Part 1

[HARUNOBU. Lovers walking in Snow.]

HARUNOBU. Lovers walking in Snow.

Japanese Colour-Prints and Their Designers

A Lecture Delivered Before the Japan Society of New York on April 19, 1911

By Frederick William Gookin

New York The Japan Society

1913

CONTENTS

JAPANESE COLOUR-PRINTS AND THEIR DESIGNERS CATALOGUE OF A LOAN COLLECTION OF JAPANESE COLOUR-PRINTS INTRODUCTION CATALOGUE

ILLUSTRATIONS

HARUNOBU. Lovers walking in Snow. MORONOBU. Nobleman and two Ladies at Seashore. KIYOMASU. Actors’ Boating Party MASANOBU. Geisha playing Samisen. TOYONOBU. Actor reading Letter KIYOMITSU. Daimyo Procession Game. HARUNOBU. Young Woman before Torii. HARUNOBU. The Sleeping Elder Sister. HARUNOBU. The Sleeping Elder Sister. HARUNOBU. The Sleeping Elder Sister. HARUNOBU. Woman reading Letter. KORYUSAI. Musume leaping from Temple Balcony. SHUNSHO. Woman in Red. KIYONAGA. Holiday Group at Gotenyama. KIYONAGA. Picnic Party. BUNCHO. Actor as Woman talking to Men. KIYONAGA. Man and two Women approaching Temple. SHUNCHO. Women watching Girls bouncing Balls. EISHI. Fête in a nobleman’s palace. SHARAKU. Two Actors. UTAMARO. Woman with a Musical Toy. TOYOKUNI. Women in Bath House. HOKUSAI. Fuji from Ushibori. HIROSHIGE. Pines at Hammamatsu.

JAPANESE COLOUR-PRINTS AND THEIR DESIGNERS

In the annals of art production the colour-prints designed by the master artists of the Ukiyoé school occupy a unique place. They represent a plebeian art which was not a spontaneous upgrowth from the soil, but, so to speak, a down-growth or offshoot from an old and highly developed art of aristocratic lineage.

This elder art had its fountain-head in ancient China. That country, during the Tang and the Sung dynasties (618-905, 960-1280), was the seat of an aesthetic movement during which painting and other arts reached an extraordinarily high development. To the works produced during this great flowering-time of art the Japanese painters of the classical schools turned for inspiration and enlightenment. These works were distinguished by singleness of purpose, rhythmic vitality, and synthetic coherence, and by a clear conception of the essential that goes far beyond anything elsewhere attained, and which, when fully apprehended, must inevitably force a revision of Western ideas and criteria.

The art of ancient China and of the earlier Japanese schools is an art refined, poetic, and intensive to the last degree. It is based upon profound understanding of aesthetic laws. The artists were carefully grounded in the fundamental principles that govern all art, whether Oriental or Occidental. The result of this training is apparent in the homogeneity of their works. In Europe very confused notions have prevailed as to what should be done and what is permissible in art. Not even the great artists have always seen clearly; had they done so, it cannot be doubted that Western achievement would have attained a much higher level than it has ever reached.

In the Japanese modifications of the ancient Chinese art its traditions and aesthetic ideals were sedulously preserved. With only rare exceptions, the artists—and under this head it is necessary to include potters, lacquerers, metal-workers, swordsmiths, and others—were drawn from the upper classes. Many of them were in the service of the daimyo, and did not sell their productions, but received from their noble patrons regular stipends in koku of rice. Seldom did any of their works find their way into the hands of the common people, who had little opportunity, therefore, to become familiar with them. Gradually, however, as the number of paintings, statues, and other art objects multiplied and the temples were filled with votive offerings, the classical art made its impress upon buildings, wearing apparel, and utensils of all sorts; its conventions and principles were laid hold of by all classes and became the heritage of the entire people.

[MORONOBU. Nobleman and two Ladies at Seashore.]

MORONOBU. Nobleman and two Ladies at Seashore.

The social fabric in old Japan was one of sharp distinctions. At the upper end of the scale were the Emperor; the kuge, or court nobles; the daimyo, or lords of the two hundred and fifty-one provinces; and the samurai, or hereditary military men, from whom were recruited the officials, priests, and scholars. Between these and the lower classes was an almost immeasurable gulf. Highest among the heimen, or commoners, were the farmers. Below them were the artisans, and still lower were the merchants, innkeepers, servants, and the like; while lowest of all were the eta, or outcasts, a class comprising scavengers, butchers, leather-workers, and others engaged in what were considered degrading occupations.

