BOOKS FOR COLLECTORS
_With Frontispieces and many Illustrations._
CHATS ON ENGLISH CHINA.
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON OLD FURNITURE.
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON OLD PRINTS.
(How to collect and value Old Engravings.)
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON COSTUME.
By G. Woolliscroft Rhead.
CHATS ON OLD LACE AND NEEDLEWORK.
By E. L. Lowes.
CHATS ON ORIENTAL CHINA.
By J. F. Blacker.
CHATS ON OLD MINIATURES.
By J. J. Foster, F.S.A.
CHATS ON ENGLISH EARTHENWARE.
(Companion volume to "Chats on English China.")
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON AUTOGRAPHS.
By A. M. Broadley.
CHATS ON PEWTER.
By H. J. L. J. Massé, M.A.
CHATS ON POSTAGE STAMPS.
By Fred. J. Melville.
CHATS ON OLD JEWELLERY AND TRINKETS.
By MacIver Percival.
CHATS ON COTTAGE AND FARMHOUSE FURNITURE.
(Companion volume to "Chats on Old Furniture.")
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON OLD COINS
By Fred. W. Burgess.
CHATS ON OLD COPPER AND BRASS.
By Fred. W. Burgess.
CHATS ON HOUSEHOLD CURIOS.
By Fred. W. Burgess.
CHATS ON OLD SILVER.
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS.
By Arthur Davison Ficke.
CHATS ON MILITARY CURIOS.
By Stanley C. Johnson.
CHATS ON OLD CLOCKS AND WATCHES.
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON ROYAL COPENHAGEN PORCELAIN.
By Arthur Hayden.
CHATS ON OLD SHEFFIELD PLATE.
(Companion volume to "Chats on Old Silver.")
By Arthur Hayden.
BYE PATHS OF CURIO COLLECTING.
By Arthur Hayden.
With Frontispiece and 72 Full page Illustrations. 9s. net.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD.
NEW YORK: F. A. STOKES COMPANY.
CHATS ON
JAPANESE
PRINTS
[Illustration: HIROSHIGE: THE BOW-MOON.
Size 15 × 7. Signed Hiroshige, hitsu.
_Frontispiece._]
CHATS ON JAPANESE PRINTS
BY ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE
WITH 56 ILLUSTRATIONS AND A COLOURED FRONTISPIECE
T. FISHER UNWIN LTD
LONDON: ADELPHI TERRACE
* * * * *
_First published in 1915_
_Second Impression, 1916_
_Third Impression, 1917_
_Fourth Impression, 1922_
(_All rights reserved_)
* * * * *
TO
FREDERICK WILLIAM GOOKIN
AND
HOWARD MANSFIELD
CUSTODIANS, APPRAISERS, AND LOVERS OF BEAUTY
As chosen guests we may partake
Of this strange hostel's ancient wine.
For thirst no common drink can slake
Tapsters of lineage divine
Here pour sweet anodyne.
The hurly-burly of the road,
The turmoil of the carters' feet,
Intrude not to this still abode
Where travellers from the world-ends meet,
And find the gathering sweet.
Hence may perhaps some secret gleam
Follow along our onward way,
From evening feast with lords of dream,
As we go forth into the grey
To-morrow's cloudy day.
PREFACE
For assistance of many kinds in preparing this book the thanks of the
author are gratefully offered to Mr. Frederick William Gookin, Mr.
Howard Mansfield, Mr. William S. Spaulding, Mr. John T. Spaulding, Mr.
Judson D. Metzgar, Mr. Charles H. Chandler, Mr. John Stewart Happer,
Col. Henry Appleton, Mrs. Arthur Aldis, Mr. Ernest Oberholtzer, and Mr.
Charles August Ficke. Though many obligations must perforce go
unacknowledged, it would be improper to fail to state indebtedness to
the writings of Von Seidlitz, Bing, Huish, Anderson, Strange, Binyon,
Gookin, Kurth, Morrison, Happer, Koechlin, Vignier, Succo, Field, De
Goncourt, Okakura, Edmunds, Perzynski, Wright, Fenollosa, and De Becker.
Many collectors have kindly allowed their prints to be used for
illustration in this book. That all the examples are from American
collections is due to considerations of convenience, not to any notion
of their superiority. All prints not credited to another owner are from
the collection of the author. The other collections from which
illustrations are drawn are as follows:--
Spaulding (William S. and John T.), Boston, Massachusetts.
Gookin (Frederick W.), Chicago, Illinois.
Mansfield (Howard), New York.
Chandler (Charles H.), Evanston, Illinois.
Metzgar (Judson D.), Moline, Illinois.
Ainsworth (Miss Mary), Moline, Illinois.
Four of the poems herein printed appeared first in _The Little Review_.
A number of the others are from the author's book "Twelve Japanese
Painters." Most of the photographs here reproduced were prepared by Mr.
