THE SECOND PERIOD: THE EARLY POLYCHROME MASTERS
FROM THE INVENTION OF POLYCHROME PRINTING TO THE RETIREMENT OF
SHUNSHO (1764-80)
The transition from primitive to sophisticated art is very like the
progression of a race from its heroic youth to its elaborately gifted
maturity. Life grows more complex, the material riches and the machinery
of living become more diversified; but it is still to the early days
that one looks for the strongest development of personality and the most
daring achievement in the face of great difficulties. Sophistication, in
the history of an art as of a race, brings refinements and nuances
unknown to the pioneers; but it cannot intensify and may often encumber
the spiritual force and essential genius of the creators. The great
individuals of the earlier time developed all that was essential as far
as it could be developed; the later enlargement of scope is in the
direction of the material and the accidental. In the Primitives we find
the full stature of the spirit; in the art of later days, with all its
parade of processes, we shall hardly find more.
In the First Period the initial impulse of print-designing manifested
itself in work that was powerful and beautiful, but of simple technique.
In the Second Period the barriers that confined the Primitives were
swept away by new possibilities of expression. The three-colour prints
gave place to prints in which an unlimited number of blocks could be
employed; and this enlargement of the artist's resources produced a new
and splendid blossoming. In this Second Period the art seemed to
hesitate midway between the forces of the primitive inspiration, which
was one of pure and stately decoration, and the more naturalistic forces
that were making ready for the Third Period, with its fuller rendering
of the lights and spaces of life. The presence of both groups of forces
makes this Second Period possibly the most interesting of all.
The specific characteristics of the period are sharply marked. They
consist, first of all, in technical advances--the mastery of full-colour
printing and the realization through this process of the marvellous
colour-dreams of the great masters. But beyond the technical advances
there is a change in spiritual attitude; the artist, heretofore content
to create a pure decoration, a masterful mosaic that expressed his
æsthetic ideals, now begins to adopt a more personal attitude in his
treatment of the forces and spectacles of daily existence. True, he
disposes these elements arbitrarily; the picture he creates is a world
of imagination; but as compared with the Primitives, he tells us more
of his experience and is closer to our own. Even his most fanciful
designs bring to us some remote and abstract echo of known voices. Lyric
joy speaks through Harunobu, dramatic terror through Shunsho, splendour
through Koriusai, mystery through Buncho; and though the medium be a
symbol, and its connection with reality as remote as that of music, yet
by the vividness of the emotion evoked in us we may judge of the
definiteness of the artist's motive, and realize through colour and line
an intangible human voice.
The stream of art history here flowed in two main channels. One was the
Katsukawa School, headed by Shunsho, which like the older Torii School
devoted itself chiefly to the representation of actors. The other was
the school of Harunobu, whose gracious designs of women were the most
novel productions of the period. A third school was founded by Toyoharu
and a fourth by Shigemasa; but the real importance of these two schools
developed only in a later epoch. During this period the great Torii
School may be said to have remained dormant; it was to awaken in the
Third Period to a new splendour in Kiyonaga.
There is a passage from a contemporary record that throws light on the
temper of the people and the artists at this time. I have freely
translated it, with the courteous permission of Dr. Julius Kurth
(Kurth's "Harunobu," R. Piper & Co., Munich), from his German rendering
of a unique manuscript book in his possession, which appears to have
been written by the poet Yukura Sanjin, and illustrated by Harunobu in
1769. The book is a whimsical, devil-may-care production of the lightest
sort; but from its pages the glitter and surge and laughter of Yedo
holiday life rise with a far-away yet curiously distinct echo.
AN EXTRACT FROM "THE STORY OF THE HONEY-SWEETMEAT VENDOR, DOHEI."
"Dohei hails from Oshu. Upon his head he wears a cap; and his mouth
sends up a song when in the Capital of the East he vends his
honey-sweetmeats. His cape is of tiger-skin, and bears a suspicious
resemblance to the loin-apron of the Devil. His umbrella is of
scarlet crêpe, and recalls the plumed spears of the festival-guards.
As his coat of arms he chose a Devil's head and a skeleton; upon his
outer robe he wrote the sign, 'Dohei, Dohei.' While you buy his
honey-sweetmeats, he sings a song of a new style, and ends it with
the refrain, 'Dohei, Dohei!' Therefore the name of Dohei has become
known everywhere. Even the smallest children all sing this song in
chorus over and over a thousand times. If he sells his
honey-sweetmeats in the Eastern part of the city, the people in the
Western streets are furious; if he sells them in the Southern
quarter, the people in the Northern streets are furious. For then
they want to know why he came to them so late.
"If on the three hundred and sixty days of the year one goes, day in
and day out, through all the eight hundred and eight streets, one
finds a tavern at every five paces; and it is as if this city had
been changed into a pond of rice-wine. One cannot take ten steps
without coming upon a shop in which whole mountains of rice-cakes
and other confections are offered. If one hears in the distance an
almost heavenly music, it is the song of a lady to the strum of a
guitar. If there is a rattling like peals of thunder, it is the
ox-carts on the side streets. People with coiffures shaped like the
leaf of the ginko-tree roll up their outer robes and jostle shoulder
to shoulder. Ladies with girdles of spun gold and long-sleeved
girlish dresses sway their hips; and their garments, coloured like
the graining of wood, flow as do torrents of Spring. Their hats of
green paper resemble a clump of trees in Summer. And as they wander
along, the hems of their robes flutter open, and the blood-red silk
linings gleam like maple foliage--though it is not yet Autumn! The
festive white material of their inner robes shines like snow--though
it is not yet Winter! If it were, they would be muffled to their
very noses with crêpe veils. They have arranged their hair as if
surmounted by a cap, like tiers of little chrysanthemums. At their
thighs sparkle tobacco-wallets ornamented with silver and gold.
"The black-and-white prints of earlier days are antiquated now, and
the only thing people care for is the newly-devised gorgeousness of
the Eastern Brocade Pictures. Musical plays are no longer to be
seen; instead, you go to the music-girls and the dancing-girls in
the taverns. The young people want lively entertainment, and visit
the wine-shops. Out of a vase in which, according to the ancient
custom, flowers were formerly placed, lots are now drawn to fix
upon the day for a party; while according to the fashionable
arrangement of flowers in the hanging jars, the flowers look like
arrows from a bow. The vendors of fritters call out, 'Celebrated
Pasties! Celebrated Pasties!' and boast upon the brilliant paper
signs of the just-opened booths, 'Headquarters! Headquarters!'
Handkerchiefs at four coppers apiece hang at the loins of the
servants of Samurais. The song of the New Year's dancers rings out
among people who hitherto had sung only folk-songs. The caligraphist
studies the Nagao style; the poet learns by heart the poems of the
Chinese epoch, and the minstrel the style of the Manyo anthology. To
obtain new remedies for his stock the doctor draws upon the old
school for all kinds of herbs, and cures eyes and noses with
them--just as pumpkins are perfected into melons. Often the priest
of Buddha wanders, an object of derision, through the streets in the
darkness of night in search of a girl. To be sure, he is a very
learned man; but what leads more easily to dangerous labyrinths than
love?
"The theatres in the Sakai Street give performances continuously.
The reconstruction of the Yoshiwara is to be finished in a few days,
and people come and go there only to drink and to sing. They draw
water from the floods of the Sumida River, but it will not be
drained dry! They view again and again the flowers of the Asuka
River, but these also are without end! The Shenshuraku Theatre
enlivens the public, and upon the Banzairaku stage man's life is
idealized. So all are happy--like green firs that become thicker
and thicker and put forth new needles."
Into this crowded world of exuberant life came Harunobu and his
contemporaries--into this underworld, if you will, but an underworld
more beautiful and sun-drenched than any known to our great Western
cities. Instead of the bar in the slum they had the tea-house on the
river-bank; instead of the prize-fight they had the cherry festival; for
them, vice put on robes of a certain stately beauty; their stage was
marked by the same ennobling absence of realism that distinguished the
stage of the Greeks. The holiday spirit of the hour seems more
spontaneous than ours; their hearts seem less troubled by spiritual
confusions. And manifestly their underworld knew beauty and brought
forth an art that is now a universal human treasure; while our
underworld has been, with the rarest of exceptions, wholly sterile.
