encyclopedia, sumptuous in form, kaleidoscopic in colour.
Ukiyo-ye prepared Japan for intercourse with other nations by
developing in the common people an interest in other countries, in
science and foreign culture, and by promoting the desire to travel,
through the means of illustrated books of varied scenes. To Ukiyo-ye,
the Japanese owed the gradual expansion of international consciousness,
which culminated in the revolution of 1868,—a revolution, the most
astonishing in history, accomplished as if by miracle; but the esoteric
germ of this seemingly spontaneous growth of Meiji lay in the atelier
of the artists of Ukiyo-ye.
To trace the evolution of the Popular School in its development through
nearly three centuries is a lengthy study, of deep interest. The mists
of uncertainty gather about the lives of many apostles of Ukiyo-ye,
from the originator, Iwasa Matahei, to Hiroshige, one of the latest
disciples, whose changes of style and diversity of signature have given
rise to the supposition that as many as three artists are entitled to
the name. These mists of tradition cannot be altogether dispersed by
such indefatigable students as M. Louis Gonse, Professor Fenollosa, M.
Edmond de Goncourt, Wm. Anderson, John S. Happer and many others, but
by their aid the methods of Oriental Art are clarified and explained.
Iwasa Matahei, the date of whose birth is given as 1578, is considered
to be the originator of the Popular School. The spontaneous growth of
great movements and the mystery of the source of genius are illustrated
in the career of Matahei. His environment fitted him to follow in the
footsteps of his master, Mitsunori of Tosa. Yet the city of Kyoto,
veiled in mystic sanctity, where religion and princely patronage held
art in conventional shackles, gave birth to the leader of the Popular
School. Still, was not Kyoto, the sacred heart of Japan, a fit cradle
for Ukiyo-ye, the life and soul of the Japanese people?
Matahei and his followers entered into the spirit of the Japanese
temperament, and from the Popular School sprang liberty and a novelty
of horizon. The aristocratic schools had confined themselves to
representations of princely pageantry, to portraiture, and to ideal
pictures of mythical personages, saints and sages. The tradition
of China showed in all their landscapes, which reflected ethereal
vistas classically rendered, of an alien land. Therefore Matahei was
contemptuously disowned by Tosa for depicting scenes from the life of
his countrymen, yet the technique of Kano and Tosa were the birthright
of the artists of Ukiyo-ye, an inalienable inheritance in form, into
which they breathed the spirit of life, thus revivifying an art grown
cold and academical, and frosted with tradition. The colouring of Kano
had faded, tending continually toward monochrome, but the Ukiyo-ye
painters restored the use of gorgeous pigments, preserving the glory of
Kano Yeitoku, the court painter to Hideyoshi.
In the middle of the seventeenth century appeared Hishigawa Moronobu,
considered by many to be the real founder of Ukiyo-ye. His genius
welded with the new motif the use of the block for printing, an
innovation which led to the most characteristic development in
Ukiyo-ye art. This art of printing, which originated in China and
Corea, had, until the beginning of the seventeenth century, been
confined solely to the service of religion for the reproduction of
texts and images, but Moronobu conceived the idea of using the form of
printed book illustration, just coming into vogue, as a channel to set
forth the life of the people. Besides painting and illustrating books,
he began printing single sheets, occasionally adding to the printed
outlines dashes of colour from the brush, principally in orange and
green. These sheets, the precursors of the Ukiyo-ye prints, superseded
the _Otsu-ye_,—impressionistic hand-paintings, draughted hastily for
rapid circulation. The _Otsu-ye_ were sometimes richly illuminated, the
largest surfaces in the costumes being filled in with a ground of black
lacquer, and ornamented with layers of gold leaf attached by varnish.
Moronobu acquired his technique from both Tosa and Kano, but was
originally a designer for the rich brocades and tissues woven in Kyoto.
He added to this art that of embroidery, and leaving Kyoto, took up
this branch at the rival city Yedo, where all the arts and crafts
were developing under the fostering care of the Tokugawa Shoguns, the
dynasty with which Ukiyo-ye art is practically co-extensive. It was
Hishigawa Moronobu who designed for his countrywomen their luxurious
trailing robes, with enormous sleeves, richly embroidered,—gorgeous
and stately garments which he loved to reproduce on paper, with
marvellous powers of sweeping line. As in all fashions of dress, in
time the graceful lines became exaggerated until, in the beginning of
the nineteenth century, they overstepped the limits of beauty, and
approached the realm of caricature. Today, in the modern poster, we
see perpetuated the degenerate offspring of the genius of Moronobu, of
whom it is remarked that his enlarged compositions have the plasticity
of bas-reliefs.