J. H. Paarman, Miss Sarah G. Foote-Sheldon, and Mr. J. D. Metzgar.
DAVENPORT, IOWA, U.S.A.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE 11
GLOSSARY 19
CHAPTER
I. PRELIMINARY SURVEY 23
II. CONDITIONS PRECEDING THE RISE OF PRINT DESIGNING 47
III. THE FIRST PERIOD: THE PRIMITIVES 61
IV. THE SECOND PERIOD: THE EARLY POLYCHROME MASTERS 125
V. THE THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA AND HIS FOLLOWERS 205
VI. THE FOURTH PERIOD: THE DECADENCE 255
VII. THE FIFTH PERIOD: THE DOWNFALL 347
VIII. THE COLLECTOR 401
INDEX 449
ILLUSTRATIONS
HIROSHIGE: THE BOW-MOON _Frontispiece_
PLATE PAGE
1. MORONOBU: A PAIR OF LOVERS 71
2. SUKENOBU: A YOUNG COURTESAN 77
3. KWAIGETSUDŌ: COURTESAN ARRANGING HER COIFFURE
(_Spaulding Collection_) 81
4. OKUMURA MASANOBU: COURTESANS AT TOILET 93
5. OKUMURA MASANOBU: STANDING WOMAN 97
6. OKUMURA MASANOBU: YOUNG NOBLEMAN PLAYING THE DRUM
(_Chandler Collection_) 101
7. TOYONOBU: TWO KOMUSO, REPRESENTED BY THE ACTORS SANOKAWA
ICHIMATSU AND ONOYE KIKUGORO (_Chandler Collection_) 109
8. TOYONOBU: GIRL OPENING AN UMBRELLA (_Metzgar Collection_) 113
TOYONOBU: WOMAN DRESSING 113
9. KIYOMITSU: THE ACTOR SEGAWA KIKUNOJO AS A WOMAN SMOKING 117
10. KIYOMITSU: WOMAN WITH BASKET HAT 121
KIYOMITSU: WOMAN COMING FROM BATH 121
11. HARUNOBU: YOUNG GIRL IN WIND (_Gookin Collection_) 137
12. HARUNOBU: LADY TALKING WITH FAN-VENDOR (_Chandler Collection_) 141
13. HARUNOBU: GIRL VIEWING MOON AND BLOSSOMS
(_Chandler Collection_) 145
14. HARUNOBU: COURTESAN DETAINING A PASSING SAMURAI 149
15. HARUNOBU: SHIRAI GOMPACHI DISGUISED AS A KOMUSO 153
HARUNOBU: GIRL PLAYING WITH KITTEN 153
16. KORIUSAI: MOTHER AND BOY 161
KORIUSAI: TWO LOVERS IN THE FIELDS; SPRING CUCKOO 161
17. KORIUSAI: TWO LADIES 165
KORIUSAI: A GAME OF TAG 165
18. SHIGEMASA: TWO LADIES 169
KORIUSAI: A COURTESAN 169
19. SHUNSHO: AN ACTOR OF THE ISHIKAWA SCHOOL IN TRAGIC RÔLE 175
20. SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA MATSUYE AS A WOMAN IN WHITE 179
21. SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA NOSHIO IN FEMALE RÔLE
(_Gookin Collection_) 183
22. BUNCHO: COURTESAN AND HER ATTENDANT IN SNOWSTORM
(_Mansfield Collection_) 187
23. SHUNYEI: AN ACTOR 191
24. SHUNKO: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA MONNOSUKE IN CHARACTER 195
25. KIYONAGA: THE COURTESAN HANA-ŌJI WITH ATTENDANTS 211
26. KIYONAGA: LADY WITH TWO ATTENDANTS (_Gookin Collection_) 215
27. KIYONAGA: THE COURTESAN SHIZUKA WITH ATTENDANTS IN THE
PEONY GARDEN AT ASAKUSA 219
28. KIYONAGA: TWO WOMEN AND A TEA-HOUSE WAITRESS BESIDE THE
SUMIDA RIVER (_Gookin Collection_) 223
29. KIYONAGA: YOSHITSUNE SERENADING THE LADY JORURIHIME
(_Spaulding Collection_) 227
30. KIYONAGA: GEISHA WITH SERVANT CARRYING LUTE-BOX 231
KIYONAGA: WOMAN PAINTING HER EYEBROWS 231
31. SHUNCHO: GROUP AT A TEMPLE GATE (_Mansfield Collection_) 235
32. SHUNCHO: TWO LADIES UNDER UMBRELLA 239
SHUNCHO: THE COURTESAN HANA-ŌJI; THE SUMIDA RIVER SEEN
THROUGH THE WINDOW 239
33. SHUNCHO: TWO LADIES IN A BOAT ON THE SUMIDA RIVER 243
YEISHO: TWO COURTESANS AFTER THE BATH 243
34. KITAO MASANOBU: THE CUCKOO (_Spaulding Collection_) 251
35. YEISHI: THREE LADIES BY THE SEASHORE 267
36. YEISHI: LADY WITH TOBACCO-PIPE 271
37. YEISHI: INTERIOR OPENING ON TO THE SEASHORE
(_Metzgar Collection_) 275
38. UTAMARO: OKITA OF NANIWAYA, A TEA-HOUSE WAITRESS
(_Chandler Collection_) 283
39. UTAMARO: TWO COURTESANS 287
40. UTAMARO: WOMAN SEATED ON A VERANDA 291
41. UTAMARO: A YOUTHFUL PRINCE AND LADIES 295
42. SHARAKU: THE ACTOR ARASHI RYUZŌ IN THE RÔLE OF ONE
OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN (_Spaulding Collection_) 301
43. SHARAKU: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA DANJURO IN THE RÔLE OF MORONAO 309
44. SHARAKU: THE ACTOR KOSAGAWA TSUNEYO AS A WOMAN IN
THE DRAMA OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONIN (_Ainsworth Collection_) 313
45. CHOKI: COURTESAN AND ATTENDANT 321
SHUNMAN: TWO LADIES UNDER A MAPLE-TREE 321