Under the peaceful regime of the Tokugawa shoguns there was a sociological change that in the cities almost amounted to a transformation. The most salient feature was the rise of the tradesmen and artisans to wealth and power. Many places of amusement sprang up, restaurants and tea-houses multiplied, jugglers, story-tellers, musicians, and other itinerant entertainers found audiences in every street, fêtes were frequently held in the temple compounds, the theatre rose to a position of prominence, and the yukwaku, or courtesan quarters, with their medley of attractions, became established institutions.

The art of the Ukiyoé was a direct outcome of the gay life of this time. The inception of the school dates back to the closing years of the sixteenth century, when a reaction set in against the Chinese classicism of the Ashikaga period. This manifested itself in the choice of Japanese instead of Chinese subjects, and in novel treatment in which features of both the classic Kano and Tosa styles were combined, but which in many respects broke away from academic traditions. The reputed leader of the revolt was Iwasa Shoi, better known as Matahei, son of the Daimyo of Itami; but other distinguished artists, notably Kano Sanraku, also painted pictures in the new manner, which was not then held to constitute a distinct school. The subjects being drawn from the life of the people, these pictures were called Ukiyoé. É is the Japanese term for a picture or drawing.(1) Ukiyo, as originally written, had a Buddhistic signification and was applied to the secular as distinguished from the ecclesiastical world. Literally the word means “the miserable world,” but as now used it may be more accurately translated as “the passing (or floating) world of every-day life.”

Perhaps for the reason that Ukiyoé themes were not considered quite dignified, and because they did not express poetic ideas, the Ukiyo paintings of Matahei and his contemporaries and successors, though prized and much sought after, were seldom signed, and the identification of their authorship is a matter of extreme difficulty. For more than half a century works in this manner continued to be produced in considerable numbers, but the movement did not crystallize into a school until, in the person of Hishikawa Moronobu, a leader appeared to give it form and direction. Moronobu was an artist of rare distinction. His paintings were eagerly sought by the daimyos and the wealthier samurai. But Moronobu was a man of the people, and it was as a designer of book illustrations and later of ichimai-yé, or single-sheet prints, that he gave the impetus to Ukiyoé. For fifty years or more prior to his time books with engraved illustrations had been published in Japan, but they were comparatively few and the illustrations were poor and crudely executed. The twelve drawings Moronobu made for a book of instruction for women in etiquette and hygiene, published in 1659, marked a decided advance. This, so far as we know, was the first of a long series of books illustrated by him. Their popularity was deservedly great, and by them his fame became wide-spread. The illustrations were printed in black from blocks similar to those from which the text was printed, and were characterized by fine broad treatment and a rather wiry but strong and expressive outline.

About 1670 Moronobu began to issue large single-sheet prints which could be affixed to screens or mounted as kakemono. These prints, which were impressions in black from one block only, are known as sumi-yé—_sumi_ being the Japanese name for Chinese—or, as we incorrectly call it, India—ink. They were designed to be coloured by hand, and apparently a part of the edition was so coloured before being placed on sale by the publishers. At first this colouring consisted of a few touches of yellow-green crudely laid on; later it became more elaborate, and occasionally we meet with prints that are very beautifully coloured, but in such cases it is impossible to tell when or by whom the colouring was done. The probability is that in some instances it was the work of purchasers of the prints.

Moronobu’s pupils, of whom there were many, devoted themselves almost exclusively to painting. After his death in 1695, the production of prints fell chiefly into the hands of Torii Kiyonobu and his son Torii Kiyomasu, two artists who take rank among the most talented men of the Ukiyoé school. Moronobu had taken for the subjects of his prints historic incidents, the manners and customs of the people, and, in particular, women and their occupations and amusements. To these the Torii artists, seeing a new and fertile field for the print-designer in the rise of the theatre as a popular form of entertainment, added portraits of actors in the costumes of their most admired rôles. Especially esteemed were Kiyonobu’s portraits of the first DanjuÌroÌ. During the Genroku period (1688-1704) the people developed a passion for the theatre that amounted to veritable madness. In the first quarter of the eighteenth century this reached a height that sorely troubled the Tokugawa rulers. To check it various expedients—among them the exclusion of women from the stage—were tried. They only added fuel to the flame. Certain gross practices were abolished. This helped to purify the theatre, but also to perpetuate it by removing the seeds of what must inevitably have meant its early decay. Actors of distinguished ability became popular idols. Their comings and goings were like royal progresses. Wherever they went, were it to view the cherry blossoms at Ueno, for a boating party on the river, or for a visit to the Yoshiwara, they moved in state. Yet their rank in the social scale was so low that they were looked upon as little better than eta. The earliest actors were contemptuously termed _kawara-mono_ (river-bed folk), from the fact that the first theatrical performances in Japan were upon a stage erected in the dry bed of the Kamogawa at Kyoto. The stigma that attached to their origin and to the vulgarity of the early performances has never been entirely lifted. Many of the Ukiyoé artists felt it a degradation to make drawings of actors. Nevertheless the popular demand created a supply, and for more than a century a large proportion of the enormous output of prints consisted of theatrical scenes and portraits of the performers.