One of the most important of the underworld institutions which the
prints of this period depict is the theatre. Though Harunobu turned
aside from it, his great contemporary Shunsho and the whole body of
Shunsho's followers found most of their material there.
The popular theatre had sprung into importance in the days of Moronobu.
Previous to that time, the classic lyric drama of the aristocracy,
called the Nō, had flourished in the secluded palaces of great nobles;
but the mob was obliged to divert itself with nothing more interesting
than jugglers and street performers. Therefore when the theatre first
came into being, in the river-bed of Kyoto, it achieved great
popularity; and when later it was transferred to Yedo, it rose during
the Genroku Period (1688-1703) to a position of passionate favour. It
appears never to have had a very savoury moral odour; and before long it
became associated with so much corruptness that it presented a serious
problem for the Tokugawa rulers. In 1643, as a corrective measure, they
had decreed the exclusion of female actors from the stage. From this
time on, only men trod the Japanese boards; the female rôles were taken
by male actors whose skill in this impersonation is said to have been
extraordinary.
The status of a great actor in the hearts of the people was not very
different from that of a successful prize-fighter among us to-day. He
was a popular idol; his movements were the subject of the eager
curiosity of the gaping multitude; but his social rank was of the
lowest. The prints of a later date show us pictures of actors with their
gay companions on boating-parties or tea-house picnics, surrounded by
inquisitive throngs of spectators. Famous and greatly sought after as
these actors were, they occupied positions of even less esteem than the
English players in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Nothing so well
illustrates their ostracism from any kind of society as the words used
by one of the greatest of actor-painters, Shunsho, in the preface to a
book of drawings representing actors: "To be sure, I love the theatre,
and greatly enjoy being a spectator, _but I have no connection with the
actors themselves, and do not know them in private life_." Even
Shunsho, who had created the heroic designs of these men in their great
rôles, dared not acknowledge himself as their familiar.
When they appeared on the stage, the faces of the actors were frequently
painted with startling streaks of red and white, an effect reproduced in
some of the prints. The elaborate robes worn when they represented
heroic figures of bygone ages formed superb material for the designs of
the artists. The Japanese stage of to-day probably does not differ very
much from what it was in Shunsho's time; and we still see on it that
florid elaboration of gesture, bombastic delivery, and intensification
of facial expression which the prints have perpetuated.
The actors were divided into clans or schools; the name of a famous head
of a clan would be handed down for generations from master to pupil.
Thus there were many of the name of Danjuro, Hanshiro, and Kikunojo in
succession, who were not related to each other by blood. Certain clans
such as the Kikunojo specialized exclusively in women's rôles. Each clan
had its _mon_ or crest, worn on the sleeve, and each actor had a
personal _mon_; in the prints these generally appear. In Plate 20, for
example, the circle with eight crossed arrow-buts indicates the _mon_ of
Nakamura Matsuye; in other prints, the three great concentric squares of
Danjuro, the trisected concentric circles of Hanshiro, or the iris
within a circle of Kikunojo (Plate 9), are easily identified.
In the hands of Shunsho and his followers the figures of these actors
were used as the material for brilliant designs. For the moment,
however, we must return to the foremost artist of this period--one who
never loved the actors--Harunobu.
HARUNOBU.
_Figure of a Girl._
Ye winds that somewhere in the West--
In gulfs of sunset, isles of rest--
Rise dewy from prenatal sleep
To strew with little waves the deep--
Surely it is your breath that stirs
These fluttering gauzy robes of hers!
Come whence ye may, I marvel not
That ye are lured to seek this spot;
Your tenuous scarcely breathèd powers
Sway not the sturdier garden flowers,
And had unmanifest gone by
Save that she feels them visibly.
O little winds, her little hands
In time with tunes from fairy-lands
Are moving; and her bended head
Knows nothing of the long years sped
Since heaven more near to earth was hung,
And gods lived, and the world was young.
Her inner robe of tenderest fawn
In cool, faint fountains of the dawn
Was dyed; and her long outer dress
Borrows its luminous loveliness
From some clear bowl with water filled
In which one drop of wine was spilled.
Peace folds her in its deeps profound;
Her shy glance lifts not from the ground;
And through this garden's still retreat
She moves with tripping silver feet
Whose trancèd grace, where'er she strays,
Turns all the days to holy days.
Come! let us softly steal away.
For what can we, whose hearts are grey,
Bring to her dreaming paradise?
A chill shall mock her from our eyes;
A cloud shall dim this radiant air:
Come! for our world is otherwhere.
But O ye little winds that blow
From golden islands long ago
Lost to our searching in the deep
Of dreams between the shores of sleep--
Ye shall her happy playmates be,
Fluttering her robes invisibly.
[Illustration: HARUNOBU: YOUNG GIRL IN WIND.
Polychrome, from eight blocks. Size 11 × 8. Signed _Susuki Harunobu ga_.
Gookin Collection.
_Plate 11._]
[Illustration: SUSUKI HARUNOBU.]
The few available fragments of information about the life of Susuki
Harunobu can be briefly stated. Born between 1725 and 1730, he lived in
Yedo all his life in a house near the river. In 1764 he perfected a new
and epoch-making treatment of colour-print technique, and died in 1770,
not much more than forty years of age. We may, where so little is known,
willingly follow Dr. Kurth in his ingenious tracing of a romantic link
between Harunobu and the hamlet of Kasamori, whose pine-trees, red
temple-torii, and beautiful tea-house waitress O-Sen haunt his work
recurrently; but we must be content to regard this as at least half
fancy. Harunobu's direct teacher was Shigenaga, and he was influenced
early by Toyonobu; but it was to Sukenobu and Kiyomitsu that he turned
for the inspiration of those characteristic figures which he created
during the six great years of his real activity.
Harunobu's work before the year 1764 is relatively unimportant. It
consists of prints of actors and legendary subjects, printed in two or
three colours; a few of his _hoso-ye_ prints of this period have
charming delicacy of line and colour, and at least one of his actor
pillar-prints is a work of notable dignity; but upon the whole his work
is not very individual. Any one of a dozen of Shigenaga's pupils might
have done almost as well. Before 1764 these men were all his equals;
after 1764 he took a step which few could keep pace with and which none
could outstrip.
In 1764 he brought forth that synthesis of the resources of his art
which was to shake the Ukioye world. Whether he was the actual inventor
of polychrome printing is not certain; some authorities attribute the
invention to an engraver named Kinroku; but it is very clear that
Harunobu was the first to seize upon and realize the possibilities of
the discovery. Some technical hindrance, such as the difficulty of
securing perfect register from many blocks on the wet stretching sheets,
had prevented the earlier completion of the process; and it is possible
that it was a printer who discovered the simple device needed to
overcome the difficulty. This, however, is a matter of mere mechanics
and has no bearing upon the question of the real glory of Harunobu. What
is important is that he seized the new technique and made out of it an
instrument responsive to every subtlest breath of his beauty-haunted
spirit.
[Illustration: HARUNOBU: LADY TALKING WITH FAN-VENDOR.
Polychrome. Size 11 × 7½. Signed _Harunobu ga_. Chandler Collection.
_Plate 12._]
The old three-colour prints had achieved fine effects by means of
powerfully conceived but essentially simple mosaics of colour. Now
Harunobu turned the three-stringed lute into the violin, capable of
expressing the most delicate modulations of tone. Beginning with
combinations of only four or five colours, he gradually increased the
number of blocks used. It is certain that he used eight blocks on at
least one 1765 calendar print. In the end he had at his command a
palette which, by the use of no less than twelve or fifteen blocks, and
with the limitless number of shades obtainable by superimposing one
colour upon another, made the whole rainbow his. Constant experiment
marked his further progress. We have, for example, one print which he
originally printed from eight blocks, and later varied by increasing the
blocks to ten, and still later to thirteen. From year to year an ever
fresh succession of complex colour-harmonies emanated from his fertile
brain.