An artist who greatly influenced Moronobu was Tanyu, of the School of
Kano, whose masterpiece may be seen at the great temple in Kyoto,—four
painted panels of lions, of indescribable majesty. M. Louis Gonse
tells us that one of Tanyu’s kakemonos, belonging to a celebrated
French painter, well sustains the test of comparison with its companion
pictures, in the artist’s studio, by Durer, Rembrandt and Rubens. Under
Tanyu’s direction the task of reproducing the old masterpieces was
undertaken. The artists of Ukiyo-ye were ever ready to profit by the
teaching of all the schools; therefore, properly to follow the methods
of the Popular School, we must study the work of the old masters and
the subjects from which they derived their inspiration.
In this brief resumé we cannot follow the fluctuations of Japanese
Art through the centuries. During long periods of conflict and bloody
internecine strife, art languished; when peace reigned, then in the
seclusion of their _yashikis_ these fierce and princely warriors threw
down their arms and surrendered themselves to the service of beauty and
of art. Nor had the dainty inmates of their castles languished idly
during these stirring times. Often they defended their honour and their
homes against treacherous neighbours. It was a Japanese woman who led
her conquering countrymen into Corea. In the arts of peace the cultured
women of Japan kept pace with their lovers and husbands. A woman
revised and enlarged the alphabet, and some of the most beautiful
classic poems are ascribed to them. Well might the Japanese fight
fiercely for his altar and home, with the thought of the flower-soft
hands that were waiting to strip him of his armour and stifle with
caresses the recollection of past conflict. The early history of Japan
suggests a comparison with ancient Greece, and the Japanese poets might
have apostrophized their country, as did Byron the land of his adoption:
“The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,—
Where Delos rose, and Phœbus sprung!”
Happily Japan, unlike Greece, withstood the enervating influences of
luxury and the passionate adoration of beauty. Princes laboured alike
with chisel and with brush, and the loftiest rulers disdained not the
tool of the artisan. Art Industrial kissed Grand Art, which remained
virile beneath the sturdy benediction. Therefore Japan lives, unlike
Greece, whose beauty in decay called forth that saddest of dirges,
ending,
“’Tis Greece, but living Greece no more.”
In Japan, art lightens the burden of labour, utility and beauty go hand
in hand, and the essential and the real reach upward, and touch the
beautiful and the ideal.
Genroku.
The Golden Era of Romance and Art.
The Nen-go of Genroku, from 1688 to 1703, was that period of
incomparable glory which the Japanese revere as the French do the time
of Louis the Fourteenth. Peace had long reigned and art flourished
under the fostering care of the Tokugawa Shoguns.
Then lived the great worker in lacquer, Korin, pupil of Sotatsu, the
flower painter, unrivalled artists who had absorbed the secrets of both
Kano and Tosa. Itcho, the grand colourist, flourished, and Kenzan,
brother of Korin, the “Exponent in pottery decoration of the Korin
School.”
Yedo, the new capital of the usurping Tokugawas, now became the
Mecca of genius, rivalling the ancient metropolis Kyoto, for the
great Shoguns encouraged art in all forms, not disdaining to enroll
themselves as pupils to the masters in painting and lacquer. The
greatest ruler became one of the greatest artists, even assuming the
art title of Sendai Shogun. In this age the height of perfection was
reached in metal work, both chased and cast.
“The sword is the soul of the Samurai,” says the old Japanese motto,
therefore its decoration and adornment was a sacred service to which
genius delighted to dedicate itself. In Japan the greatest artists
were sometimes carvers and painters and workers in metals in one, and
suggest comparison with the European masters of two centuries earlier.
Did not Botticelli take his name from the goldsmith for whom he worked,
and Leonardo da Vinci began his art life by “twisting metal screens
for the tombs of the Medici”? Later we see him playing before his
patron, Francesco, in Milan, upon that weird silver harp he had himself
constructed, till at last, perfected in art, he projected upon canvas
the Mona Lisa, that “realization of strange thoughts and fantastic
reveries and exquisite passions.”
