Part 24

Towards the close of the Ashikaga shogunate painting entered on a new phase. Talented representatives of the Kose, Takuma and Tosa lines maintained the reputation of the native and Buddhist schools, and the long-neglected Chinese school was destined to undergo a vigorous revival. The initiation of the new movement is attributed to a priest named Jôsetsu, who lived in the early part of the 15th century, and of whom little else is known. It is not even certain whether he was of Chinese or Japanese birth; he is, however, believed by some authorities to have been the teacher of three great artists--Shubun, Sesshu and Kano Masanobu--who became the leaders of three schools: Shubun, that of the pure Chinese art of the Sung and Yuan dynasties (10th and 13th centuries); Sesshu, that of a modified school bearing his name; and Masanobu, of the great Kano school, which has reached to the present day. The qualities of the new Chinese schools were essentially those of the older dynasties: breadth, simplicity, a daringly calligraphic play of brush that strongly recalled the accomplishments of the famous scribes, and a colouring that varied between sparing washes of flat local tints and a strength and brilliancy of decorative effort that rivalled even that of the Buddhist pictures. The motives remained almost identical with those of the Chinese masters, and so imbued with the foreign spirit were many of the Japanese disciples that it is said they found it difficult to avoid introducing Chinese accessories even into pictures of native scenery.

Sesshu (1421-1507) was a priest who visited China and studied painting there for several years, at length returning in 1469, disappointed with the living Chinese artists, and resolved to strike out a style of his own, based upon that of the old masters. He was the boldest and most original of Japanese landscape artists, leaving powerful and poetic records of the scenery of his own land as well as that of China, and trusting more to the sure and sweeping stroke of the brush than to colour. Shubun was an artist of little less power, but he followed more closely his exemplars, the Chinese masters of the 12th and 13th centuries; while Kano Masanobu (1424-1520), trained in the love of Chinese art, departed little from the canons he had learned from Josetsu or Oguri Sotan. It was left to his more famous son, Motonobu, to establish the school which bears the family name. Kano Motonobu (1477-1559) was one of the greatest Japanese painters, an eclectic of genius, who excelled in every style and every branch of his art. His variety was inexhaustible, and he remains to this day a model whom the most distinguished artists are proud to imitate. The names of the celebrated members of this long line are too many to quote here, but the most accomplished of his descendants was Tanyu, who died in 1674, at the age of seventy-three. The close of this long period brought a new style of art, that of the Korin school. Ogata Korin (1653-1716) is claimed by both the Tosa and Kano schools, but his work bears more resemblance to that of an erratic offshoot of the Kano line named Sotatsu than to the typical work of the academies. He was an artist of eccentric originality, who achieved wonders in bold decorative effects in spite of a studied contempt for detail. As a lacquer painter he left a strong mark upon the work of his contemporaries and successors. His brother and pupil, Kenzan, adopted his style, and left a reputation as a decorator of pottery hardly less brilliant than Korin's in that of lacquer; and a later follower, Hoitsu (1762-1828), greatly excelled the master in delicacy and refinement, although inferior to him in vigour and invention. Down to the end of this era painting was entirely in the hands of a patrician caste--courtiers, priests, feudal nobles and their military retainers, all men of high education and gentle birth, living in a polished circle. It was practised more as a phase of aesthetic culture than with any utilitarian views. It was a labour of loving service, untouched by the spirit of material gain, conferring upon the work of the older masters a dignity and poetic feeling which we vainly seek in much of the later work. Unhappily, but almost inevitably, over-culture led to a gradual falling-off from the old virility. The strength of Meicho, Sesshu, Motonobu and Tanyu gave place to a more or less slavish imitation of the old Japanese painters and their Chinese exemplars, till the heirs to the splendid traditions of the great masters preserved little more than their conventions and shortcomings. It was time for a new departure, but there seemed to be no sufficient strength left within the charmed circle of the orthodox schools, and the new movement was fated to come from the masses, whose voice had hitherto been silent in the art world.

Fourth Period: Popular School.

A new era in art began in the latter half of the 17th century with the establishment of a popular school under an embroiderer's draughtsman named Hishigawa Moronobu (c. 1646-1713). Perhaps no great change is ever entirely a novelty. The old painters of the Yamato-Tosa line had frequently shown something of the daily life around them, and one of the later scions of the school, named Iwasa Matahei, had even made a specialty of this class of motive; but so little is known of Matahei and his work that even his period is a matter of dispute, and the few pictures attributed to his pencil are open to question on grounds of authenticity. He probably worked some two generations before the time of Moronobu, but there is no reason to believe that his labours had any material share in determining the creation and trend of the new school.