Until the invention of polychrome printing, Harunobu had not adequately
expressed himself; now, having found his true instrument, he played
divinely. The year 1765 was a Jubilee year, celebrating the
nine-hundredth anniversary of the entrance of Sugawara Michigane, the
great statesman, painter, and humanist, to the Court of the Emperor.
This circumstance, in connection with the desire of literary men to
present to their friends specimens of the new prints as New Year cards,
led Harunobu to produce a number of dated calendar-prints of this
year--a fortunate occurrence which has been of great aid to students of
his work. The theory that these dated prints are the expression of
Harunobu's naïve exultation over the new discovery is now generally
discredited. Since the calendars are dated 1765, Mr. Gookin's suggestion
that they were probably made in the last months of 1764 seems
reasonable; and this date must therefore be regarded as marking the
beginning of polychrome printing.
The brilliant new prints fittingly ushered in the festal year. And the
public was not too busy with its celebrations to take note of the
change. The new manner with its wealth of colour-beauty won instant
popularity; and under the name of "Brocade Pictures of the Eastern
Capital" grew to such fame that by 1767 prints in the old style were
almost driven out of the market, and Harunobu was unquestioned lord of
Ukioye.
It is not strange that in the glow of success and ambition he should
have put behind him his old actor-pictures. "I am a Japanese painter,"
he wrote proudly; "why should I paint the portraits of this vulgar
herd?" And at this moment feeling himself akin to the great classical
tradition whose refined beauties had been handed down from ancient China
mingled with the beauties of poets and sages, he determined that he
would lift from the Ukioye School the stigma of vulgarity which the
theatre had given it, and invest it with some of that gentle cultivation
which fills like light the old Chinese paintings of Ming gardens.
Therefore he turned his energies to the depiction of another world than
the theatre--the life of aristocratic ladies, of young lovers, of
those famed beauties who in humbler station were the flowers and
sunshine of the tea-house and the festival. Plate 14 portrays one of
these. His method of handling the figures--a peculiar mingling of
naïveté and sophistication, like that of a minstrel singing incredible
enchanted legends with complete seriousness--was a new and
never-recovered note in the history of Ukioye.
[Illustration: HARUNOBU: GIRL VIEWING MOON AND BLOSSOMS.
Size 11 × 8. Signed _Harunobu ga_. Chandler Collection.
_Plate 13._]
From this time on, during six years, Harunobu produced a series of
prints whose grace is unsurpassable. The firm and refined strokes of his
brush endowed with a fresh charm all that was lovely in the flowing
draperies and serene faces of the young girls of Japan. He was the
painter of youth. The type which he introduced was the slender and
gracious embodiment of youthful girlhood. And an indescribable delicacy
and purity of manner clothes as with clear light these girl-figures of
his. His draperies, as in Plate 11, are never drawn naturalistically,
but always with a certain conventionalization that produces folds and
swirls more abstractly beautiful than a literal rendering. He for the
first time in colour-printing made a practice of giving to his figures a
background that exhibited fully the scene of their daily lives. Instead
of the heroic figures of the Primitives, stalking through space in
colossal grandeur, he drew the familiar forms of everyday existence
nestling among their natural surroundings. The world he pictures is,
however, one of mortals who hardly know the burdens of mortality. Like
the women of Botticelli, they seem to poise in an atmosphere of more
rarefied loveliness than anything we know in reality. Rich as may have
been the beauty of the tea-house girl, O-Sen, whom Harunobu loved and
painted, and of the little seller of cosmetics, O-Fuji, who appears many
times in his pictures, they were but the starting-point, the exciting
agency, from which Harunobu passed on into a secret fanciful world of
his own to evoke his dream-maidens. Half of the charm of these figures,
such as the one in Plate 12, lies in this unreal and unhuman impression
they make; they are not Japanese women or any women, but living
fairy-tales, butterfly creatures out of nowhere. All that is joyous and
playful in the Japanese spirit lifts them on wings of fantasy into
regions of universal delight. They are the most fragrant flowers of
Japanese art.
It follows that Harunobu's subjects are almost always light and trivial
scenes--a girl playing with a cat, a young man and a maiden walking
amiably together, young girls engaged in some delicate occupation, or,
as in Plate 13, pausing in pensive reverie. A gentle joy pervades most
of them, or at least a gravity so light that it is nearer joy than
melancholy. Harunobu does not handle these scenes with any especial
insight into life; they are not windows through which we may look and
see the human souls of the people he portrays. They are nothing more
than gay, pleasing moments--records of fortunate hours--froth and foam
over the real deeps of life.
[Illustration: HARUNOBU: COURTESAN DETAINING A PASSING SAMURAI.
Size 11 × 8. Signed _Harunobu ga_.
_Plate 14._]
Yet as the spectator allows the pure and delicate atmosphere of one of
these creations to enter his spirit, he gradually becomes aware that not
this trivial scene, not this light episode, was Harunobu's real
theme; his real theme was the great harmonics of colour and line. Out of
colour and line his immeasurable genius evoked lofty improvisations. He
dedicated the fervour of his passion and his vision to the creation of
these orchestrations of tone, these modulated arabesques of contour.
Beyond his cheerful groups, beyond his felicitous arrangements, lies the
history of his prodigious essay to impose his sense of beauty upon one
section of chaos. Kurth is quite right when he calls him "the great
virtuoso of colour."
Most of Harunobu's prints are of small size, almost square. In this form
his refinement found its most perfect expression. If we would see an
aspect of Harunobu that is of more impressive proportions, and realize
that scope as well as daintiness was in him, we must turn to certain
rare pillar-prints which were done chiefly in the years immediately
preceding his untimely death. Here dignity combines with grace, and an
exalted sweep of composition adds nobility to that exquisite colour
which here no less than in his small prints finds place. Two of these
pillar-prints, reproduced in Plate 15, may serve to illustrate this last
phase of Harunobu's greatest triumph.
The first print is a soft grey and lavender study of a girl. Within the
long, narrow space, against a background of cool unbroken grey, rises
the figure, whose bent, pensive head looks down at the ball she is
dangling before a cat at her feet. Her hair, a mass of strong black
against the clear grey background, is drawn in a conventionalized manner
that is perhaps the noblest formula ever devised for the painting of
hair--as pure of line as a Greek helmet. Drooping from her slender
shoulders fall robes whose slow curves seem moulded by the touch of
faint and gentle airs that breathe around her. The long drapery is
interwoven with hints of mauve melting into rose--more like ghosts of
the palette than colours--and touches of translucent salmon and amber
and grey are repeated like an arabesque of lights down the folds. The
folds sweep in great restful curves like those of vines hanging in
festoons from summer branches. At the girl's girdle a strong note of
dull green strikes like a bass chord across the composition; and smaller
spots of the same colour carry this motive diminishingly down to the
bottom of the picture.
It is a sentiment, an emotion, a dream--as much an abstraction as a
musical composition. In the lines of the dress, in the poise of the
head, in the limpid tones of the whole picture, is secreted the
dwelling-place of a peace, a solemnity, an awe never to be forgotten. It
is reminiscent of the grandeur of the Primitives, but more etherialized;
and there lingers about it still, persisting from earlier times, the
penumbra of that hierarchal purity and spirituality peculiar to archaic
art. Like those strange and memorable archaic statues of the Priestesses
in the Museum of the Akropolis at Athens, like the frescoes of Giotto at
Assisi, it holds the secret of an untainted beauty that is lost to later
artists.
[Illustration: HARUNOBU: SHIRAI GOMPACHI DISGUISED AS A KOMUSO.
Size 27 × 4½. Signed _Susuki Harunobu ga_.
HARUNOBU: GIRL PLAYING WITH KITTEN.
Size 26 × 4½. Signed _Susuki Harunobu ga_.
