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diff --git a/old/69418-0.txt b/old/69418-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 56fc189..0000000 --- a/old/69418-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,3024 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Impressions of Ukiyo-ye, the school of -the Japanese colour-print artists, by Dora Amsden - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Impressions of Ukiyo-ye, the school of the Japanese colour-print - artists - -Author: Dora Amsden - -Release Date: January 2, 2023 [eBook #69418] - -Language: English - -Produced by: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at - https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images - generously made available by The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE, THE -SCHOOL OF THE JAPANESE COLOUR-PRINT ARTISTS *** - - Transcriber’s Notes - -Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations -in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and -punctuation remains unchanged. - -Italics are represented thus _italic_. - -Each of the illustrations is accompanied by a fac-simile of the -artist’s signature. - - - - - [Illustration: Surimono: A Crow Stealing a Sword. This sword is a - famous heirloom of the ancient house of Genji, described in the old - romance known as “Genji Monogatari.” By Hokusai.] - - - [Illustration: Biwa, the Beautiful Lake, so named from its resemblance - in form to the Four-stringed Lute. By Hiroshige.] - - - - - IMPRESSIONS - OF UKIYO-YE - - THE SCHOOL OF - THE JAPANESE COLOUR-PRINT - ARTISTS - - BY - - DORA AMSDEN - - _The things of Heaven - and of Buddha: The Life of Men - and Women._ - - _From the Mang-wa of Hokusai._ - - [Illustration: Symbol] - - - PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY - SAN FRANCISCO AND NEW YORK - - - _Copyright 1905 - by_ PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY - - REVISED EDITION - - - The Tomoye Press - - - TO - MY BROTHER AND BEST FRIEND - CHARLES WATSON JACKSON - - - - - Contents. - - _Page_ - The Rise of Ukiyo-ye (The Floating World) 1 - - Genroku (The Golden Era of Romance and Art) 13 - - The School of Torii (The Printers Branch of Ukiyo-ye) 25 - - Utamaro (Le Fondateur de L’École de la Vie) 35 - - The Romance of Hokusai (Master of Ukiyo-ye) 47 - - Hiroshige (Landscape Painter and Apostle of Impressionism) 57 - - Analytical Comparisons between the Masters of Ukiyo-ye 69 - - Hints to Collectors of Ukiyo-ye Gems 77 - - Bibliography, for Use of Students 78 - - Fac-similes of the Most Famous Signatures of the Ukiyo-ye Artists 80 - - Index 83 - - - Illustrations. - - Hiroshige I—Biwa, the Beautiful Lake, named after the - four-stringed Lute _Frontispiece_ - - Suzuki Harunobu—An Illustration from the “Occupations of - Women” _Opposite Page_ 22 - - Kiyonaga—Under the Cherry Blooms “ 30 - - Toyokuni—The Actor Kikugoro “ 34 - - [A]Utamaro—While Mother Sleeps “ 40 - - Hokusai—Two Ladies “ 48 - - Hok’kei—A River Scene “ 52 - - Hiroshige—Wistaria Viewing at Kameido “ 58 - - Yeishi—Two Ladies “ 70 - - Shunko—An actor in the Miyako Dance “ 72 - - Kitugawa Yeizan—The Snowstorm “ 74 - - Hokusai—One of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji “ 76 - - Hokusai—Surimono: A Crow Stealing a Sword _First Fly-leaf_ - - Yanagawa Shigenobu—The Ride of the Warrior - Miura Kenisuke _Last Fly-leaf_ - -[Footnote A: From the Happer Collection.] - - - - - IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE - - - - - The Rise of Ukiyo-ye. - - The Floating World. - - -The Art of Ukiyo-ye is a “spiritual rendering of the realism and -naturalness of the daily life, intercourse with nature, and imaginings, -of a lively impressionable race, in the full tide of a passionate -craving for art.” This characterization of Jarves sums up forcibly the -motive of the masters of Ukiyo-ye, the Popular School of Japanese Art, -so poetically interpreted “The Floating World.” - -To the Passionate Pilgrim, and devotee of nature and art, who has -visited the enchanted Orient, it is unnecessary to prepare the way for -the proper understanding of Ukiyo-ye. This joyous idealist trusts less -to dogma than to impressions. “I know nothing of Art, but I know what -I like,” is the language of sincerity, sincerity which does not take -a stand upon creed or tradition, nor upon cut and dried principles -and conventions. It is truly said that “they alone can pretend to -fathom the depth of feeling and beauty in an alien art, who