Also in Japan, as in Europe, the genius of the nation was consecrated
to the dead. More than half of Michelangelo’s life was devoted to the
decoration of tombs, and the shrines of the Shoguns are the greatest
art monuments in Japan. Preoccupation with graves perhaps enabled the
Japanese to face death so readily, even embracing it upon the slightest
pretext.
Genroku was the acme of the age of chivalry. Its tales of deadly duels
and fierce vendettas are the delight of the nation. The history of the
Forty-seven Ronin equals any mediæval tale of bloodthirsty vengeance
and feudal devotion. This Japanese vendetta of the seventeenth century
is still re-enacted upon the stage, and remains the most popular drama
of the day, and the actor designers of Torii ever delighted in it as
a subject for illustration. A brief outline of the story may be of
interest and serve to recall its charming interpretation by Mitford.
The cause of this famous drama of vendetta was the avarice of
Kotsuki-no-Suke, a courtier of the Shogun at Yedo who might have served
as prototype for “Pooh Bah,” in Gilbert’s clever burlesque. This
pompous official was detailed to receive at his castle and instruct in
court etiquette two provincial noblemen, to whom had been assigned the
onerous task of entertaining the Mikado’s envoy from Kyoto. In return
for this tutelage they duly sent many gifts to Kotsuki-no-Suke, but
not costly enough to gratify the rapacity of the Gilbertian minister,
who day by day became more insufferably arrogant, not having been
“sufficiently insulted.”
Then a counsellor of one of these great lords, being wise in his
generation, and fearing for his master’s safety, rode at midnight
to the castle of the greedy official, leaving a present or bribe of
a thousand pieces of silver. This generous donation had the desired
effect.
“You have come early to court, my lord,” was the suave welcome the
unconscious nobleman received the next morning. “I shall have the
honour of calling your attention to several points of etiquette today.”
The next moment the countenance of Kotsuki-no-Suke clouded, and,
turning haughtily toward his other pupil from whom no largesse had been
received, he cried, “Here, my lord of Takumi, be so good as to tie
for me the ribbon of my sock,” adding under his breath, “boor of the
provinces.”
“Stop, my lord!” cried Takumi-no-Kami, and, drawing his dirk, he flung
it at the insolent nobleman’s head. Then a great tumult arose. His
court cap had saved from death Kotsuki-no-Suke, and he fled from the
spot, whilst Takumi-no-Kami was arrested, and to divert the disgrace of
being beheaded, hastily performed hari-kiri; his goods and castle were
confiscated and his retainers became Ronin (literally “Wave Men”), cast
adrift to follow their fortunes, roving at will.
The vendetta, sworn to and carried out by these forty-seven faithful
servants, is the sequel of the story. Oishi Kuranosuki, the chief
of the Ronin, planned the scheme of revenge. To put Kotsuki-no-Suke
off his guard, the band dispersed, many of them under the disguise of
workmen taking service in the _yashiki_ of their enemy in order to
become familiar with the interior of the fortification.
Meanwhile Kuranosuki, to further mislead his enemies, plunged into
a life of wild dissipation, until Kotsuki-no-Suke, hearing of his
excesses, relaxed his own vigilance, only keeping half the guard he had
at first appointed. The wife and friends of Kuranosuki were greatly
grieved at his loose conduct, for he took nobody into his confidence.
Even a man from Satsuma, seeing him lying drunk in the open street,
dared to kick his body, muttering, “Faithless beast, thou givest
thyself up to women and wine, thou art unworthy of the name of a
Samurai.”
But Kuranosuki endured the contumely, biding his time, and at last, in
the winter of the following year, when the ground was white with snow,
the carefully planned assault was successfully attempted. The castle
of Kotsuki-no-Suke was taken, but what was the consternation of the
brave Ronin, when, after a prolonged search, they failed to discover
their victim! In despair, they were about to despatch themselves, in
accordance with their severe code of honour, when Kuranosuki, pushing
aside a hanging picture, discovered a secret courtyard. There, hidden
behind some sacks of charcoal, they found their enemy, and dragged him
out, trembling with cold and terror, clad in his costly nightrobe of
embroidered white satin. Then humbly kneeling, Oishi Kuranosuki thus
addressed him: “My lord, we beseech you to perform Seppuku (happy
despatch). I shall have the honour to act as your lordship’s second,
and when, with all humility, I shall have received your lordship’s
head, it is my intention to lay it as an offering upon the grave of our
master, Asano-Takumi-no-Kami.” Unfortunately, the carefully planned
programme of the Ronin failed to recommend itself to Kotsuki-no-Suke,
and he declined their polite invitation to disembowel himself,
whereupon Kuranosuki at one stroke cut off the craven head, with the
blade used by his master in taking his own life.