_Plate 15._]
The second pillar-print is one which, following the opinion of Professor
Fenollosa and Mr. Gookin, may be regarded as one of the supreme triumphs
of Harunobu's career, and one of the greatest prints we know. It
represents Shirai Gompachi, the white-robed lover of the beautiful
Komurasaki, wandering in disguise with the basket-hat and flute of a
_komuso_ or dishonoured Samurai. There is no background; against the
clear white paper the long lines of the tall figure flow in curves of
jet black and purple-grey, with here and there lights of orange and
white. By a simplicity of selection that is more than Greek, Harunobu
has woven from these few curves an effect that is like an incantation.
It has in it the power to reach into the secret storehouses of the
spectator's emotion and awaken echoes from those intimations of eternal
perfection which haunt every heart. Fenollosa writes: "There is
something unearthly about its line themes, orchestrated in black and
ghost-tints, which lifts one to the infinities of Beethoven's purest
melodies. The dreamy clarinet-player seems to droop and melt away into
regions of sublimity where no earthly ear shall follow his dying chords.
Thus indeed we are glad at last to have Harunobu pass, transfigured,
from our vision."
_Pillar Print by Harunobu._
From an infinite distance, the ghostly music!
Few and slender the tones, of delicate silver,
As stars are broidered on the veil of evening....
He passes by, the flute and the dreaming player--
Slow are his steps, his eyes are gravely downcast;
His pale robes sway in long folds with his passing.
Out of the infinite distance, a ghostly music
Returns--in slender tones of delicate silver,
As stars are broidered on the veil of evening.
Certain puzzles for the collector and student arise in connection with
Harunobu.
This is the first knotty point. Shiba Kokan, a contemporary artist who
outlived Harunobu by forty-eight years, is obscurely connected with
Harunobu's work. "Look out when you buy Harunobu prints!" he writes in
his memoirs, published long after his death. "A great portion of the
most popular ones are skilfully forged, and the forger was I, Shiba
Kokan!" This warning holds good to-day, and in many cases no one can say
with confidence whether certain sheets are by Shiba Kokan or Harunobu.
Kokan claims, in particular, to have been the author of those with
transparent draperies, those done in the Chinese manner, and those in
which snow on bamboos is rendered by embossing without outline blocks.
All these and other characteristic beauties of Harunobu's work he would
annex, and it is doubtful if we shall ever know whether he is the
greatest liar or the greatest forger in history. Probably his statements
must be regarded as partly true. Until we know, however, every print
signed Harunobu is suspect; for if Shiba Kokan could deceive the public
of that day, we shall not be likely to detect his forgeries. There is
only one consolation for the collector: if the prints of Shiba Kokan,
signed Harunobu, are as beautiful as those of Harunobu, then not the
collector is the sufferer, but only the unfortunate person who tries to
write an accurate account of this hopeless entanglement.
Other forgers, contemporaneous or slightly later, probably took
advantage of Harunobu's popularity: coarse reprints from recut blocks
turn up frequently in the market; and, worst of all, very fine modern
forgeries and imitations of his work abound. These last two classes are
the only ones that need cause the collector anxiety; they should of
course be guarded against with the utmost care, for they are quite
worthless. Their impure and muddy colours generally betray them to the
practised eye. No means of detecting them is safe for the inexperienced
amateur except a minute comparison with an unquestioned original
impression of the same print. On the other hand, the contemporaneous
forgeries, if beautiful, are no inconsiderable treasures.
[Illustration: KYOSEN.]
The name Kyosen furnishes another puzzle. It is signed to prints
unmistakably by Harunobu, to prints unmistakably not by him, and to
prints which he also signs. The solution seems to be that Kyosen is
simply the name of the printer or engraver who did work for Harunobu and
for other designers. Kyosen himself sometimes designed prints, but in
such cases he signed distinctly as artist. The signature Kyosen does
not, therefore, indicate a separate artist, and its presence on
Harunobu's prints need not cause doubts as to Harunobu's authorship.
Senga, a printer, and Takahashi Gyokushi and Takahashi Rosen, engravers,
also signed certain of Harunobu's prints.
A further difficulty arises in the relation of Harunobu to Koriusai, an
artist whom we shall soon treat by himself. At times his work comes so
close to Harunobu's style that earlier authorities believed his name to
be merely a later signature of Harunobu. This position is now entirely
discredited, and it is agreed that Koriusai was a distinct person, a
friend and successor of Harunobu. But it is not so sure that Koriusai
may not have signed certain of his own designs with Harunobu's name
after Harunobu's death; the striking resemblances of some such sheets to
Koriusai's work makes one unwilling to regard the relation between the
two as settled. In the case of certain unsigned prints, it is impossible
to determine with assurance which of the two was the creator. As a rule,
however, the colour-schemes of the two are totally different, Koriusai
running characteristically to schemes in which blue and orange are
dominant. Dr. Kurth seems to think it barely possible that prints signed
"Koriu" may be by Harunobu; but this theory is untenable, both because
the internal evidence of the prints is against it, several of Koriusai's
most characteristic prints being thus signed, and because of the
difficulty of believing that Harunobu, the greatest of living Ukioye
artists, should at the height of his fame have signed to his work the
name of a younger and less noted contemporary.
Those prints in the Harunobu manner which are unsigned and unsealed also
offer perplexities, since we must look entirely to internal evidence to
discover whether they are by Harunobu.
Harunobu's work is among the most highly prized in the whole list. The
great collections have many of his prints, but in the market one finds
the fine ones to be limited in number. In his case, even more than in
the case of other artists, perfect condition is a vital requirement.
For, in the process of fading, his prints lose that delicate
colour-orchestration which is their supreme glory. The same changes in
tone that would hardly detract from the beauty of a fine Kiyomitsu might
easily rob a fine Harunobu of most of its significance. If one has once
seen the copies in such collections as that of Mr. Frederick W. Gookin,
of Chicago, Mr. Charles H. Chandler, of Evanston, Messrs. William S.
Spaulding and John T. Spaulding, of Boston, or Mr. Howard Mansfield of
New York, one loses all interest in the battered riff-raff of the
dealers' counters.
KORIUSAI.
_Koriusai speaks._
Let whoso will take sheets as wide
As some great wrestler's mountain-back
Space cannot hide
His lack.
Take thou the panel, being strong.
'Tis as a girl's arm fashioned right--
As slender and divinely long
And white.
That tall and narrow icy space
Gives scope for all the brush beseems.
And who shall ask a wider place
For dreams?
It is an isle amid the tide--
A chink wherethrough shines one lone star--
A cell where calms of heaven hide
Afar.
One chosen curve of beauty wooed
From out the harsh chaotic world
Shall there in solitude
Be furled.
The narrow door shall be so strait
Life cannot vex, with troubled din,
Beauty, beyond that secret gate
Shut in.
Lo! I will draw two lovers there,
Alone amid their April hours,
With lines as drooping and as fair
As flowers.
I will make Spring to circle them
Like a faint aureole of delight.
Their luminous youth and joy shall stem
The night.
And men shall say: Behold! he chose,
From Time's wild welter round him strown,
This hour; and paid for its repose
His own.
Koriusai's life is shrouded in those mists prevalent in the cases of
most Ukioye artists. It is known that he was a Samurai, or feudal
retainer of knightly rank; upon the death of his master, Tsuchiya, he
became, as was the custom, a ronin--that is, a retainer without a
lord--and established himself near the picturesque Ryogoku Bridge in
Yedo as a painter. He originally used the name Haruhiro. Shigenaga was
his first teacher, Harunobu his second; his work can safely be dated
between 1770 and 1781. By the end of this period Kiyonaga was beginning
to advance achievements that eclipsed Koriusai's. As Fenollosa points
out, it was Koriusai's misfortune to collide with Harunobu at the
beginning and with Kiyonaga at the end of his career; could we
obliterate those two, we might think of Koriusai as "the most beautiful
Ukioye designer."
[Illustration: KORIUSAI: MOTHER AND BOY.
Size 28 × 4½. Signed _Koriu ga_.
KORIUSAI: TWO LOVERS IN THE FIELDS--SPRING CUCKOO.
Size 27 × 4½. Signed _Koriusai ga_.