resolutely -determine to scrutinize it from the point of view of an inhabitant of -the place of its birth.” - -To the born cosmopolite, who assimilates alien ideas by instinct, -or the gauging power of his sub-conscious intelligence, the feat is -easy, but to the less intuitively gifted, it is necessary to serve a -novitiate, in order to appreciate “a wholly recalcitrant element like -Japanese Art, which at once demands attention, and defies judgment upon -accepted theories.” These sketches are not an individual expression, -but an endeavour to give in condensed form the opinions of those -qualified by study and research to speak with authority upon the form -of Japanese Art, which in its most concrete development the Ukiyo-ye -print is now claiming the attention of the art world. - -The development of colour printing is, however, only the objective -symbol of Ukiyo-ye, for, as our Western oracle, Professor Fenollosa, -said, “The true history of Ukiyo-ye, although including prints as one -of its most fascinating diversions, is not a history of the technical -art of printing, rather an æsthetic history of a peculiar kind of -design.” - -The temptation to make use of one more quotation, in concluding these -introductory remarks, is irresistible, for in it Walter Pater sets -his seal upon art as a legitimate pursuit, no matter what form it -takes, though irreconcilable with preconceived ideas and traditions. -“The legitimate contention is not of one age or school of art against -another, but of all successive schools alike, against the stupidity -which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to -form.” - -As the Popular School (Ukiyo-ye) was the outcome of over a thousand -years of growth, it is necessary to glance back along the centuries in -order to understand and follow the processes of its development. - -Though the origin of painting in Japan is shrouded in obscurity, and -veiled in tradition, there is no doubt that China and Corea were the -direct sources from which she derived her art; whilst more indirectly -she was influenced by Persia and India,—the sacred fount of oriental -art,—as of religion, which ever went hand in hand. - -In China, the Ming dynasty gave birth to an original style, which for -centuries dominated the art of Japan; the sweeping calligraphic strokes -of Hokusai mark the sway of hereditary influence, and his wood-cutters, -trained to follow the graceful, fluent lines of his purely Japanese -work, were staggered by his sudden flights into angular realism. - -The Chinese and Buddhist schools of art dated from the sixth century, -and in Japan the Emperor Heizei founded an imperial academy in 808. -This academy, and the school of Yamato, founded by Motomitsu in the -eleventh century, led up to the celebrated school of Tosa, which with -Kano, its august and aristocratic rival, held undisputed supremacy for -centuries, until challenged by plebeian Ukiyo-ye, the school of the -common people of Japan. - -Tosa has been characterized as the “manifestation of ardent faith, -through the purity of an ethereal style.” Tosa represented the taste -of the court of Kyoto, and was relegated to the service of the -aristocracy; it reflected the esoteric mystery of Shinto and the -hallowed entourage of the divinely descended Mikado. The ceremonial -of the court, its fêtes and religious solemnities,—dances attended -by daimios, in robes of state falling in full harmonious folds,—were -depicted with consummate elegance and delicacy of touch, which -betrayed familiarity with the occult methods of Persian miniature -painting. The Tosa artists used very fine, pointed brushes, and set -off the brilliance of their colouring with resplendent backgrounds -in gold leaf, and it is to Tosa we owe the intricate designs, almost -microscopic in detail, which are to be seen upon the most beautiful -specimens of gold lacquer work; and screens, which for richness have -never been surpassed. - -Japanese Art was ever dominated by the priestly hierarchy, and also by -temporal rulers, and of this the school of Tosa was a noted example, as -it received its title from the painter-prince, Tsunetaka, who, besides -being the originator of an artistic centre, held the position of -vice-governor of the province of Tosa. From its incipience, Tosa owed -its prestige to the Mikado and his nobles, as later Kano became the -official school of the usurping Shoguns. Thus the religious, political -and artistic history of Japan were ever closely allied. The Tosa style -was combated by the influx of Chinese influence, culminating in the -fourteenth century, in the rival school of Kano. The school of Kano -owed its origin to China. At the close of the fourteenth century the -Chinese Buddhist priest, Josetsu, left his own country for Japan, and -bringing with him Chinese tradition, he founded a new dynasty whose -descendants still represent the most illustrious school of painting in -Japan. The Kano school to this day continues to be the stronghold of -classicism, which in Japan signifies principally adherence to Chinese -models, a traditional technique, and avoidance of subjects which -represent every-day life. The Chinese calligraphic stroke lay at the -root of the technique of Kano, and the Japanese brush owed its facility -elementarily to the art of writing. Dexterous handling of the brush is -necessary to produce these bold, incisive strokes, and the signs of the -alphabet require little expansion to resolve themselves into draped -forms, and as easily they can be decomposed into their abstract element. - -Walter Crane inculcates the wisdom of this method for preliminary -practice with the brush in his valuable study, “Line and Form,” but -the Chinese and Japanese ideographs give a far wider scope to initial -brush work. - -The early artists of Kano reduced painting to an academic art, and -destroyed naturalism, until the genius of Masanobu, who gave his name -to the school, and still more, that of his son, Motonobu, the real -“Kano,” grafted on to Chinese models, and monotony of monochrome, a -warmth of colour and harmony of design which regenerated and revivified -the whole system. Kano yielded to Chinese influence, Tosa combated it, -and strove for a purely national art, Ukiyo-ye bridged the chasm, and -became the exponent of both schools, bringing about an expansion in art -which could never have been realized by these aristocratic rivals. The -vigour and force of the conquering Shoguns led Kano, while the lustre -of Tosa was an emanation from the sanctified and veiled Mikado. - -The favourite subjects of the Kano painters were chiefly Chinese saints -and philosophers, mythological and legendary heroes, represented in -various attitudes with backgrounds of conventional clouds and mists, -interspersed with symbolical emblems. Many of the Kano saints and -heroes bear a striking resemblance to mediæval subjects, as they are -often represented rising from billowy cloud masses, robed in ethereal -draperies, and with heads encircled by the nimbus. - -Beneath the brush of Motonobu, formal classicism melted. In this new -movement, says Kakuzo Okakura, “art fled from man to nature, and in the -purity of ink landscapes, in the graceful spray of bamboos and pines, -sought and found her asylum.” - -Space will not permit a glance at the personnel of the many schools of -Japanese Art. A lengthy catalogue alone would be required to enumerate -the masters who inaugurated schools, for if an artist developed -exceptional talent in Japan, he immediately founded an individual -school, and it was incumbent upon his descendants for generations to -adhere rigidly to the principles he had inculcated, so becoming slaves -to traditional methods. - -During the anarchy of the fourteenth century art stagnated in Japan, -but a revival, corresponding with our European Renaissance, followed. -The fifteenth century in Japan, as in Europe, was essentially the -age of revival. Wm. Anderson epitomizes in one pregnant phrase this -working power: “All ages of healthy human prosperity are more or less -revivals. A little study would probably show that the Ptolemaic era in -Egypt was a renaissance of the Theban age, in architecture as in other -respects, while the golden period of Augustus in Rome was largely a -Greek revival.” There seems ever to have been a reciprocal action in -Japanese Art. Tosa, famed for delicacy of touch, minutiæ of detail and -brilliance of colour, yielded to the black and white, vigorous force of -Kano. Kano again was modified by the glowing colouring introduced by -Kano Masanobu and Motonobu. Later we see the varied palette of Miyagawa -Choshun efface the monochromic simplicity of Moronobu, the ringleader -of the printers of Ukiyo-ye. - -The leading light in art in the beginning of the fifteenth century was -Cho Densu, the Fra Angelico of Japan, who, a simple monk, serving in a -Kyoto temple, must in a trance of religious and artistic ecstasy have -beheld a spectrum of fadeless dyes, so wondrous were the colours he -lavished upon the draperies of his saints and sages. The splendour of -this beatific vision has never faded, for the masters who followed in -the footsteps of the inspired monk reverently preserved the secret of -these precious shades, till at last, in the form of the Ukiyo-ye print, -they were sown broadcast, and revolutionized the colour sense of the -art world. - -It has been remarked that Japanese Art of the nineteenth century is -often nothing but a reproduction of the works of the ancient great -masters, and the methods and mannerisms of the fifteenth century -artists have ever served as examples for later students. The glory of -the fifteenth century was increased by Mitsunobu of Tosa, and above -all by the two great Kano artists, Masanobu and his son, Motonobu, who -received the title of “Hogen,” and is referred to as “Ko Hogen,” or the -ancient Hogen, of whom it has been remarked, “He filled the air with -luminous beams.” - -By the close of the fifteenth century the principles of art in -Japan became definitely fixed, as, almost contemporaneously, Giotto -established a canon of art in Florence, which he, in turn, had received -from the Attic Greeks, through Cimabue, and which was condensed by -Ruskin into a grammar of art, under the term “Laws of Fésole.” - -The two great schools, Tosa and Kano, flourished independently until -the middle of the eighteenth century, when the genius of the popular -artists, forming the school of Ukiyo-ye, gradually fused the traditions -of Tosa and Kano, absorbing the methods of these rival schools,—which, -differing in technique and motive, were united in their proud disdain -of the new art which dared to represent the manners and customs of the -common people. Harunobu and Hokusai, Kiyonaga and Hiroshige were the -crowning glory of all the schools,—the artists whose genius told the -story of their country, day by day, weaving a century of history into -one living encyclopedia, sumptuous in form, kaleidoscopic in colour. - -Ukiyo-ye prepared Japan for intercourse with other nations by -developing in the common people an interest in other countries, in -science and foreign culture, and by promoting the desire to travel, -through the means of illustrated books of varied scenes. To Ukiyo-ye, -the Japanese owed the gradual expansion of international consciousness, -which culminated in the revolution of 1868,—a revolution, the most -astonishing in history, accomplished as if by miracle; but the esoteric -germ of this seemingly spontaneous growth of Meiji lay in the atelier -of the artists of Ukiyo-ye. - -To trace the evolution of the Popular School in its development through -nearly three centuries is a lengthy study, of deep interest. The mists -of uncertainty gather about the lives of many apostles of Ukiyo-ye, -from the originator, Iwasa Matahei, to Hiroshige, one of the latest -disciples, whose changes of style and diversity of signature have given -rise to the supposition that as many as three artists are entitled to -the name. These mists of tradition cannot be altogether dispersed by -such indefatigable students as M. Louis Gonse, Professor Fenollosa, M. -Edmond de Goncourt, Wm. Anderson, John S. Happer and many others, but -by their aid the methods of Oriental Art are clarified and explained. - -Iwasa Matahei, the date of whose birth is given as 1578, is considered -to be the originator of the Popular School. The spontaneous growth of -great movements and the mystery of the source of genius are illustrated -in the career of Matahei. His environment fitted him to follow in the -footsteps of his master, Mitsunori of Tosa. Yet the city of Kyoto, -veiled in mystic sanctity, where religion and princely patronage held -art in conventional shackles, gave birth to the leader of the Popular -School. Still, was not Kyoto, the sacred heart of Japan, a fit cradle -for Ukiyo-ye, the life and soul of the Japanese people? - -Matahei and his followers entered into the spirit of the Japanese -temperament, and from the Popular School sprang liberty and a novelty -of horizon. The aristocratic schools had confined themselves to -representations of princely pageantry, to portraiture, and to ideal -pictures of mythical personages, saints and sages. The tradition -of China showed in all their landscapes, which reflected ethereal -vistas classically rendered, of an alien land. Therefore Matahei was -contemptuously disowned by Tosa for depicting scenes from the life of -his countrymen, yet the technique of Kano and Tosa were