So in solemn procession the Forty-seven Ronin, bearing their enemy’s
head, approached the Temple of Sengakuji, where they were met by the
abbot of the monastery, who led them to their master’s tomb. There,
after washing in water, they laid it, thus accomplishing the vendetta;
then praying for decent burial and for masses, they took their own
lives.
Thus ended the tragic story, and visitors to the temple are still shown
the receipt given by the retainers of the son of Kotsuki-no-Suke for
the head of their lord’s father, returned to them by the priest of
Sengakuji. Surely it is one of the weirdest relics to take in one’s
hand, this memorandum, the simple wording of which but adds to its
horror:
Item—One head.
Item—One paper parcel, and then the signatures of the two retainers
beneath.
Another manuscript is also shown, in which the Ronin addressed their
departed lord, laying it upon his tomb. It is translated thus by
Mitford:
“The fifteenth year of Genroku, the twelfth month, and fifteenth day.
We have come this day to do homage here, forty-seven men in all, from
Oishi Kuranosuki, down to the foot soldier, Terasaka Kichiyemon, all
cheerfully about to lay down our lives on your behalf. We reverently
announce this to the honoured spirit of our dead master. On the
fourteenth day of the third month of last year our honoured master was
pleased to attack Kira-Kotsuki-no-Suke, for what reason we know not.
Our honoured master put an end to his own life, but Kotsuki-no-Suke
lived. Although we fear that after the decree issued by the Government,
this plot of ours will be displeasing to our master, still we who have
eaten of your food could not without blushing repeat the verse, ‘Thou
shalt not live under the same heaven nor tread the same earth with the
enemy of thy father or lord,’ nor could we have dared to leave hell and
present ourselves before you in paradise, unless we had carried out the
vengeance which you began. Every day that we waited seemed as three
autumns to us. Verily we have trodden the snow for one day, nay for two
days, and have tasted food but once. The old and decrepit, the sick and
ailing, have come forth gladly to lay down their lives. Having taken
counsel together last night, we have escorted my lord, Kotsuki-no-Suke,
hither to your tomb. This dirk by which our honoured lord set great
store last year, and entrusted to our care, we now bring back. If your
noble spirit be now present before this tomb, we pray you as a sign to
take the dirk, and striking the head of your enemy with it a second
time to dispel your hatred forever. This is the respectful statement of
forty-seven men.”
There were forty-seven Ronin. Why, then, do forty-eight tomb-stones
stand beneath the cedars at Sengakuji? Truly the answer has caused
tears to fall from the eyes of many a visiting pilgrim, for the
forty-eighth tomb holds the body of the Satsuma man, who in an agony of
grief and remorse ended his life, and was buried beside the hero, whose
body he had scornfully trampled upon in the streets of sacred Kyoto.
This history of the Forty-seven Ronin is an epitome of Japanese ethics,
for in it is exemplified their feudal devotion, their severe code
of honour, their distorted vision of duty and fealty to a superior,
justifying the most lawless acts. Thus the conduct of Kuranosuki during
his wild year of reckless abandonment, in which he threw off all moral
restraint in order to deceive his enemy, breaking the heart of his
faithful and devoted wife, was considered by his countrymen meritorious
and a proof of his devotion. The Ukiyo-ye artists, who loved to take
for models the beautiful denizens of the “Under World,” chose this
obsession of Kuranosuki as the subject for many of their illustrations,
so that at a first glance the series might almost be mistaken for
scenes from the life of the Yoshiwara.