_Plate 16._]
Koriusai was already working in Harunobu's manner at the time of the
master's death; and afterward he continued Harunobu's experiments. His
characteristic device in colour is the predominance of a strong orange
pigment, based on lead, which when originally applied had the utmost
brilliance, but which now is frequently changed by chemical
decomposition into a rich mottled black. Combining this orange with a
blue of his own devising, he obtained novel and striking effects.
[Illustration: KORIUSAI.]
Koriusai's small prints have often a beauty almost equal to Harunobu's,
but they lack individuality of invention. They never surpass the
triumphs of the older master in this form. Koriusai seldom can catch
Harunobu's perfect grace and repose, his luminous atmosphere and subtle
colour. But in his large sheets he produced a few compositions whose
elaborate magnificence is a new and individual achievement. The styles
in hair-dressing which came into vogue at this time were no small
element in enabling him to create his stately figures; the wide lines of
the coiffure, more solid and massive than in Harunobu's day, lent itself
admirably to strong decorative treatment. In a series of large sheets
called "Designs of Spring Greenery," each picture representing an Oiran
and her two or more young attendants, some of the prints are disfigured
by the heaviness of the faces; but others, from which this exaggeration
is absent, are of almost unparalleled splendour in colour, even though
somewhat monotonous in their repetitions. One of this type, in the Morse
Collection, Evanston (described at No. 155 of Fenollosa's Ketcham
Catalogue) is surely one of the greatest prints in the world. Some of
Koriusai's designs of birds and other animals, occasionally printed with
mica backgrounds, are admirable compositions.
But Koriusai's distinctive glory lies in the sphere of pillar-prints, of
which five are reproduced in Plates 16, 17, and 18. This form of
composition is one of the most interesting and exacting to be found in
the art of any race; the tall sheet, generally about 28 inches high and
only 5 inches wide, furnishes a mere ribbon of space that taxes all the
resources of a designer. It is like a Greek frieze placed on end; but
whereas the frieze gives space for a multitude of processional figures,
and is essentially a stage for the depiction of a social pageant, this
slim panel demands the exclusion of all but a few significant lines. In
this particular it is the finest of art-forms. It exacts the
quintessence of selection--one narrow glimpse of some cross-section of
life. Its limitations are like those of the lyric, requiring a
concentrated and finely chosen vision.
[Illustration: KORIUSAI: TWO LADIES.
Size 29 × 5. Signed _Koriu ga_.
KORIUSAI: A GAME OF TAG.
Size 26 × 5. Signed _Koriusai ga_.
_Plate 17._]
The shape was first devised by Okumura Masanobu as a modification of the
wider and shorter sheets commonly used by the Primitives for their large
pictures. As is often the case in the evolution of a fine art-form,
it was not Masanobu's mere whim, but structural exigencies, that
prompted the invention, the need being to provide long narrow pictures
that could be hung upon the square wooden pillar of the Japanese house.
Kiyomitsu and Toyonobu used this shape admirably; and the final and most
perfect form for its dimensions was fixed and brought into general use
by Harunobu. It became a favourite shape among the greatest of the later
artists; and no small number of their supreme achievements are in this
form. To the modern European eye, no other seems so distinctively
characteristic of the special Japanese genius.
Pillar-prints are almost invariably works of the first
importance--_pièces de résistance_, deliberate and studied productions,
representing the best effort and highest powers of the artist. For they
were intended to be mounted and rolled, like _kakemono_; and the artist
could therefore foresee for them a degree of attention that he could
hardly expect in the case of the loose square sheets. The peculiar shape
is in itself so interesting and beautiful, and so ringing a challenge to
the powers of the designer, that in many cases the best work of the
artist is to be found only in this form.
Pillar-prints are to-day far rarer than prints of the square variety.
They were probably produced in editions of smaller numbers than the
square prints; and, further, the use to which they were put as hanging
pictures exposed them to hazardous vicissitudes and generally resulted
in eventual destruction.
Koriusai's variations on the limited themes whose treatment is possible
in this narrow space display daring, originality, and power of
concentrated selection. He is the supreme master of the pillar-print; no
one else has produced so many fine ones, and practically all his finest
work is in this form. The infinite variety of his designs and the
fertility of his invention make a series of his pillar-prints one of the
most absorbing features of a fine collection. In one print (Plate 17),
he dashes the intense black line of a screen down through the middle of
his picture and sets the delicate eddies of a child's and a young girl's
garments playing around its base. In a second (Plate 18), a girl in
robes of gorgeous colour stands like a calm peacock, with glowing orange
combs alight in her hair; while in a third (Plate 16), the whole space
waves and sings with the forms of grasses, a flying cuckoo, and a maiden
carried in the arms of her lover through fields of spring. And in a
fourth (Plate 17), he draws the figures of two women, one behind and a
little above the other, the one in the background luminous with soft
neutral tints, the one in the foreground robed in a black whose
intensity cuts sharply through the otherwise monotonous sweetness of the
picture. To the grace of Harunobu, Koriusai has here added a vigour all
his own, and a richness surpassing that of his teacher.
To-day Koriusai's small prints are rather rare, as are also the birds
and the large-size sheets. His pillar-prints, which are his greatest
works, were produced in such numbers that, contrary to the rule that
applies to the pillar-prints of all other designers, a good many of
them have survived. It is still possible to secure examples that are
among the foremost of all print treasures.
[Illustration: SHIGEMASA: TWO LADIES.
Size 28½ × 5. Unsigned.
KORIUSAI: A COURTESAN.
Size 27 × 4½. Signed _Koriusai ga_.
_Plate 18._]
OTHER FOLLOWERS OF HARUNOBU.
SUSUKI HARUSHIGE is reported to have been the son and pupil of Harunobu.
The few prints of his that are known have a grace of line that might
well be a son's heritage, if such things were inheritable. The unholy
rascal Shiba Kokan alleges that this name was one which he himself used,
as well as Harunobu's; it is reported, on the other hand, that it is
merely Koriusai's early name. It is probable that Kokan's statement must
be believed.
[Illustration: HARUSHIGE.]
SHIBA KOKAN has already been mentioned as the forger of Harunobu's work.
His ability needs no further recommendation when we admit that we cannot
with certainty tell his prints from Harunobu's. This is his chief title
to fame. He was born in 1747 and died in 1818. During his life he signed
many names to his work and attempted many manners. From the Dutch at
Nagasaki he learned something of the rules of European perspective, and
tried, in the eighties, with success but without much beauty, to carry
them over into Japanese art. In addition, he introduced shadows into
some of his compositions--a device alien to the whole spirit of Chinese
and Japanese painting. He was the first Japanese artist to attempt
copper-plate engraving. Queer renderings of European scenes by him
remain to us. In a hundred different spheres of art, invention, and
speculation he tried his hand. His intellectual curiosity in every field
reminds one of Leonardo da Vinci. He remains one of the most interesting
and puzzling figures of his time--an adventurer, a restless
experimenter, a forger and a man of extraordinary though chaotic genius.
A poem written when he was dying has a curious vibrancy: "Kokan now
dies, for he is very old; to the passing world he leaves a picture of
the world that passes."
KOMAI YOSHINOBU did work in the style of Harunobu during the seventies.
He furnishes another example of the obscurity that covers so much of
Japanese print history; for it is not known whether he was an
independent artist, or identical with Yamamoto Yoshinobu, who produced
two-colour prints in the fifties, or worse yet, an early signature of
Koriusai. The first theory is the most probable. His work is rare,
beautiful in colour, and well worthy of further research.
[Illustration: MASUNOBU.]
MASUNOBU, the second of that name, whose work, in clear, delicate colour
and charming arrangement, generally follows Harunobu's closely, is also
not definitely located. He appears to have been originally a pupil of
Shigenobu and Shigenaga. Most writers erroneously regard him as the same
man who, under the name of Sanseido Tanaka Masunobu, produced
two-colour prints in the forties, and hand coloured prints still
earlier.