the birthright -of the artists of Ukiyo-ye, an inalienable inheritance in form, into -which they breathed the spirit of life, thus revivifying an art grown -cold and academical, and frosted with tradition. The colouring of Kano -had faded, tending continually toward monochrome, but the Ukiyo-ye -painters restored the use of gorgeous pigments, preserving the glory of -Kano Yeitoku, the court painter to Hideyoshi. - -In the middle of the seventeenth century appeared Hishigawa Moronobu, -considered by many to be the real founder of Ukiyo-ye. His genius -welded with the new motif the use of the block for printing, an -innovation which led to the most characteristic development in -Ukiyo-ye art. This art of printing, which originated in China and -Corea, had, until the beginning of the seventeenth century, been -confined solely to the service of religion for the reproduction of -texts and images, but Moronobu conceived the idea of using the form of -printed book illustration, just coming into vogue, as a channel to set -forth the life of the people. Besides painting and illustrating books, -he began printing single sheets, occasionally adding to the printed -outlines dashes of colour from the brush, principally in orange and -green. These sheets, the precursors of the Ukiyo-ye prints, superseded -the _Otsu-ye_,—impressionistic hand-paintings, draughted hastily for -rapid circulation. The _Otsu-ye_ were sometimes richly illuminated, the -largest surfaces in the costumes being filled in with a ground of black -lacquer, and ornamented with layers of gold leaf attached by varnish. - -Moronobu acquired his technique from both Tosa and Kano, but was -originally a designer for the rich brocades and tissues woven in Kyoto. -He added to this art that of embroidery, and leaving Kyoto, took up -this branch at the rival city Yedo, where all the arts and crafts -were developing under the fostering care of the Tokugawa Shoguns, the -dynasty with which Ukiyo-ye art is practically co-extensive. It was -Hishigawa Moronobu who designed for his countrywomen their luxurious -trailing robes, with enormous sleeves, richly embroidered,—gorgeous -and stately garments which he loved to reproduce on paper, with -marvellous powers of sweeping line. As in all fashions of dress, in -time the graceful lines became exaggerated until, in the beginning of -the nineteenth century, they overstepped the limits of beauty, and -approached the realm of caricature. Today, in the modern poster, we -see perpetuated the degenerate offspring of the genius of Moronobu, of -whom it is remarked that his enlarged compositions have the plasticity -of bas-reliefs. - -An artist who greatly influenced Moronobu was Tanyu, of the School of -Kano, whose masterpiece may be seen at the great temple in Kyoto,—four -painted panels of lions, of indescribable majesty. M. Louis Gonse -tells us that one of Tanyu’s kakemonos, belonging to a celebrated -French painter, well sustains the test of comparison with its companion -pictures, in the artist’s studio, by Durer, Rembrandt and Rubens. Under -Tanyu’s direction the task of reproducing the old masterpieces was -undertaken. The artists of Ukiyo-ye were ever ready to profit by the -teaching of all the schools; therefore, properly to follow the methods -of the Popular School, we must study the work of the old masters and -the subjects from which they derived their inspiration. - -In this brief resumé we cannot follow the fluctuations of Japanese -Art through the centuries. During long periods of conflict and bloody -internecine strife, art languished; when peace reigned, then in the -seclusion of their _yashikis_ these fierce and princely warriors threw -down their arms and surrendered themselves to the service of beauty and -of art. Nor had the dainty inmates of their castles languished idly -during these stirring times. Often they defended their honour and their -homes against treacherous neighbours. It was a Japanese woman who led -her conquering countrymen into Corea. In the arts of peace the cultured -women of Japan kept pace with their lovers and husbands. A woman -revised and enlarged the alphabet, and some of the most beautiful -classic poems are ascribed to them. Well might the Japanese fight -fiercely for his altar and home, with the thought of the flower-soft -hands that were waiting to strip him of his armour and stifle with -caresses the recollection of past conflict. The early history of Japan -suggests a comparison with ancient Greece, and the Japanese