46. CHOKI: A COURTESAN AND HER LOVER 325
CHOKI: A GEISHA AND HER SERVANT CARRYING LUTE-BOX 325
47. TOYOKUNI: LADIES AND CHERRY BLOSSOMS IN THE WIND
(_Metzgar Collection_) 333
48. TOYOHIRO: A DAIMYO'S KITE-PARTY 341
49. HOKUSAI: FUJI, SEEN ACROSS THE TAMA RIVER, PROVINCE OF MUSASHI 361
50. HOKUSAI: FUJI, SEEN FROM THE PASS OF MISHIMA, PROVINCE OF KAHI 367
51. HOKUSAI: THE MONKEY BRIDGE; TWILIGHT AND RISING MOON 371
52. HIROSHIGE: HOMING GEESE AT KATADA; TWILIGHT 377
53. HIROSHIGE: THE SEVEN RI FERRY, KUWANA, AT THE MOUTH
OF THE KISO RIVER; SUNSET 383
54. HIROSHIGE: THE VILLAGE OF THE FUJI KAWA; EVENING SNOW 387
55. HIROSHIGE: THE OMMAYA EMBANKMENT, ON THE SUMIDA RIVER
AT ASAKUSA; EVENING 391
56. HIROSHIGE: BIRD AND FLOWERS 395
GLOSSARY
BENI.--A delicate pink or red pigment of vegetable origin.
BENI-YE.--A print in which _beni_ is the chief colour used. The term
is generally employed to describe all those two-colour prints which
immediately preceded the invention of polychrome printing.
CHUBAN.--A vertical print, size about 11 × 8, sometimes called the
"medium size" sheet.
DIPTYCH.--A composition consisting of two sheets.
GAUFFRAGE.--Printing by pressure alone, without the use of a
pigment, producing an embossed effect on the paper.
HASHIRA-YE.--A very tall narrow print, size about 28 × 5, used to
hang on the wooden pillars of a Japanese house; a pillar-print.
HASHIRAKAKE.--See _hashira-ye_.
HOSO-YE.--A small vertical print, size about 12 × 6.
KAKEMONO.--A painting mounted on a margin of brocade; hung by its
top when in use, and rolled up when not in use.
KAKEMONO-YE.--A very tall wide print, size about 28 × 10.
KEY-BLOCK.--The engraved wooden plate from which the black outlines
of the print were produced.
KIRA-YE.--A print with mica background.
KOBAN.--A vertical print slightly smaller than the _Chuban_ (q.v.).
KURENAI-YE.--A hand-coloured print in which _beni_ is chiefly used.
MON.--The heraldic insignia used by actors and others as
coat-of-arms; generally worn on their sleeves.
NAGAYE.--See _hashira-ye_.
NISHIKI-YE.--Brocade picture--a term used at first to describe the
brilliant colour-inventions of Harunobu, but now loosely applied to
all polychrome prints.
OBAN.--A large vertical print, about 15 × 10--the normal full-size
upright sheet.
OTSU-YE.--A rough broadsheet painting, of small size, on paper; the
precursor of the print.
PENTAPTYCH.--A composition consisting of five sheets.
PILLAR-PRINT.--See _hashira-ye_.
SUMI.--Black Chinese ink.
SUMI-YE.--A print in black and white only.
SURIMONO.--A print, generally of small size and on thick soft paper,
intended as a festival greeting or memento of some social occasion.
TAN.--A brick-red or orange colour, consisting of red oxide of lead.
TAN-YE.--A print in which _tan_ is the only or chief colour used.
Such prints, in which the _tan_ was applied by hand, were among the
earliest productions.
TRIPTYCH.--A composition consisting of three sheets.
UCHIWA-YE.--A print in the shape of a fan.
URUSHI.--Lacquer.
URUSHI-YE.--A print in which lacquer is used to heighten the colour.
The term is generally employed to describe only the early
hand-coloured prints in which lacquer, colours, and metallic dust
were applied to the printed black outline.
YOKOYE.--A large horizontal print, about 10 × 15--the normal
full-size landscape sheet.
I
PRELIMINARY
SURVEY
THE GENERAL NATURE
OF JAPANESE PRINTS
GROWTH OF INTEREST
IN THEM
THE TECHNIQUE OF
THEIR PRODUCTION
THEIR ÆSTHETIC
CHARACTERISTICS
Bring forth, my friend, these faded sheets
Whose charm our laboured utterance flies.
Perhaps our later search repeats
The groping of those scholars' eyes
Who, ere the dawned Renaissant day,
With duskèd sight and doubtful hand,
Bent o'er the pages of some grey
Greek text they could not understand;
Drawn by the sense that there concealed
Lay key to spacious realms unknown;
Held by the need that be revealed
Forgotten worlds to light their own.
CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARY SURVEY
The general nature of Japanese prints--Growth of interest in
them--The technique of their production--Their æsthetic
characteristics.
That sublimated pleasure which is the seal of all the arts reaches its
purest condition when evoked by a work in which the æsthetic quality is
not too closely mingled with the every-day human. Poetry, because of its
close human ties, is to a certain extent a corrupt art; its medium is
that base speech which we use for communicating information, and few are
the readers whose minds can absolve words from the work-a-day obligation
of conveying, first of all, mere tidings. Music, on the other hand,
employing a medium wholly sacred to its own uses, starts with no such
handicap; its succession of notes awakens in the listener no expectation
of an eventual body of facts to carry home. Between the two extremes lie
the graphic arts. These are perhaps most fortunate when they deal with
material not familiar to the spectator, for it is then that he most
readily accepts them as designs and harmonies, without looking to them
for a literal record of things only too well known to him.
The graphic art of an alien race has therefore an initial strength of
purely æsthetic appeal that a native art often lacks. It moves free from
the demands with which unconsciously we approach the art of our own
people. It stands as an undiscovered world, of which nothing can
logically be expected. The spectator who turns to it at all must come
prepared to take it on its own terms. If it allures him, it will do so
by virtue of those qualities of harmony, rhythm, and vision which in
these strange surroundings are more perceptible to him than in the art
of his own race, where so many adventitious associations operate to
distract him. Like a man whom Mayfair bewilders with its fashions, he
may find that fundamental verity, that humanity which he seeks only
among the Gipsy beggars.
Perhaps this theory best explains the impulse that has of late led many
lovers of beauty to turn to the arts of Persia, China, and Japan for
their keenest pleasure. Here, in unfamiliar environment, the fundamental
powers of design stand forth free. Here the beautiful is discoverable
for its own sake, liberated from the oppression of utility.
Toward Japan this impulse has in our own day been strongly directed. The
handicrafts of the Japanese people have charmed the Western world,
possibly to an undue extent. On the other hand, the great classical
schools of Japanese painting have unfortunately been difficult of
access. But between the two, half craft and half art, lies the Japanese
colour-print--a finer product than mere dexterous artizan work, and more
accessible than the paintings of the classic masters. In the print many
a Western mind has found its clearest intimation of the universal
principles of beauty.
During a period of a little more than a hundred years, roughly delimited
by 1742 and 1858, there were produced in Japan large numbers of
wood-engravings, printed in colours; these have of late come to occupy
an almost unique place in the esteem of European art-lovers. So great is
the importance now attached to these works that the Japanese public of
earlier days, for whose delectation they were designed, would be
astounded could they witness it. Just as obscure Greek potters moulded
for common use vases that are to-day treasured in the museums as
paradigms of beauty, so the coloured broadsheets, whose immediate
purpose was to give pleasure to the crowds of the Japanese capital, have
taken in the course of years a distinguished rank among the beautiful
things of all time.
The day is passing when the love of these sheets can be looked upon as
the badge of a cult, the secret delight of far-searching worshippers of
the strange and exotic. Even did the collector desire, he could not long
hide this light under a bushel; and the Japanese print is swiftly
becoming a general treasure. This is proper and natural. An
understanding of the origin of this form of art makes its present
popularity in Europe seem like the felicitous rounding of a circle begun
on the other side of the world.
It was in Yedo, the teeming capital of Japan, that the art of the
colour-print flourished; and the patron sought by the artists was
primarily the common man. No art more purely national or more
definitely popular and exoterical in its inception has ever existed. The
subjects of the prints are alone enough to make this fact evident. In
them appear the forms and faces of the popular actors in their admired
rôles, fashionable courtesans decked in all the splendour of their
unhappy but far-famed days and nights, legendary heroes, dancers,
wrestlers, and popular entertainers. In the matter of landscape, the
scenes shown are the festival-crowded temples of Yedo, the sunlit
tea-gardens and gay midnight boating-parties of the Sumida River, the
great highroads of national travel, the famous spots of popular
recreation. Only rarely are there episodes from aristocratic life; and
the occasional occurrence of these has precisely the significance of a
photograph of a royal house-party shown in a penny paper. The Yoshiwara,
as the licensed quarter of Yedo is called, appears in these prints more
often than do the garden-parties of noble ladies; the vulgar theatre is
shown, but not the classic Nō drama of the aristocracy; it is a Japanese
Montmartre, not a Japanese Faubourg St. Germain, that is revealed. The
artist's sense of beauty subdues these riotous pleasures of the populace
to the severe demands of a beautiful pattern; but it is a whimsical
vulgar world, a world of the people, a world of passing gaiety, that he
portrays.
The purposes of these pictures were various. "To some extent," says Mr.