One of the Second Masunobu's pillar-prints, representing a girl with an
open umbrella jumping from a balcony to meet a waiting lover, has a
unique and most charming individuality of poise and colouring. His
pillar-prints, of which about ten are known, are particularly fine.
UJIMASA, KAMEGAKI HOŌRIU, MURANOBU, TACHIBANA MINKO, BANTO, CHIRYU,
RYUSHI, KISEN, and SUIYO are rare men who worked contemporaneously with
Harunobu. The Hayashi Catalogue also names SHOHA, SOAN, SOGIKU, KOGAN
and SEIKO.
KUNINOBU is an artist of extreme rarity, whose few surviving prints show
distinction of line, based on the Harunobu manner. His work, done about
1775, stands out from the work of Harunobu's horde of followers; he was
evidently a noteworthy artist, of whom one wishes we knew more.
FUJINOBU worked in the manner of Harunobu in the early seventies. His
output was small, and little of his work survives. It may be that he was
the same individual as Yamamoto Fujinobu, who has already been mentioned
as Shigenaga's pupil.
KOMATSUKEN is a name signed to certain calendar-prints for the year
1765. The style is greatly like Harunobu's. His name may also be read
_Shoshoken_. Mr. Gookin thinks him to be identical with Fusanobu, who
has been previously mentioned.
HARUTSUGU and SUSUKI HARUJI, said by some to be the same person,
produced a few pleasing prints about 1770.
SHUNSHO.
_Portrait of an Actor in Tragic Rôle._
His soul is a sword;
His sword with the spirit's breath
Is bathed of its terrible lord,
In whose eyes is death.
And the massive control,
And the lighted implacable eye
Leash a fierce and exalted soul
Of dark destiny.
. . . . . .
With the strength of the hills--
Kiso's iron mountains of snow--
He waits: time brings and fulfills
The hour for the blow.
He waits; and the white
Full robes round his shoulders sway,
With woof of pale orange alight,
Pale green, pale grey.
Like a falcon, flown
To bleak mid-regions of sky,
He poises. One image alone
Holds his sinister eye--
A vision, a prey
Towards which he shall soon be hurled--
And his fury shall darken the day,
And his joy, the world.
. . . . . .
A music enfolds him
Like the thunders that are poured
Across heaven; it holds him
With the song of the sword.
It enthrals, it inspires,
And its zenith shall be
Lightning of unleashed desires
Crashing along the sea.
[Illustration: SHUNSHO: AN ACTOR OF THE ISHIKAWA SCHOOL IN TRAGIC RÔLE.
Size 12 × 6. Signed _Shunsho ga_.
_Plate 19._]
Those actor-types which Harunobu and his school so scornfully cast aside
became the chosen speciality of the greatest of his rivals and
contemporaries, Katsukawa Shunsho. As one examines sheet after sheet of
Shunsho's theatrical prints, Harunobu's contemptuous words concerning
"this vulgar herd," the actors, lose their significance; for here pass
in gorgeous procession a series of lofty, intense, and unforgettable
figures charged with the quintessence of heroic force.
[Illustration: KATSUKAWA SHUNSHO.]
The designer of these prints was born in 1726 and died about 1792--some
authorities say 1790. His period of greatest activity covered the years
1765 to 1780, thus including the working periods of both Harunobu and
Koriusai, and ending as Koriusai's did when in the eighties Kiyonaga's
star rose blindingly. He lived for a while at the house of his
publisher, Hayashi; sometimes in his early work he used in place of a
signature a seal shaped like a small covered jar with handles, on which
Hayashi's name is inscribed. The legend is that he was too poor to own a
seal in the early days of his struggle and so borrowed that of his
landlord!
Shunsho had no antecedent teachers among the print-designers. He sprang
instead from a school of painters who did not design for prints. These,
headed by Choshun and his son Katsukawa Shunsui, had since 1700 been
producing rich paintings of women in elaborate drapery. The Buckingham
Collection contains one print by Shunsui, but it is an almost unique
rarity. Shunsho, by a curious shift in the stream of art history, not
only took up prints, but even took up the department of prints least in
line with the tendencies of his own school, the department of
actor-representation, which was the speciality of Kiyomitsu and the old
Torii School, and which Harunobu's popular innovations had almost driven
out of fashion. To this work Shunsho brought the new technique of
Harunobu and great native individuality; and with the fresh armament of
full colour he defended magnificently the threatened stronghold of
actor-prints. His popularity became enormous. He grew quickly to the
stature of one of the great and far-reaching powers in Ukioye history.
Side by side with Harunobu, he in his separate field executed year by
year actor-portraits which by their vigour of line and brilliancy of
colour-combination take a place as high as that held by the works of his
rival.
No contrast could be more striking than that between them. The one is
all grace, the other all force; the one loves to linger in quiet
gardens, the other drags us up to the icy heights of tragic crisis.
Shunsho's sense of dramatic composition was keen; and, as we see in
Plate 19, his ferocious actor-faces peer out with a vivid menace, his
tense actor-limbs shake with a concentrated and imprisoned fury not the
less impressive because of its intentional exaggeration. They have not
Harunobu's unreality of perfect grace, but the utterly different
super-reality of magnified passion. In repose they are like statues; in
action they have the vigour of those natural forces--waves, river
currents, storms of thunder--which, as in the Shunsho print reproduced
on the cover of this volume,[Transcriber's Note: The edition used to
produce this etext did not include this print on the cover.] so often
form their backgrounds.
[Illustration: SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA MATSUYE AS A WOMAN IN WHITE.
Size 11 × 5½. Unsigned.
_Plate 20._]
Shunsho's figures of women--or rather his figures of men acting the
parts of women, according to the invariable custom of the Japanese stage
at this time--are less violent, but often as tense. Two of these appear
in Plates 20 and 21. In long sweeping robes of brilliant dye they move
with the step of a Clytemnestra, or poise in strange attitudes of
arrested motion not unworthy of an Antigone. All his figures are
dynamic--the storehouses of volcanic forces whose existence he suggests
by restless line-conflicts.
Shunsho's predecessors in actor representation had never equalled the
intensity of these figures and faces. Shunsho tears the heart out of a
rôle and holds it up for us to see. He gives the passion of the actor
such expression as would have been impossible to Kiyonobu, twisting the
face into a distorted and grandiose mask beside which the faces of the
Primitives seem wooden and meaningless.
The spectator whose æsthetic sense embraces only a love of tranquillity
will find no beauty in these disturbing faces and forms--unless perhaps
the beauty of pure colour is enough to beguile him. It may well do this;
few things have power to bring a richer sense of æsthetic satisfaction
than a succession of fine Shunshos, in each one of which a new
colour-arrangement unfolds new harmonies.
Shunsho's work includes a very great number of actor-prints in the
narrow upright _hoso-ye_ form and a few large square prints. He also
issued a series of small illustrations for the "Ise Monogatari," an old
romantic chronicle which furnished many favourite subjects to the
artists. These are quiet in design and soft in colour; to them the eye
may turn for rest if wearied by the straining actors. In collaboration
with Shigemasa he produced a set of ten small prints representing
sericulture, which have considerable charm. In 1776 the same pair of
artists brought out a series of book-illustrations called "Mirror of the
Beauties of the Green Houses," representing groups of courtesans
occupied with the various activities of daily life--in the street, the
house, the garden, and the temple. This book has been called the most
beautiful ever produced in Japan; when one examines its chief rival,
"The Mirror of the Beautiful Women of the Yoshiwara," by Kitao Masanobu,
one need have no hesitancy in giving Shunsho's and Shigemasa's the first
place. This means, very probably, the first place among the illustrated
books of the world. Its pages, printed in rose, purple, brown, yellow,
and grey, are rich and delicate. Sheets from all these books are often
found mounted as separate prints. Shunsho's few known pillar-prints are
generally magnificent.
[Illustration: SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA NOSHIO IN FEMALE RÔLE.
Size 12½ × 6. Signed _Shunsho ga_. Gookin Collection.