Moronobu was a consummate artist, with all the delicacy and calligraphic force of the best of the Tosa masters, whom he undoubtedly strove to emulate in style; and his pictures are not only the most beautiful but also the most trustworthy records of the life of his time. It was not to his paintings, however, that he owed his greatest influence, but to the powerful impulse he gave to the illustration of books and broadsides by wood-engravings. It is true that illustrated books were known as early as 1608, if not before, but they were few and unattractive, and did little to inaugurate the great stream of _ehon_, or picture books, that were to take so large a share in the education of his own class. It is to Moronobu that Japan owes the popularization of artistic wood-engravings, for nothing before his series of xylographic albums approached his best work in strength and beauty, and nothing since has surpassed it. Later there came abundant aid to the cause of popular art, partly from pupils of the Kano and Tosa schools, but mainly from the artisan class. Most of these artists were designers for books and broadsides by calling, painters only on occasion, but a few of them did nothing for the engravers. Throughout the whole of this period, embracing about a hundred years, there still continued to work, altogether apart from the men who were making the success of popular art, a large number of able painters of the Kano, Tosa and Chinese schools, who multiplied pictures that had every merit except that of originality. These men, living in the past, paid little attention to the great popular movement, which seemed to be quite outside their social and artistic sphere and scarcely worthy of cultured criticism. It was in the middle of the 18th century that the decorative, but relatively feeble, Chinese art of the later Ming period found favour in Japan and a clever exponent in a painter named Ryurikyo. It must be regarded as a sad decadence from the old Chinese ideals, which was further hastened, from about 1765, by the popularity of the southern Chinese style. This was a weak affectation that found its chief votaries amongst literary men ambitious of an easily earned artistic reputation. The principal Japanese supporter of this school was Taigado (1722-1775), but the volume of copies of his sketches, _Taigado sansui juseki_, published about 1870, is one of the least attractive albums ever printed in Japan.

Fifth Period: Naturalistic School.

The fifth period was introduced by a movement as momentous as that which stamped its predecessor--the foundation of a naturalistic school under a group of men outside the orthodox academical circles. The naturalistic principle was by no means a new one; some of the old Chinese masters were naturalistic in a broad and noble manner, and their Japanese followers could be admirably and minutely accurate when they pleased; but too many of the latter were content to construct their pictures out of fragmentary reminiscences of ancient Chinese masterpieces, not presuming to see a rock, a tree, an ox, or a human figure, except through Chinese spectacles. It was a farmer's son named Okyo, trained in his youth to paint in the Chinese manner, who was first bold enough to adopt as a canon what his predecessors had only admitted under rare exceptions, the principle of an exact imitation of nature. Unfortunately, even he had not all the courage of his creed, and while he would paint a bird or a fish with perfect realism, he no more dared to trust his eyes in larger motives than did the most devout follower of Shubun or Motonobu. He was essentially a painter of the classical schools, with the speciality of elaborate reproduction of detail in certain sections of animal life, but fortunately this partial concession to truth, emphasized as it was by a rare sense of beauty, did large service.

Okyo rose into notice about 1775, and a number of pupils flocked to his studio in Shijo Street, Kioto (whence Shijo school). Amongst these the most famous were Goshun (1742-1811), who is sometimes regarded as one of the founders of the school; Sosen (1757-1821), an animal painter of remarkable power, but especially celebrated for pictures of monkey life; Shuho, the younger brother of the last, also an animal painter; Rosetsu (1755-1799), the best landscape painter of his school; Keibun, a younger brother of Goshun, and some later followers of scarcely less fame, notably Hoyen, a pupil of Keibun; Tessan, an adopted son of Sosen; Ippo and Yosai (1788-1878), well known for a remarkable set of volumes, the _Zenken kojitsu_, containing a long series of portraits of ancient Japanese celebrities. Ozui and Ojyu, the sons of Okyo, painted in the style of their father, but failed to attain great eminence. Lastly, amongst the associates of the Shijo master was the celebrated Ganku (1798-1837), who developed a special style of his own, and is sometimes regarded as the founder of a distinct school. He was, however, greatly influenced by Okyo's example, and his sons, Gantai, Ganryo, and Gantoku or Renzan, drifted into a manner almost indistinguishable from that of the Shijo school.

European School.

It remains only to allude to the European school, if school it can be called, founded by Kokan and Denkichi, two contemporaries of Okyo. These artists, at first educated in one of the native schools, obtained from a Hollander in Nagasaki some training in the methods and principles of European painting, and left a few oil paintings in which the laws of light and shade and perspective were correctly observed. They were not, however, of sufficient capacity to render the adopted manner more than a subject of curiosity, except to a few followers who have reached down to the present generation. It is possible that the essays in perspective found in the pictures of Hokusai, Hiroshige, and some of the popular artists of the 19th century, were suggested by Kokan's drawings and writings.