[KIYOMASU. Actors’ Boating Party]

KIYOMASU. Actors’ Boating Party

Many of the prints produced during the early years of the eighteenth century were large single figures of actors, geishas, and women of the Yoshiwara. These were broadly treated, with strong, free brush-strokes based upon the technique of the Kano masters and quite different from Moronobu’s style, which was more nearly like that of the Tosa painters. Each of the classical schools, I may explain, had its own peculiar methods, for which brushes of special shape were required. In their spontaneity, their freedom, their glorious sweep of line, these prints are among the finest works of the Ukiyoé school. Among them are many masterpieces of linear composition. Yet by the people of the upper classes they were regarded as hopelessly vulgar. Though the Kano painters used similar sweeping strokes, they laid great stress upon carefully modulated tone. The notan, or lightness and darkness of the ink in different parts of the drawing, was an essential quality. It should not be confused with chiaroscuro, the science of light and shade. Notan signifies merely difference in lightness and darkness of tone. In the early prints this did not appear. All the lines were uniformly black. And the addition of colouring which was looked upon as coarse and gaudy was a further offence to persons of refined taste.

Our vision not being hampered by the canons of the Kano academy, we can appreciate the distinguished character of these compositions. Unquestionably the brush-work of a Sesshu, a Motonobu, or a Tanyu—to name a few only of the most eminent of the Japanese painters—has a precious quality not to be found in any printed line.(2) Nevertheless the primitive Ukiyoé prints have a freshness and vital force peculiarly their own. The word “primitive” as applied to these prints calls for a word of explanation. They are primitive, not in their art, which is highly developed, but merely as regards its application to wood-engraving.

The failure of Japanese connoisseurs to appreciate Ukiyoé art is not, however, entirely or even principally because of its technique. The art of the classical schools is deeply imbued with poetic feeling and usually is dignified in subject. Ukiyoé art, on the contrary, is flippant, whimsical, comic. Except when it deals with portraits, landscapes, or birds and flowers—subjects that are not strictly Ukiyoé—it is seldom that the things depicted are intended to be taken quite seriously. In nearly every picture there is some joke, open or cleverly hidden, some amusing fantasy in the shape of a modern analogue or travesty of popular myth, well-known tale, or historical event. Sly hits at the vices or follies of the aristocrats are not uncommon. A very large proportion of the subjects deals with the theatre and the denizens of the Yoshiwara. To the Japanese of the upper classes Ukiyoé art was a synonym for the art of the underworld. It is not surprising that they failed to appreciate its merit. To give Ukiyoé paintings or prints an honourable place in one’s house was a confession of lack of taste. Were there no other reason, the subjects for the most part rendered them unfit, if not impossible. The prints were indeed amusing, and therefore many of them were saved; but they were looked upon much as we regard the pictures in our comic periodicals. Even when the art in these is good, it is hard to disassociate it from the humour and to enjoy it for itself alone. More commonly we fail to appreciate it as art or even to think of it as such. So it was with the prints. To the Japanese they appeared little better than children’s toys. In considering this we should not overlook the important circumstance that when first printed they were in general less charming than they are to-day. The wonderful colour that makes them so entrancing has come in large measure through the mellowing influence of time. Not infrequently this has wrought transformations that would seem incredible did not close study show clearly the changes that have taken place.

[MASANOBU. Geisha playing Samisen.]

MASANOBU. Geisha playing Samisen.

Even to-day inherited prejudice prevents wide-spread appreciation of the prints in the land of their origin. Our enthusiastic admiration is still more or less a mystery to our neighbours across the Pacific. Only now, when most of the fine prints have passed into the hands of European and American collectors, are the Japanese connoisseurs beginning to understand how it is that the Western art-lover, unfettered by any traditional point of view and not disturbed by any meanings the subject may hold or suggest, is able to perceive the glorious colour, the superb composition, the masterly treatment and rare beauty to which they have been blind.