_Plate 21._]
Because of his enormous productiveness, Shunsho's work in _hoso-ye_ form
is common, frequently in fine condition. Most of the _hoso-ye_ prints
were originally issued in joined groups of three; the groups are
seldom found intact now. The grace of his women has made them more
generally popular than his impressive men, and they are consequently
harder to obtain. It must be noted that Shunsho's work is uneven, and
that the majority of the pieces offered are either tame and
uninteresting examples of pot-boiling or caricatures that lack the
intensity which lifts certain of the artist's most grotesque figures to
tragic heights. The matchless Shunsho collection of Mr. Frederick W.
Gookin is full of such prints as rarely come into the market to-day.
Occasionally the more distinguished ones are met with; and they are
treasures which the practised collector eagerly seizes. Fortunately
print dealers are not, as a rule, conscious of the greatness of the
difference, and they will frequently offer side by side a print that is
merely one of Shunsho's commonest pieces of hack-work and a print that
is one of the glories of the Ukioye School. On such occasions the
collector has the pleasure of profiting by his own discrimination.
Shunsho's large square prints and pillar-prints are of extreme rarity.
BUNCHO.
Connected by association with the school of Shunsho, yet lifted by his
originality to a place quite apart from it, is the artist Ippitsusai
Buncho. His master, a certain Ishikawa Kogen (or Yukimoto) of the
classical Kano School, seems to have meant little to him; from the
beginning of his production, about 1765, Shunsho's and Harunobu's
influence chiefly guided him. He and Shunsho jointly published in 1770
three volumes of actor-portraits enclosed in fans. Little is known of
his life except that he was originally a Samurai; he is said to have
turned from his original master to the Ukioye School and to have led a
life of dissipation until eventually his friends persuaded him to
abandon such things and procured for him the honorary title of Hokyo.
After this, we hear nothing of him. He died in 1796.
[Illustration: IPPITSUSAI BUNCHO.]
Buncho's work attracts the observer with a charm different from that of
any other Ukioye artist. A curious mannerism in his way of drawing faces
and a fascinating perverse grace in the attitudes of his figures mark
his prints. Practically all his work is in the _hoso-ye_ form. His
subjects are chiefly young male actors in the rôles of women. Harunobu's
influence, manifest in Plate 22, brought him grace but not sweetness.
There is an astringent quality in his work that prevents it from ever
being serene. His figures, whose line-work is the apotheosis of suavity
and studied refinement, are arched into slightly strained and tortured
attitudes; complex forces seem to dominate them like unseen winds;
consuming or delicate passions move obscurely through their limbs and
faces. Their heads poise at unnatural angles as if consciously turning
their indifferent eyes from the spectacle of common things toward a
secret and hypnotizing world of their own. These alien beings haunt one;
it seems as if they had some mystery to reveal, some disturbing wonder
to communicate could one but make them speak.
[Illustration: BUNCHO: COURTESAN AND HER ATTENDANT IN SNOWSTORM.
Size 12 × 5½. Signed _Ippitsusai Buncho ga_. Mansfield Collection.
_Plate 22._]
Part of Buncho's strangeness lies in the fact that he seeks for his
figures not a human but an abstract and geometrical grace. His famous
print, often reproduced, of the actor Segawa Kikunojo as a lady in white
carrying an orange umbrella beneath a willow-tree, is a study in the
harmonics of pure line; to this end every other element of
representation has been sacrificed. Line exists here not merely to bound
a form but for its own inherent beauty. Buncho is the greatest of all
masters of the geometry of lines and spaces; these have, as he arranges
them, the inevitability and clarity of a mathematical demonstration.
His use of colour is equally notable and strange. By employing tints
that are almost discords he produces arresting and fascinating effects.
His combinations of orange and slaty grey, or dull red and slaty blue
and pale yellow, or pink and purple, have an uncanny vibrancy that makes
them stand out in one's memory.
Buncho's strangeness has a further aspect. There is in him an intangible
spiritual abnormality. I am led to localize this in his portraits of the
actor Segawa Kikunojo, and to imagine a curious relation between the
two. Some of his portraits of this actor are the flower of his work. In
them appears a passionately rarefied beauty; they have an unusual pitch,
like the overstrained vibration of violin strings stirred by some heavy
blow. Segawa Kikunojo was the foremost woman-impersonator of his time.
His grace in such rôles is attested by prints from the hands of many
artists; but none rise to the unearthly beauty of Buncho's. Even if we
knew nothing of the life of the Japanese stage at this time, or of the
custom of actors like Segawa Kikunojo to dress and live like women when
off the stage, we might still be put on inquiry by the peculiar ethereal
quality of some of these portraits. For art whose initial impulse lies
in morbid regions often flies into regions of the most disembodied
spirituality for expression. Flowers of the morass frequently have a
pale delicacy that is alien to the flowers of the field.
It is, however, with a confession of fancifulness that I reconstruct the
following story to account for Buncho. He, a Samurai, was driven by keen
artistic sensibility to the study of painting under a classical master.
From this studio he was lured by the glitter and glamour of Ukioye into
the world of prints and actors, and sank into a slough of dissipation
above which gleamed the balefully beautiful star of Segawa Kikunojo.
Haunted by a perverse susceptibility, his tense-strung nerves vibrated
at that morbid touch into notes of such disembodied sweetness as the
world has scarcely known elsewhere; and at last he passed into
retirement and death, still the puppet of a disturbing illusion. He was
an unbalanced temperament, a dreamer of keen and attenuated beauty
that has nothing in common with the normal wholesome life of earth.
[Illustration: SHUNYEI: AN ACTOR.
Grey background. Size 14 × 9½. Signed _Shunyei ga_.
_Plate 23._]
His prints are exceedingly rare; many a good collection possesses not a
single fine specimen of his work. I had never seen or heard of a
pillar-print by him until very recently; but lately an interesting one
has been found in Japan.
SHUNYEI.
[Illustration: SHUNYEI.]
Shunsho's vigorous style had many followers, among whom Shunyei is
commonly regarded as the most important. He was born in 1767, and lived
until 1819. His teacher Shunsho's manner dominated his work from his
earliest years, though some late sheets exist in which he followed
Kiyonaga. It is believed that originally he used the name Shunjo; fine
work is extant with that signature. He had many pupils, and was himself
an able painter; but his ordinary work is largely derivative. At times,
however, his _hoso-ye_ actor-prints achieve an effect of great power by
the use of large masses of colour. He had a certain sharpness of
observation--a certain knack of catching in his portraits the
peculiarities of his models, that produces an effect less dignified but
more vivid than Shunsho's. A sense of humour glimmers through his
rendering of some of these keenly drawn and intimately characterized
actor-faces. Unmistakable as may be the features of a Danjuro or a
Hanshiro drawn by Shunsho, one nevertheless feels that the personality
of the actor has been largely dominated by Shunsho's supreme interest in
the passion or terror of the rôle; and though he pictured the face of
the actor, the spirit which he sought was wholly the spirit of the part.
Shunyei, on the other hand, often managed to retain the idiosyncrasies
of the sitter and his peculiar spiritual flavour; and though his works
are not often as beautiful as Shunsho's, they are frequently more human.
On the whole, we may say that Shunsho created generalized types, Shunyei
reproduced observed individuals.
Shunyei produced, besides the actors in _hoso-ye_ form by which he is
best known, a few large heads and full-length portraits of actors marked
by a strength of drawing and a breadth of characterization different
from his usual work. One of these is reproduced in Plate 23. On a grey
background, this powerfully designed figure stands out with gigantic
simplicity in masses of dull colour. The prints of this rare type are
perhaps Shunyei's best. Beside them must rank the large actor-heads,
interesting to the collector because of their relation to the work of
another great artist, Sharaku. It is still uncertain whether Sharaku or
Shunyei was the inventor of this type of large bust-portrait. Dr. Kurth
assumes, for the greater glory of Sharaku, that he was the precursor;
but the question cannot be regarded as settled.
[Illustration: SHUNKO: THE ACTOR ISHIKAWA MONNOSUKE IN CHARACTER.
Size 13 × 6. Unsigned, but stamped with Jar Seal.
_Plate 24._]
SHUNKO.