Frederick W. Gookin, "they were used as advertisements. Incidentally
they served as fashion plates. Some were regularly published and sold
in shops. Others were designed expressly upon orders from patrons, to
whom the entire edition, sometimes a very small one, was delivered. The
number struck from any block or set of blocks varied widely. Of the more
popular prints many editions were printed, each one, as might be
expected, inferior to those that preceded it.... Most of the prints were
sold at the time of publication for a few _sen_. The finer ones brought
relatively higher prices, and such prints as the great triptychs and
still larger compositions by Kiyonaga, Yeishi, Toyokuni, Utamaro, and
other leading artists could never have been very cheap. In general,
however, the price was small, and they were regarded as ephemeral
things. Many were used to ornament the small screens that served to
protect kitchen fires from the wind, and in this use were inevitably
soiled and browned by smoke. Others, mounted upon the sliding partitions
of the houses, perished in the fires by which the Japanese cities have
been devastated; or, if in houses that chanced safely to run the
gauntlet of fires, typhoons, cloudbursts, and other mishaps, their
colours faded, and their surfaces were rubbed until little more than dim
outlines were left."
The plebeian origin of the prints explains why the cultivated Japanese
have not, as a rule, looked upon them with much enthusiasm. Only now,
when the greatest print treasures have gone out of Japan, are a few
Japanese collectors beginning to buy back at high prices works which
they allowed to leave the country for a song. The admiration of Europe
and America has awakened them to a realization of the distinction of
the prints, in spite of the undistinguished nature of their subjects;
and the day will come when the Japanese themselves will be the most
formidable bidders at the sales of great Western collections.
The interest of Western collectors in Japanese prints is of
comparatively recent origin. As late as 1861 it was possible for a
writer on Japan to regard them with blank indifference. There is a rare
little book by Captain Sherard Osborne, printed in that year in London,
called "Japanese Fragments." It contains six hand-coloured reproductions
of prints and a number of uncoloured cuts, all from prints which Captain
Osborne had purchased in Japan. In the following words he makes
reference to Hiroshige, who is now generally ranked as one of the
supreme landscape artists of all time: "Even the humble artists of that
land have become votaries of the beautiful, and in such efforts as the
one annexed strive to do justice to the scenery. Their appreciation of
the picturesque is far in advance, good souls, of their power of pencil,
but our embryo Turner (i.e. Hiroshige) has striven hard ..." etc. In
1861, perhaps, few people would have believed it possible that to-day
many serious judges might question whether any product of European art
has ever matched the designs of these "humble artists."
The earliest of European collectors was, according to Mr. Edward F.
Strange, a certain M. Isaac Titsingh, who died in Paris in 1812. M.
Titsingh had for fourteen years served the Dutch East India Company in
Nagasaki; and among his effects were "nine engravings printed in
colours." Doubtless he had acquired them merely as curiosities, without
any perception of their artistic importance. Mr. Strange notes that four
prints were reproduced in Oliphant's "Account of the Mission of Lord
Elgin to China and Japan" (1859); and, as we have seen, Osborne devoted
some desultory attention to prints in 1861. These are, perhaps, the
chief evidences of early European interest.
Subsequently such events as the International Exhibition in London,
1862, the Paris Exposition of 1867 and that of 1878, and the Centennial
Exhibition in Philadelphia, 1876, served to bring a few prints to the
notice of Western amateurs. Particularly in Paris was intense interest
in them aroused among painters and literary men. From 1889 to 1891, S.
Bing was bringing out in Paris his magazine _Le Japon Artistique_, whose
pages contain many fine reproductions of notable prints. In 1891, Edmond
de Goncourt issued his volume on Utamaro. Other books followed rapidly.
In 1895, Professor Anderson issued his small but important monograph on
"Japanese Wood Engraving." In 1896, Fenollosa's epoch-making catalogue,
"Masters of Ukioye," was published in New York, establishing for the
first time the foundations of all our present knowledge of this field,
and pronouncing judgments from which the consensus of later opinion has,
in the main, never departed. The same year brought forth de Goncourt's
"Hokusai." Mr. Strange's "Japanese Colour Prints" appeared in 1897. In
the same year, Von Seidlitz issued his "Geschichte des japanischen
Farbenholzschnittes" (published in England as "A History of Japanese
Colour Prints" in 1900), which remains to-day the most comprehensive and
accurate single treatise on the subject.
Of recent years, the growth of interest and the increase of books has
been rapid. Eager collectors have scoured the world to bring to light
new masterpieces; Japan has been ransacked so thoroughly that the
would-be purchaser can perhaps more wisely go to London or Paris or New
York than to Tokyo or Kyoto in his search for prizes; and the places of
honour accorded these sheets in the portfolios of discriminating
collectors and great museums leaves no doubt as to the esteem with which
they are regarded. Values have been multiplied by tens and hundreds, so
that to-day the supreme rarities among prints are beyond the reach of
the ordinary purchaser.
All this is due neither to accident nor to any strange freak of
whimsical tastes. It has come about because the prints are in fact
artistic treasures. Commonplace and trivial as the subjects of most of
them are, they rise by virtue of the quality of their execution to a
very high point--masterpieces of composition, triumphs of colour,
monuments of the power of human genius to impose its sense of rhythm,
form, and harmony on the appearances of the seen world.
But as is true in the case of any art, the content of the colour-prints
is not to be grasped at a first glance by the casual passer-by.
Familiarity with the aims selected, the conventions employed, and the
achievements possible is necessary before the specific charm of these
works makes itself manifest. It is the experience of most print-lovers
that, starting with perhaps a mere casual liking for a certain landscape
design, they progress gradually, in the course of years, to an
unmeasured delight in the whole body of prints, and eventually find in
them a unique source of repose and exaltation.