Here and there, however, we come across the Ronin engaged in terrific
conflict with Kotsuki-no-Suke’s retainers. Cruel and bloodthirsty are
the blades of their relentless katanas, which once unsheathed must be
slaked in human blood, and their garments, slashed into stiletto-like
points of inky blackness, forming a _chevaux de frise_ round their
fierce faces, seem scintillant with the spirit of vendetta.
In examining the sets of impressions, illustrating the popular story,
it is hard to give preference to any special artist: to choose
between the Utamaro-like violets and greens of Yeisen; the rich
dark tints and fine backgrounds of Kunisada; the delicately massed
detail of Toyokuni, unlike the usual boldness of his style, and the
varied sword-play of the versatile Hiroshige, set in a frosted, snowy
landscape. Hokusai, who abjured theatrical subjects after breaking away
from the tutelage of Shunsho, published a series of prints illustrating
the famous vendetta, but as his great-grandfather had been a retainer
of Kotsuki-no-Suke, losing his life during the midnight attack, the
story formed part of his ancestral history. The series is signed Kako,
and the sweeping lines and contours of the female figures show the
Kiyonaga influence. Yellow preponderates, outlining the buildings and
long interior vistas, and the impressions are framed with a singular
convention of Hokusai at that period, drifting cloud effects in
delicate pink. Utamaro also illustrated the story, substituting for the
Ronin the forms of women, a favourite conceit of the artist of beauty.
This digression in favour of the masters of the Popular School has
carried us over a hundred years, and we must return to the close of
the seventeenth century. Moronobu illustrated the carnival of Genroku,
but toward the end of the century, under the domination of a Shogun
who combined the qualities of extravagance and profligacy with the
delirious superstition of a Louis the Eleventh, a period of unbridled
license set in. The military men, who were the nation’s models,
forgot their fine traditions and fell from their estate, so that the
latter manners and customs of Genroku became a by-word. Then followed
a puritanical reaction. Under the eighth Shogun, the knights were
restricted from attending the theatre, just coming into favour, and the
looser haunts of pleasure were strictly under ban. The Ukiyo-ye print,
being the medium for illustrating these joys and pleasures, forbidden
to the great, but still indulged in by the people, was strictly
condemned, and to this day the aristocracy of Japan accord but grudging
and unwilling recognition to the merits of the masters of Ukiyo-ye, the
old caste prejudice still blinding their artistic sense.
At this stage Ukiyo-ye broke into rival schools, the founders of both
belonging to the academy of Hishigawa Moronobu. The leader of the
first, the school of painting, was Miyagawa Choshun, who in order to
preserve aristocratic patronage and praise, eschewed the use of the
printing-block, still taking his subjects from the “floating world,”
and so being in one sense at unity with the other branch, that of
printing founded by Kiyonobu, the first master of the great Torii
School. As the Print artists are our subject matter we cannot follow
the other branch of Ukiyo-ye, founded by Miyagawa Choshun, but leaving
the atelier of the painters, we must devote ourselves to the fortunes
of the Torii School, the laboratory of the Ukiyo-ye print, working
parallel with the pictorial school for the first half of the eighteenth
century.
The first sheets of Kiyonobu (about 1710), the founder of the Torii
School, were printed in ink from a single block. Part of the edition
would be issued in this uncoloured form, the rest being coloured by
hand. The colours most used were olive and orange, these prints being
called _Tan-ye_, whilst those in ink were named _Sumi-ye_. Urishi-ye
(lacquer pictures), was the generic term for hand-painted prints.
_Beni-ye_ (literally red pictures), followed the Urishi-ye. They were
printed in two tones, rose and pale green, enforced by black, a harmony
exquisite in delicacy. The use of the multiple colour blocks gave rise
to the title _Nishiki-ye_, or brocade paintings. The national mania for
the stage induced Kiyonobu and his followers to take for their subjects
popular actors, and the theatrical poster may be said to date from the
decade following Genroku.
Later in the century the process of colour-printing by the substitution
of blocks for flat colours was gradually evolved, and to no special
artist or engraver can the credit be given, for all contributed to its
development, though the genius of Suzuki Harunobu drew to a focus in
1765 the achievements of his brother artists, and it was he who solved
the problem of uniting the skill of the engraver with the full palette
of Miyagawa Choshun and his follower Shunsui, thus uniting the two
branches of Ukiyo-ye art.
The Popular School, however, is bound up with print development.