The history of art is everywhere among civilized peoples a record of the influence of a succession of ideas, each in turn dominating for a longer or a shorter period the character of what is produced. When an idea has sufficient vitality to constitute the germ of a specific type of art, and artists of creative genius are inspired by it, the votaries working under the stimulus of a common ideal form what we designate as a school. “When left to pursue its course of development unchecked,” each marked type of art, as John Addington Symonds pointed out in one of his essays, “passes through stages corresponding to the embryonic, the adolescent, the matured, the decadent, and the exhausted,” This sequence, he showed, was clearly marked in the evolution of Italian painting, the Attic and the Elizabethan drama. Any of the classic schools of Japanese painting, the Kosé, the Yamato, the Sesshu, or the Kano, would furnish an excellent illustration, though in studying these movements it would be necessary to follow them back to their Chinese antecedents. The Ukiyoé school affords a particularly striking example. In the works of the earlier artists—Moronobu, Kiyonobu, Kiyomasu, and the KwaigetsudoÌ group—we find superabundant vigour, swift inspiration, and splendid though sometimes brutal force. The note of prophecy that these works contain is found also in those of the next generation of artists, foremost among whom was Okumura Masanobu. The fire of enthusiasm still glows brightly, but more attention is paid to subtleties of style, to beauty of detail, and to the development of technical processes. Hand-coloured prints are superseded by those in which the colour as well as the black outline is printed. Ukiyoé has become an art of the printed pictures which in large measure have taken the place of paintings.

Then, after a brief interval of eager experiment and rapid changes, comes the flowering-time, when a group of great artists turn out by the thousand works in which spiritual intensity is combined with grace, beauty, refinement of composition, and technical perfection. This is the epoch of Harunobu, ShunshoÌ, Shigemasa, Koryusai, Kiyonaga, and ShunchoÌ.

The decline of the initial impetus that brought the school into being is plainly apparent in the works of the next generation. Utamaro was an artist of the very first rank, whose genius cannot be gainsaid; Eishi and Toyokuni were only a little less brilliant; but it was their misfortune to come upon the scene when the cycle of animating ideas had been exhausted. Too virile to be content merely to echo the performances of their predecessors, they spent their energy in inventing variations upon the perfected type. It was the only course open to them, but it led steadily and swiftly downward, though neither the artists nor the people who gleefully applauded each successive innovation were conscious of the decadence.

With the appearance of still another generation of artists upon the scene, the degradation of the school was complete. Artistic feeling was obscured by blatant vulgarity and affectation. There was a steady letting down to the level of the popular taste, which was steadily lowered in consequence. The skill of the more able artists was expended in the production of works interesting chiefly as _tours de force,_ more remarkable for technical than for artistic merit; the tendency toward exaggerated drawing became more pronounced; colouring grew more crude, raw, and over-vivid. Coincident with this decline in the art of the Popular School was a change for the worse in the fashions of the time. Loud patterns for brocades and other fabrics came into vogue; garments became showy and elaborate; coiffures, more especially those of the demi-monde, were often startling in their extravagance. As the prints were accurate mirrors of contemporary life, in these changed fashions may be found a partial explanation of the inferiority of the works of the later men. The Ukiyoé RyuÌ was a school of design which laid its impress upon all of the arts. The prints were but one of its phases, though the principal and the most distinguished of them. The rise, culmination, and disintegration took place all along the line. Toward the middle of the nineteenth century the Ukiyoé school sank into the dotage of decrepitude, and then into the sleep from which there is no awakening. I choose this phrase deliberately. An art that is of the past can never be revived. We may strive to work in the style of Harunobu or of Kiyonaga. All we can do is to copy their forms and imitate their mannerisms. We cannot possibly get our inspiration from the same source as they; that dried up at the fountain-head long ago. The best work we can do in their style must necessarily lack creative force and be without a spark of real vitality.

Primarily the charm of the Ukiyoé colour-prints is due to the fact that the leading masters of the school were artists of exceptional power. It is also due to the fact that most of them(3) made print-designing their chief occupation, to which they devoted their thought, time, and skill, and that with rare exceptions they were less distinguished as painters.

[TOYONOBU. Actor reading Letter]

TOYONOBU. Actor reading Letter

From about 1670, when Moronobu began to issue single-sheet prints, until about 1742, a period of at least seventy years, the prints were in black outline and were coloured by hand. They were, in fact, cheap paintings. Early in the eighteenth century the chief pigment used in colouring them was red lead. The Japanese name for this pigment is tan, and the prints upon which it appears are designated as tan-yé. About 1710 yellow and citrine were commonly used with the tan. Four or five years later a new style of hand-colouring, said to have been devised by Torii Kiyonobu, came into vogue and greatly modified the style in which the prints were designed. In place of tan he substituted beni, a very beautiful but fugitive red extracted from the saffron. This was used in combination with a greenish yellow (probably gamboge) and low-toned blues and purples. Finer details were introduced into the designs, and the colouring in general was more carefully done. In response to a growing demand for less expensive pieces smaller prints (hoso-yé) became common. To give brilliance to the pigments a little thin lacquer (urushi) was mixed with them, and, while wet, parts of the design were sprinkled with metallic powder, which was probably applied by blowing it through a small bamboo tube. These prints were known as urushi-yé, or lacquer prints. A little later the custom grew up of painting parts of the prints with black lacquer.