There are certain peculiarities, common not only to prints but to
Japanese art as a whole, that require a special effort of the Western
mind before they become acceptable. The first and most vital of these is
the absence of realism. "Throughout the course of Asian painting,"
writes Mr. Laurence Binyon, "the idea that art is the imitation of
Nature is unknown, or known only as a despised and fugitive heresy.... A
Chinese critic of the sixth century, who was also an artist, published a
theory of æsthetic principles which became a classic and received
universal acceptance, expressing as it did the deeply rooted instincts
of the race. In this theory, it is rhythm that holds the paramount
place; not, be it observed, imitation of Nature, or fidelity to Nature,
which the general instinct of the Western races makes the root-concern
of art. In this theory every work of art is thought of as an incarnation
of the genius of rhythm manifesting the living spirit of things with a
clearer beauty and intenser power than the gross impediments of complex
matter allow to be transmitted to our senses in the visible world around
us. A picture is conceived as a sort of apparition from a more real
world of essential life."
It will, therefore, be vain to expect in Japanese designs any production
that will astonish the spectator by its life-likeness, its fidelity to
an actual scene. Eastern art has never attempted to compete with the
work of photography. Its function is the function which the European
public grants to poets but not always to painters--the seeking out of
subtle and invisible relations in things, the perception of harmonies
and rhythms not heard by the common ear, the interpretation of life in
terms of a finer and more beautiful order than practical life has ever
known.
All Asian art has recognized for centuries the fact that vision and
imagination are the faculties by which the painter as well as the poet
must grapple with reality. In the words of Mr. Binyon once more--"It is
always the essential character and genius of the element that is sought
for and insisted on: the weight and mass of water falling, the sinuous,
swift curves of a stream evading obstacles in its way, the burst of foam
against a rock, the toppling crest of a slowly arching billow; and all
in a rhythm of pure lines. But the same principles, the same treatment,
are applied to other subjects. If it be a hermit sage in his mountain
retreat, the artist's efforts will be concentrated on the expression,
not only in the sage's features, but in his whole form, of the rapt
intensity of contemplation; toward this effect every line of drapery and
of surrounding rock or tree will conspire, by force of repetition or of
contrast. If it be a warrior in action, the artist will ensure that we
feel the tension of nerve, the heat of blood in the muscles, the
watchfulness of the eye, the fury of determination. That birds shall be
seen to be, above all things, winged creatures rejoicing in their
flight; that flowers shall be, above all things, sensitive blossoms
unfolding on pliant, up-growing stems; that the tiger shall be an
embodiment of force, boundless in capacity for spring and fury--this is
the ceaseless aim of these artists, from which no splendour of colour,
no richness of texture, no accident of shape diverts them. The more to
concentrate on this seizure of the inherent life in what they draw, they
will obliterate or ignore at will half or all of the surrounding objects
with which the Western painter feels bound to fill his background. By
isolation and the mere use of empty space they will give to a clump of
narcissus by a rock, or a solitary quail, or a mallow plant quivering in
the wind, a sense of grandeur and a hint of the infinity of life."
This almost symbolic quality is the chief element of the pleasure to be
derived from Japanese art. Japanese designs are metaphors; they depict
not any object, but remote and greater powers to which the object is
related. Often the artist produces his effect by the exaggeration of
certain aspects, or by expressing particular qualities in the terms of
some kindred thing. If his subject happens to be an actor in some great
and tragic rôle, he will not hesitate to prolong the lines of the
drapery unconscionably, to give the effect of solemn dignity, slow
movement, and monumental isolation. Westerners may smile at the
distortion of such a figure; but they must acknowledge that an
atmosphere of lofty and special destiny surrounds the form, precisely
because the artist has dared to use these devices. The Japanese artist
will draw a woman as if she were a lily, a man as if he were a tempest,
a tree as if it were a writhing snake, a mountain as if it were a
towering giant. This is the very essence of poetical imagination; and
the result of it is to endow a picture with obscure suggestions and
overtones of infinite power. Symbols of existence beyond themselves,
these designs are charged with an almost mystical command upon the
emotions of the spectator. Western art has employed such a method
comparatively little in painting. In poetry it appears frequently. The
poet, when he wishes to convey the impression of a beautiful woman, does
not set out her features and her stature and all the details of her
aspect. He tries to awaken some realization of her by a bold and
fantastic leap of the imagination straight to the heart of the
matter--he makes her a perfume, a light, a music, a memory of goddesses.
The prosaic mind will never greatly care for work produced in accordance
with this principle; the conventions will seem distortions, the
imaginative generalizations will seem inaccuracies, and the transcending
of reality to shape a more universal and significant statement will
appear nothing more than ineptitude in grappling with fact. But to the
poetical mind, all these things will come with a unique and irresistible
fascination; and far more delightful than the novelty and interest of
the scenes represented will be the manner of their representation. As
one enters into the spirit of these paintings and prints, it is as if
one saw the world from a new angle, or had acquired the power to
assemble into new intellectual combinations those sensory impressions
which our own art has taught us to combine in a manner now grown a
little dull and stereotyped.