Japanese book illustration and single-sheet printing revolutionized the
world’s art. The great connoisseurs of colour tell us that nowhere else
is anything like it, so rich and so full, that a print comes to have
every quality of a complete painting.
The other leaders of the Torii School were Torii Kiyomasu and Okumura
Masanobu, namesake of the great founder of Kano, who must not be
confounded with the later artist of the same name, belonging to the
school of Kitao. Masanobu deserves special mention, for his style being
chiefly pictorial, and his subjects not confined to the stage, he
formed a link between the painter’s atelier and his own.
[Illustration: An illustration from “The Occupations of Women.” By
Suzuki Harunobu, who, though a worker in prints, styled himself
“Yamato Yeshi,” the title assigned to the great court painters.]
He realized that book prints rather than actor prints ought to be the
most potent force of Ukiyo-ye.
Shigenaga followed in the footsteps of Masanobu, but his fame is
eclipsed by that of his great pupil Harunobu, whose genius was
displayed not only by the introduction of new colours upon the
printing-block, but by his schemes of arrangement, juxtaposition of
shades, and marvellous handling of the areas between the printed
outlines. This restriction of measured spaces does not cramp the
painter’s individuality and sweep of brush; rather, they set him free
to concentrate his genius upon blended harmonies, and interwoven
schemes of colour, and to surrender himself to the intoxication of the
palette.
Suzuki Harunobu revolutionized the status of the Popular School,
pronouncing this dictum, “Though I am a worker in prints I shall
hereafter style myself ‘Yamato Yeishi,’” the title assumed by the
ancient court painters. A national painter he declared himself, let
him deny who dare, working through the new medium of the despised and
ostracized Ukiyo-ye print from which he determined to remove the stigma
of vulgarity.
Now we see a strange transposition in the aims of the popular artists.
Harunobu, though a pupil of Shigenaga, the printer, took for his models
the subjects of the painter Shunsui, successor to Miyagawa Choshun, and
by rejecting stage motives discarded the Torii tradition. From Shunsui,
Harunobu borrowed the ineffable grace and refinement which breathe from
the forms of his women, from the painter he stole colour harmonies and
designs with landscape backgrounds, which the Torii School had hitherto
ignored. The introduction of genre painting, though attributed by
Walter Pater to Giorgione, applies equally to the work of Harunobu
and his follower Koriusai. “He is the inventor of genre, of those
easily movable pictures which serve neither for uses of devotion nor
of allegorical or historical teaching: little groups of real men and
women, amid congruous furniture or landscape, morsels of actual life,
conversation or music or play, refined upon and idealized till they
come to seem like glimpses of life from afar. People may move those
spaces of cunningly blent colour readily and take them with them where
they go, like a poem in manuscript, or a musical instrument, to be used
at will as a means of self-education, stimulus or solace, coming like
an animated presence into one’s cabinet, and like persons live with us
for a day or a lifetime.” Must not such an influence have descended
upon Whistler when, saturated with the atmosphere of Hiroshige, he
imagined that most beautiful of his “Nocturnes” described by Theodore
Child as “a vision in form and colour, in luminous air, a Japanese
fancy realized on the banks of the gray Thames”?
The School of Torii.
The Printers’ Branch of Ukiyo-ye.
The Torii School was pre-eminently the exponent of the drama. It
was bound up with stage development and ministered to the emotional
temperament of the nation; leading in what may be considered a national
obsession, a mania for actors and actor-prints.
A fascinating subject is this century of dramatic evolution fostered
by the printers’ branch of the Popular School. The actor had been
consigned, in dark feudal days, to the lowest rung in the ladder of
caste, ranking next to the outcast (_Eta_), as in early English days
the strolling player was associated with tinkers and the other vagrant
population.
The _No Kagura_ and lyric drama,—suggesting the mediæval and passion
plays of Europe,—prefigured the modern drama in Japan, but the
immediate precursor of the present theatre was the Puppet Show, a
Japanese apotheosis of our Marionette performances. It is interesting
to note that Toyokuni, who M. Louis Gonse declared has carried further
than any one the power of mimetic art, and with whose theatrical scenes
we are most familiar, began his career as a maker of dolls, and these
puppets were eagerly sought for as works of art.