The equal of Shunyei among Shunsho's other pupils is to be found in
Katsukawa Shunko. He was the spiritual image of his master, except that
he had not his master's full command of terror. His figures, as in Plate
24, poise or sway with gentler emotions; as a rule, they are agreeable
rather than impressive. One comes to recognize him frequently by the
peculiar suavity of his designs. It is true that he sometimes approaches
very near to Shunsho's power; but this is less characteristic and less
interesting than his quieter manner. It is unnecessary to treat of him
at great length, for most of his work is of a type whose main qualities
have been treated fully under Shunsho. It is not known when Shunko was
born; he died in 1827.
[Illustration: SHUNKO.]
It may be noted that he sometimes sealed his prints instead of signing
them, using a jar-shaped seal much like that which Shunsho had made
famous.
In the Spaulding Collection, Boston, is a remarkable full-size triptych
by Shunko, representing a party of actors picnicking in the country. The
style shows it to be greatly influenced by Kiyonaga; and the whole
composition of this beautiful piece is different from most of Shunsho's
work.
OTHER FOLLOWERS OF SHUNSHO AND HIS SCHOOL.
SHUNRI was another pupil of Shunsho; he appears to have been a competent
designer, but no great figure. SHUNTOKU, SHUNKI, SHUNKAKU, SHOYU,
SHUNYEN, SHUNKEN, and SHUNKYOKU may be described in the same words. Each
has perhaps produced a few beautiful works, but their originality is not
marked.
RANTOKUSAI SHUNDO, a gifted pupil of Shunsho, has left work so rare that
one cannot make any very definite statement about him. His few known
prints are admirable. One suspects that this signature is merely the
early name of some well-known artist.
SHUNSEI, SHUNRIN, SOBAI, and SHUNKIO are later artists; their importance
is small.
SHUNTEI, "owing partly to illness and partly to systematic indulgence in
drink" (Strange), and partly to complete lack of natural distinction,
produced nothing of interest; and his coarse battle-scenes may be
classed with the crude work characteristic of a later period. He worked
chiefly between 1800 and 1820.
KINCHO SEKIGA is said to have been a pupil of Buncho.
SHUNKO II was a pupil of Shunyei. His name is written in different
characters from that of the first Shunko. KICHOSAI SHUNKO also produced
actor-prints.
YUMISHO was a very rare pupil who adopted Kiyonaga's style in line-work.
The same may be said of YENSHI, some of whose work is very beautiful;
he appears to have come much under the influence of Yeishi. Several of
his triptychs are fine.
TOYOHARU.
Utagawa Toyoharu is a strangely equivocal figure in print history; his
fame is great, but no surviving print of his, so far as I have been able
to ascertain, is of a quality to justify fully his reputation. Born in
1733, he studied with Shigenaga and probably with Toyonobu, produced a
limited number of prints in the sixties and seventies, withdrew from
prints to painting when Kiyonaga's new style grew to splendour, and died
in 1814. He is said to have been a sensitive and delicately strung
individual who shrank from competition and worked obscurely. His
best-known work is a series of twelve designs for the various months
done in collaboration with Shunsho and Shigemasa; each print is divided
diagonally into two scenes--a device of unfortunate and ingenious
ugliness. The figures, however, have a certain delicate grace. His
pillar-prints, which are rare, have considerable beauty.
[Illustration: UTAGAWA TOYOHARU.]
Toyoharu has been called a greater artist than Shunsho. It may be true,
yet I am inclined to regard this view either as the result of his
painting and not his print-designing, or as part of a great Toyoharu
myth, for which the later success of his pupils is responsible. Certain
it is that of his surviving prints few are noteworthy, and that he was
greater as a painter and teacher than as a print-designer. We shall
remember him more as the instructor of Toyokuni and Toyohiro and as the
precursor of Hiroshige than for any of his own prints that remain to us.
As a figure-painter, he is known as the founder of the Utagawa School.
As a landscape-painter, he made successful use of European perspective,
which he probably learned from Dutch engravings, and was perhaps the
first Ukioye print-artist to return to the habit of the older schools
and treat landscape not as a mere setting but as a thing by itself. His
scenes are too stiff and too crowded with petty details to lay any real
claim to beauty. He used as the dominant note in many of them the orange
colour so dear to Koriusai; but no pigment can well be imagined that is
less fitted for landscape-rendering. Yet the historical importance of
these prints is great; for they are, so to speak, the grandparents of
the marvellous landscapes of Hiroshige.
UTAGAWA TOYONOBU is believed by some authorities to have been merely
Toyoharu's early name; others think him identical with Ishikawa
Toyonobu; and still others regard him as an independent artist who was a
pupil of Ishikawa Toyonobu, his greater namesake. The few prints we have
by him--I know of less than half a dozen--are not sufficient to enable
one to form an opinion as to this.
TOYOMARU and TOYOHISA were among Toyoharu's pupils.
SHIGEMASA.
[Illustration: KITAO SHIGEMASA.]
Kitao Shigemasa may be called the great chameleon of the Ukioye School:
a discriminating chameleon, who chose only the greatest artists of each
decade from whom to take his changing hue. As M. Raymond Koechlin
expresses it, "it was his destiny to reflect in his art the art of the
most original of his contemporaries." Born about 1740, he lived until
1819. His teacher was Shigenaga; this master died not long after
Shigemasa commenced work with him. Thus Shigemasa began painting early
enough to be influenced by the last of the Primitives; and his first
prints, dating from about 1764, are graceful three-colour renderings of
actor-themes in the manner of Kiyomitsu, and more brutal ones in the
manner of Kiyomasu. With the rise of Harunobu and the perfection of
polychrome printing, Shigemasa turned to that style; later he followed
Koriusai, in whose manner he produced some wonderfully beautiful large
sheets of women and some fine pillar-prints. Still later he followed the
style of Shunsho. Together with this artist he produced in 1786 a set of
ten small sheets representing the various stages of sericulture, in
which he surpasses his collaborator. The same two artists had earlier
collaborated, in 1776, to produce the famous illustrated book "Mirror of
the Beauties of the Green Houses." These illustrations are not signed;
but comparing them with Shigemasa's portion of the sericulture series,
which are signed separately by the two artists, we may well believe that
a large part of the peculiar grace of the "Green Houses" is Shigemasa's
and not Shunsho's contribution. With Shunsho and Toyoharu, he
collaborated in a series of designs for the twelve months, of which I
have already spoken under Toyoharu. Like so many other artists of this
period, Shigemasa gradually withdrew from work in the eighties before
the blaze of Kiyonaga's glory. Kiyonaga himself was perhaps influenced
by the older artist.
Shigemasa's draughtsmanship is the one quality that marks him through
all his changes; from first to last, it is superb. With a fine firmness
and ease he produces, as in Plate 18, designs in which restraint
combines with great expressiveness. His faces have repose and
distinction; his draperies are drawn with notable simplicity and
dignity; his cool and quiet colour is admirable. Through all his styles
runs a fastidious delicacy of feeling, and what Fenollosa terms "an even
mastery." He never attempted the impossible or strained towards the
unattainable; all his work has the stamp of a calmly working, reserved,
confident artist. The deliberate, flawless craftsmanship of his works
places him beside the greatest.
Considering the length of his career, he produced surprisingly little
work; important prints by him are now rarer than those of any other
artist of this period. His pillar-prints, which are particularly fine,
have been for many years proverbially few. As a rule only his earlier
prints are signed. His surimono are, however, generally signed with the
brush-name Kosuisai. Sheets from his numerous books are often mounted as
separate prints. Collectors differ in their opinions as to whether it is
advisable thus to take to pieces the sheets of a bound volume, such as
the "Green Houses." Any such act, in dealing with art treasures, should
be approached only after careful consideration; but it seems in this
case a desirable method of preserving and exhibiting what are, after
all, wholly separate pictures.
V
THE THIRD
PERIOD:
KIYONAGA
AND HIS
FOLLOWERS
FROM THE
MATURITY OF KIYONAGA
TO HIS RETIREMENT
(1780-1790)