Sixth Period.

The sixth period began about 1875, when an Italian artist was engaged by the government as a professor of painting in the Engineering College at Tokyo. Since that time some distinguished European artists have visited Japan, and several Japanese students have made a pilgrimage to Europe to see for themselves what lessons may be gained from Western art. These students, confronted by a strong reaction in favour of pure Japanese art, have fought manfully to win public sympathy, and though their success is not yet crowned, it is not impossible that an Occidental school may ultimately be established. Thus far the great obstacle has been that pictures painted in accordance with Western canons are not suited to Japanese interiors and do not appeal to the taste of the most renowned Japanese connoisseurs. Somewhat more successful has been an attempt--inaugurated by Hashimoto Gaho and Kawabata Gyokusho--to combine the art of the West with that of Japan by adding to the latter the chiaroscuro and the linear perspective of the former. If the disciples of this school could shake off the Sesshu tradition of strong outlines and adopt the Kano Motonobu revelation of modelling by mass only, their work would stand on a high place. But they, too, receive little encouragement. The tendency of the time is conservative in art matters.

A series of magnificent publications has popularized art and its best products in a manner such as could never have been anticipated. The _Kokka_, a monthly magazine richly and beautifully illustrated and edited by Japanese students, has reached its 223rd number; the _Shimbi Daikan_, a colossal album containing chromoxylographic facsimiles of celebrated examples in every branch of art, has been completed in 20 volumes; the masterpieces of Korin and Motonobu have been reproduced in similar albums; the masterpieces of the _Ukiyo-e_ are in process of publication, and it seems certain that the Japanese nation will ultimately be educated to such a knowledge of its own art as will make for permanent appreciation. Meanwhile the intrepid group of painters in oil plod along unflinchingly, having formed themselves into an association (the _hakuba-kai_) which gives periodical exhibitions, and there are, in Tokyo and Kioto, well-organized and flourishing art schools which receive a substantial measure of state aid, as well as a private academy founded by Okakura with a band of seceders from the hybrid fashions of the Gaho system. Altogether the nation seems to be growing more and more convinced that its art future should not wander far from the lines of the past. (W. An.; F. By.)

Engraving.

Although a little engraving on copper has been practised in Japan of late years, it is of no artistic value, and the only branch of the art which calls for recognition is the cutting of wood-blocks for use either with colours or without. This, however, is of supreme importance, and as its technique differs in most respects from the European practice, it demands a somewhat detailed description.

The wood used is generally that of the cherry-tree, _sakura_, which has a grain of peculiar evenness and hardness. It is worked plankwise to a surface parallel with the grain, and not across it. A design is drawn by the artist, to whom the whole credit of the production generally belongs, with a brush on thin paper, which is then pasted face downwards on the block. The engraver, who is very rarely the designer, then cuts the outlines into the block with a knife, afterwards removing the superfluous wood with gouges and chisels. Great skill is shown in this operation, which achieves perhaps the finest facsimile reproduction of drawings ever known without the aid of photographic processes. A peculiar but highly artistic device is that of gradually rounding off the surfaces where necessary, in order to obtain in printing a soft and graduated mass of colour which does not terminate too abruptly. In printing with colours a separate block is made in this manner for each tint, the first containing as a rule the mere lines of the composition, and the others providing for the masses of tint to be applied. In all printing the paper is laid on the upper surface of the block, and the impression rubbed off with a circular pad, composed of twisted cord within a covering of paper cloth and bamboo-leaf, and called the _baren_. In colour-printing, the colours, which are much the same as those in use in Europe, are mixed, with rice-paste as a medium, on the block for each operation, and the power of regulating the result given by this custom to an intelligent craftsman (who, again, is neither the artist nor the engraver) was productive in the best period of very beautiful and artistic effects, such as could never have been obtained by any mechanical device. A wonderfully accurate register, or successive superposition of each block, is got mainly by the skill of the printer, who is assisted only by a mark defining one corner and another mark showing the opposite side limit.