Japanese art has certain conventions that are highly individual. Some of
these may trouble and repel the Western eye. For example, the Japanese
artist draws his figures without shadows, and makes no attempt to
represent the play of light and shade over them. The scene is painted as
if in a clear, cold vacuum, where the diffusion of illumination is
almost perfectly uniform. In the Japanese view, a shadow is something
ephemeral and transitory--a mere accident and illusion, and as such
unworthy of perpetuation in art. The pattern of the object itself, freed
from this momentary tyranny, should be the sole theme of the artist.
Similarly, high-lights or chiaroscuro are not attempted; nor is
modelling by means of these employed. A universal flatness is the
result--a result deliberately aimed at.
Most of the European ideas of perspective are ignored in these works. In
accordance with the ancient Chinese canon--based upon an imaginative and
not upon a visual perception--the linear perspective of the Japanese
exactly reverses that of Western painting. In their system, parallel
lines converge as they approach the spectator. Different planes of
distance may be suggested merely by placing the remote plane higher up
in the picture; and sometimes no attempt is made to diminish the size
of the figures in the upper plane. These devices may seem very naïve to
the European. But in aerial perspective--the power to give to objects a
colouring appropriate to their relative distance from the eye--the
Japanese indisputably employ the utmost subtlety. When these artists
differ from European custom, it is not because of ignorance, but because
their way seems to them the more expressive--the better adapted to the
creation of those peculiar impressions of beauty which are their aim.
The longer one examines the products of these alien theories of drawing,
the less certain one is likely to be of the superiority of our more
scientific Western conventions.
In all Japanese art, the element of pure brushwork is of greater
importance than in the art of Europe. The people, trained from childhood
in the handling of the brush as a pencil for the drawing of the complex
forms of written characters, acquire a facility and accuracy unknown in
other lands. Fine caligraphy is esteemed an art in itself. And the
Japanese painter, whose life is devoted to further exercises with the
brush, may achieve a unique degree of skill. His power to sweep, guide,
and modulate the width and intensity of his line is developed into a
sixth sense. He can make his brush-stroke smooth-flowing as a
violin-note, or splintered as a broken branch, or wavering like the flow
of a river, or coldly hard and sharp as flint; sometimes it has the edge
of a knife; at other times it dies away into imperceptible gradations;
its blacks are dazzling in their intensity, its greys are like veils of
mist. The mystery of the expression of pure personality in art is
nowhere more strikingly exemplified than here. To the accustomed eye the
line-work of the Japanese artist is vibrant with intimate connection
between hand and spirit. This command of the brush, so perfect that the
passion of the artist's soul flows out through it, is one of the vital
characteristics of Japanese painting.
The colour-print is one small and peculiar division of the larger field
of Japanese pictorial design; besides being subject to the general laws
of Japanese æsthetics, it is distinguished by certain special
characteristics that grow out of the nature of the technique employed.
Of this technique, Mr. F. W. Gookin gives an illuminating exposition:--
"None but the most primitive methods--or what from our point of view may
seem such--were employed. The most wonderful among all the prints is but
a 'rubbing' or impression taken by hand from wood blocks. The artist
having drawn the design with the point of a brush in outline upon thin
paper, it was handed over to the engraver, who began his part of the
work by pasting the design face downward upon a flat block of wood,
usually cherry, sawn plank-wise as in the case of the blocks used by
European wood-engravers in the time of Dürer. The paper was then
carefully scraped at the back until the design showed through distinctly
in every part. Next, the wood was carefully cut away, leaving the lines
in relief, care being taken to preserve faithfully every feature of the
brush strokes with which the drawing was executed. A number of
impressions were then taken in Chinese ink from this 'key block' and
handed to the artist to fill in with colour. This ingenious plan, which
is manifestly an outgrowth of the early custom of colouring the
ink-prints (sumi-ē) by hand, and which perhaps would never have been
thought of had not the colour itself been an afterthought, enabled the
artist to try many experiments in colour arrangement with a minimum
amount of labour. The colour scheme and ornamentation of the surfaces
having been determined, the engraver made as many subsidiary blocks as
were required, the parts meant to take the colour being left raised and
the rest cut away. Accurate register was secured by the simplest of
devices. A right-angled mark engraved at the lower right-hand corner of
the original block, and a straight mark in exact line with its lower arm
at the left, were repeated upon each subsequent block, and in printing,
the sheets were laid down so that their lower and right-hand edges
corresponded with the marks so made. The defective register which may be
observed in many prints was caused by unequal shrinking or swelling of
the blocks. In consequence of this, late impressions are often inferior
to the early ones, even though printed with the same care, and from
blocks that had worn very little. The alignment will usually be found to
be exact upon one side of the print, but to get further out of register
as the other side is approached.
"The printing was done on moist paper with Chinese ink and colour
applied to the blocks with flat brushes. A little rice paste was usually
mixed with the pigments to keep them from running, and to increase
their brightness. Sometimes dry rice flour was dusted over the blocks
after they were charged. To this method of charging the blocks much of
the beauty of the result may be attributed. The colour could be
modified, graded, or changed at will, the blocks covered entirely or
partially. Hard, mechanical accuracy was avoided. Impressions differed
even when the printer's aim was uniformity. Sometimes in inking the 'key
block,' which was usually the last one impressed, some of the lines
would fail to receive the pigment, or would be overcharged. This was
especially liable to happen when the blocks were worn and the edges of
the lines became rounded. A little more or a little less pigment
sometimes made a decided difference in the tone of the print, and, it
may be noted, has not infrequently determined the nature and extent of
the discoloration wrought by time.