If the aphorism “not to go to the theatre is like making one’s toilet
without a mirror,” be true, then the Japanese are justified in their
national stage passion, which overshadows the love of any other
amusement. Taking the phrase literally, it was to the persons of the
actors, and the printers who spread their pictures broadcast, that the
people owed the æsthetic wonders of their costume. The designers were
also artists, as instanced by Hishigawa Moronobu, the Kyoto designer
and Yedo embroiderer, the printer and painter, illustrator of books and
originator of Ukiyo-ye.
Enthusiasm for the portraits of actors, fostered by the Torii printers
from the foundation of the school by Kiyonobu, about 1710, hastened
no doubt the development of colour-printing. As early as Genroku, the
portrait of Danjuro, the second of the great dynasty of actors, who by
their genius helped to brighten the fortunes of the playhouse, was sold
for five cash, in the streets of the capital.
The combined genius of the artists, engravers and printers of Ukiyo-ye
evolved and perfected the use of the multiple colour-block. Toward the
middle of the century, under the waning powers of Torii Kiyomitsu,
successor to Kiyonobu, the school seemed sinking into oblivion, for
Harunobu, its rightful exponent, filled with visions of ethereal
refinement, scorned the theatrical arena. When most needed, however,
a prophet arose in the person of Shunsho, the painter, the pupil of
Shunsui and master of Hokusai, thus completing the transformation
begun by Harunobu. The great scions of the rival branches of Ukiyo-ye,
printing and painting, stepped into each other’s places and bridged the
chasm, which threatened the unity of the Popular School.
Both branches were united, however, in the use of the multiple
colour-blocks, but although Shunsho followed Harunobu’s experiments in
colouring, varying his actor designs with domestic scenes and book
illustrations, Harunobu resolutely refused to portray the life of the
stage, and in this determination he was followed by his pupil and
successor, Koriusai.
About the year 1765, the art of printing colours, by the use of
individual blocks, technically called chromo-xylography, was perfected.
It is an interesting reflection, from the standpoint of Buddhism,—which
teaches that in the fullness of time, the great masters in religion,
art and learning become reincarnated upon earth, for the benefit of
humanity, that at this period Hokusai was born, the crowning glory and
master of Ukiyo-ye. Had he appeared earlier in the century, his genius
might have been diverted to the technical development of printing, and
the world thus been the loser of his creative flights.
Professor Fenollosa beautifully defines the inception of the Ukiyo-ye
print as “the meeting of two wonderfully sympathetic surfaces,—the
un-sandpapered grain of the cherry-wood block, and a mesh in the paper,
of little pulsating vegetable tentacles. Upon the one, colour can be
laid almost dry, and to the other it may be transferred by a delicacy
of personal touch that leaves only a trace of tint balancing lightly
upon the tips of the fibres. And from the interstices of these printed
tips, the whole luminous heart of the paper wells up from within,
diluting the pigment with a soft golden sunshine. In the Japanese print
we have flatness combined with vibration.”
To the connoisseur, one of the most important considerations, scarcely
secondary to that of colouring, in the selection of Ukiyo-ye gems, is
this vibratory quality, depending equally upon the texture of the
paper and the magnetic pressure of the master printer’s fingers. This
characteristic seems to have vanished from the modern print, and cannot
be imitated, though the enthusiasm for fine specimens has flooded the
market with spurious antiques, deceptive to the uninitiated. In the
exquisite reproductions of the early Ukiyo-ye prints and paintings now
being issued,—though a joy to the student unable to acquaint himself
with the originals,—this ineffable effect of vibration is lost,
probably owing to the substitution of a less sympathetic medium than
the luminous vehicle of the early impressions.
The actual process of wood-cutting seems a simple art, but a close
study of the making of prints will show the consummate skill required
to produce them. The artist’s design was transferred by tracing
paper, then pasted on to the face of the wood block, and the white
space hollowed out with a knife and small gouges. After the block had
been inked, a sheet of damp paper was laid upon it, and the back of
the paper was then rubbed with a flat rubber till the impression was
uniformly transferred. Where more than one block was employed, as in
colour-printing, the subsequent impressions were registered by marks
made at the corners of the paper. The colouring matter laid upon these
early blocks was extracted by mysterious processes from sources unknown
to the Western world, which, alas! by supplying the Eastern market
with cheap pigments, led to the deterioration of art in this essential
particular.