The origins of this method of colour-printing are obscure. It has been practised to some extent in China and Korea, but there is no evidence of its antiquity in these countries. It appears to be one of the few indigenous arts of Japan. But before accepting this conclusion as final, one must not lose sight of the fact that the so-called chiaroscuro engraving was at the height of its use in Italy at the same time that embassies from the Christians in Japan visited Rome, and that it is thus possible that the suggestion at least may have been derived from Europe. The fact that no traces of it have been discovered in Japan would be easily accounted for, when it is remembered that the examples taken home would almost certainly have been religious pictures, would have been preserved in well-known and accessible places, and would thus have been entirely destroyed in the terrible and minute extermination of Christianity by Hideyoshi at the beginning of the 17th century. Japanese tradition ascribes the invention of colour-printing to Idzumiya Gonshiro, who, about the end of the 17th century, first made use of a second block to apply a tint of red (_beni_) to his prints. Sir Ernest Satow states more definitely that "Sakakibara attributes its origin to the year 1695, when portraits of the actor Ichikawa Danjiuro, coloured by this process, were sold in the streets of Yedo for five cash apiece." The credit of the invention is also given to Torii Kiyonobu, who worked at about this time, and, indeed, is said to have made the prints above mentioned. But authentic examples of his work now remaining, printed in three colours, seem to show a technique too complete for an origin quite so recent. However, he is the first artist of importance to have produced the broadsheets--for many years chiefly portraits of notable actors, historical characters and famous courtesans--which are the leading and characteristic use to which the art was applied. Pupils, the chief of whom were Kiyomasa, Kiyotsume, Kiyomitsu, Kiyonaga and Kiyomine, carried on his tradition until the end of the 18th century, the three earlier using but few colours, while the works of the two last named show a technical mastery of all the capabilities of the process.

The next artist of importance is Suzuki Harunobu (worked c. 1760-1780), to whom the Japanese sometimes ascribe the invention of the process, probably on the grounds of an improvement in his technique, and the fact that he seems to have been one of the first of the colour-print makers to attain great popularity. Katsukawa Shunsho (d. 1792) must next be mentioned, not only for the beauty of his own work, but because he was the first master of Hokusai; then Yeishi (worked c. 1781-1800), the founder of the Hosoda school; Utamaro (1754-1806), whose prints of beautiful women were collected by Dutchmen while he was still alive, and have had in our own day a vogue greater, perhaps, than those of any other of his fellows; and Toyokuni I. (1768-1825), who especially devoted himself to broadsheet portraits of actors and dramatic scenes. The greatest of all the artists of the popular school was, however, Hokusai (1760-1849). His most famous series of broadsheets is the _Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji_ (1823-1829), which, in spite of the conventional title, includes at least forty-six. His work is catalogued in detail by E. de Goncourt. At the beginning of the 19th century the process was technically at its greatest height, and in the hands of the great landscape artist, Hiroshige I., as well as the pupils of Toyokuni I.--Kunisada and Kuniyoshi--and those of Hokusai, it at first kept up an excellent level. But an undue increase in the number of blocks used, combined with the inferiority of the imported colours and carelessness or loss of skill in printing, brought about a rapid decline soon after 1840. This continued until the old traditions were well-nigh exhausted, but since 1880 there has been a distinct revival. The prints of the present day are cut with great skill, and the designs are excellent, though both these branches seem to lack the vigour of conception and breadth of execution of the older masters. The colours now used are almost invariably of cheap German origin, and though they have a certain prettiness--ephemeral, it is to be feared--they again can not compare with the old native productions. Among workers in this style, Yoshitoshi (d. c. 1898) was perhaps the best. Living artists in 1908 included Toshihide, Miyagawa Shuntei, Yoshiu Chikanobu--one of the elder generation--Tomisuka Yeishu, Toshikata and Gekko. Formerly the colour-print artist was of mean extraction and low social position, but he now has some recognition at the hands of the professors of more esteemed branches of art. This change is doubtless due in part to Occidental appreciation of the products of his art, which were formerly held in little honour by his own countrymen, the place assigned to them being scarcely higher than that accorded to magazine illustrations in Europe and America. But it is also largely due to his displays of unsurpassed skill in preparing xylographs for the beautiful art publications issued by the _Shimbi Shoin_ and the _Kokka_ company. These xylographs prove that the Japanese art-artisan of the present day was not surpassed by the greatest of his predecessors in this line. (E. F. S.; F. By.)

Book Illustration.

The history of the illustrated book in Japan may be said to begin with the _Ise monogatari_, a romance first published in the 10th century, of which an edition adorned with woodcuts appeared in 1608. In the course of the 17th century many other works of the same nature were issued, including some in which the cuts were roughly coloured by hand; but the execution of these is not as good as contemporary European work. The date of the first use of colour-printing in Japanese book illustration is uncertain. In 1667 a collection of designs for _kimono_ (garments) appeared, in which inks of several colours were made use of; but these were only employed in turn for single printings, and in no case were two of them used on the same print. It is certain, however, that the mere use of coloured inks must soon have suggested the combination of two or more of them, and it is probable that examples of this will be discovered much earlier in date than those known at present.