"In printing, a sheet of paper was laid upon the block and the printer
rubbed off the impression, using for the purpose a kind of pad called a
baren. This was applied to the back of the paper and manipulated with a
circular movement of the hand. By varying the degree of pressure the
colour could be forced deep into the paper, or left upon the outer
fibres only, so that the whiteness of those below the surface would
shine through, giving the peculiar effect of light which is seen at its
best in some of the surimono (prints designed for distribution at New
Year's or other particular occasion) by Hokusai. Uninked blocks were
used for embossing portions of the designs. The skill of the printer was
a large factor in producing the best results. Even the brilliancy of
the colour resulted largely from his manipulations of the pigments and
various little tricks in their application. The first impressions were
not the best, some forty or fifty having to be pulled before the blocks
would take the colour properly. Many kinds of paper were used. For the
best of the old prints it was thick, spongy in texture, and of an almost
ivory tone. The finest specimens were printed under the direct personal
supervision of the artists who designed them. Every detail was looked
after with the utmost care. No pains were spared in mixing the tints, in
charging the blocks, in laying on the paper so as to secure perfect
register, in regulating the pressure so as to get the best possible
impressions. Experiments were often tried by varying the colour schemes.
Prints of important series, as for example Hokusai's famous 'Thirty-six
Views of Fuji,' are met with in widely divergent colourings."
The results produced by this technique, as it was employed in the great
period of the art, have no parallel. When Dürer, in the fifteenth
century, brought wood and steel engraving to such brilliant perfection,
he determined the future history of European engraving, fixing the line
of greatest development in the region of black-and-white, where, except
for sporadic excursions of debatable merit, it has continued ever since.
Fortunately, in Japan, colour and line did not part company, but in
combination progressed toward a unique triumph.
A print produced by this technique is simply a sheet of paper upon
which are impressed, by means of hand-charged wood blocks, a series of
patches of colour that combine into a design. In general, each of these
patches is flat and unshaded; its edges are sharp, definite, bounded by
a line as distinct as the line of the lead used in stained glass. In the
print, as in the stained-glass window, only major lines and important
colour-masses can be shown; thus elimination of the incidental and
selection of what is vital are imperatively demanded of the designer.
Salient curves and expressive outlines are the essential requisite. One
reason why these prints seem classic is that they are purged of the
thousand unimportant and meaningless gradations of tone that are easy to
use in a painting and impossible here. Singular purity and loftiness of
effect is the result, together with a certain abstract aloofness from
reality that has a high æsthetic value.
Into the drawing of these few lines, and into the construction of these
few flat colour-spaces, went all the artist's sense of proportion and
rhythm, grace and dignity, movement and tone. On the flat wall of his
printed sheet he devised a pattern that should weave, out of figures and
objects, a decorative design upon whose harmonious mosaic the eye would
willingly linger. There he played his music to allure and beguile and
absorb the spectator.
Like his fellow-painters of all Asia, the print-designer did not feel
that literal accuracy greatly concerned him. If the figures moved with a
stately godlike grace in rhythmic procession, what matter if they were
taller or shorter than real beings? If their faces were expressive of a
noble calm or a sublime fury, why ask for a detailed mirroring of a real
face? If the landscape was beautiful, was it important that the real
scene could never look exactly thus?
As an example of the curious conventions that dominate this art, the
observer will note the way in which heads are drawn by these artists.
With very rare exceptions, the angle from which all the heads are seen
is the same. In the print, as in the Egyptian wall-carvings, the head is
held in a poise dictated by a traditional formula. The face is turned
half-way between profile and full-face; the nose approaches but does not
intersect the line of the cheek; the outline of the nose is shown, and
also the broad sweep of the brow, while at the same time both eyes are
visible. For two centuries, with only occasional variations, this
formula for drawing the face persisted; and in the submission to this
wisely chosen type--admirably adapted as it was to exhibit most
expressively the whole map of the features--is revealed something of
that willingness to accept discipline, style, and conventionalization
which in these artists went side by side with so much originality.
A magic world--a pure creation of the imagination in its search for
beauty! This convention in the drawing of the faces has much to do with
the unreal quality we find there. Something in the repetition and
uniformity of the heads produces a delicate visionary impression, a
trance-like mood--as does the rhythm of poetry or music. Under its
spell the emotion of the spectator comes forth free from its daily
bonds and preoccupations, in the liberation that only art can give.
To these regions of pure æsthetic experience the amateur turns with
delight--not only as an escape from practical life, but as an escape
from much that is known to the Western world as art. The childish mind
loves pictures that tell a story; but the more sophisticated
intelligence goes to a work of art for those elements which lie far
beyond the region of episodic narration--elements that are allied to the
principles of geometry, the laws of motion, the excursions of pure
music, the visions of religious faith. Though these manifestations are
difficult to correlate, they all arise from one fountainhead; and the
best of the Japanese prints lie very close to the source of the
stream.
II
CONDITIONS
PRECEDING THE RISE
OF PRINT-DESIGNING:
THE BIRTH OF
THE UKIOYE SCHOOL