poets might -have apostrophized their country, as did Byron the land of his adoption: - - “The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! - Where burning Sappho loved and sung, - Where grew the arts of war and peace,— - Where Delos rose, and Phœbus sprung!” - -Happily Japan, unlike Greece, withstood the enervating influences of -luxury and the passionate adoration of beauty. Princes laboured alike -with chisel and with brush, and the loftiest rulers disdained not the -tool of the artisan. Art Industrial kissed Grand Art, which remained -virile beneath the sturdy benediction. Therefore Japan lives, unlike -Greece, whose beauty in decay called forth that saddest of dirges, -ending, - - “’Tis Greece, but living Greece no more.” - -In Japan, art lightens the burden of labour, utility and beauty go hand -in hand, and the essential and the real reach upward, and touch the -beautiful and the ideal. - - - - - Genroku. - - The Golden Era of Romance and Art. - - -The Nen-go of Genroku, from 1688 to 1703, was that period of -incomparable glory which the Japanese revere as the French do the time -of Louis the Fourteenth. Peace had long reigned and art flourished -under the fostering care of the Tokugawa Shoguns. - -Then lived the great worker in lacquer, Korin, pupil of Sotatsu, the -flower painter, unrivalled artists who had absorbed the secrets of both -Kano and Tosa. Itcho, the grand colourist, flourished, and Kenzan, -brother of Korin, the “Exponent in pottery decoration of the Korin -School.” - -Yedo, the new capital of the usurping Tokugawas, now became the -Mecca of genius, rivalling the ancient metropolis Kyoto, for the -great Shoguns encouraged art in all forms, not disdaining to enroll -themselves as pupils to the masters in painting and lacquer. The -greatest ruler became one of the greatest artists, even assuming the -art title of Sendai Shogun. In this age the height of perfection was -reached in metal work, both chased and cast. - -“The sword is the soul of the Samurai,” says the old Japanese motto, -therefore its decoration and adornment was a sacred service to which -genius delighted to dedicate itself. In Japan the greatest artists -were sometimes carvers and painters and workers in metals in one, and -suggest comparison with the European masters of two centuries earlier. -Did not Botticelli take his name from the goldsmith for whom he worked, -and Leonardo da Vinci began his art life by “twisting metal screens -for the tombs of the Medici”? Later we see him playing before his -patron, Francesco, in Milan, upon that weird silver harp he had himself -constructed, till at last, perfected in art, he projected upon canvas -the Mona Lisa, that “realization of strange thoughts and fantastic -reveries and exquisite passions.” - -Also in Japan, as in Europe, the genius of the nation was consecrated -to the dead. More than half of Michelangelo’s life was devoted to the -decoration of tombs, and the shrines of the Shoguns are the greatest -art monuments in Japan. Preoccupation with graves perhaps enabled the -Japanese to face death so readily, even embracing it upon the slightest -pretext. - -Genroku was the acme of the age of chivalry. Its tales of deadly duels -and fierce vendettas are the delight of the nation. The history of the -Forty-seven Ronin equals any mediæval tale of bloodthirsty vengeance -and feudal devotion. This Japanese vendetta of the seventeenth century -is still re-enacted upon the stage, and remains the most popular drama -of the day, and the actor designers of Torii ever delighted in it as -a subject for illustration. A brief outline of the story may be of -interest and serve to recall its charming interpretation by Mitford. - -The cause of this famous drama of vendetta was the avarice of -Kotsuki-no-Suke, a courtier of the Shogun at Yedo who might have served -as prototype for “Pooh Bah,” in Gilbert’s clever burlesque. This -pompous official was detailed to receive at his castle and instruct in -court etiquette two provincial noblemen, to whom had been assigned the -onerous task of entertaining the Mikado’s envoy from Kyoto. In return -for this tutelage they duly sent many gifts to Kotsuki-no-Suke, but -not costly enough to gratify the rapacity of the Gilbertian minister, -who day by day became more insufferably arrogant, not having been -“sufficiently insulted.” - -Then a counsellor of one of these great lords, being wise in his -generation, and fearing for his master’s safety, rode at midnight -to the castle of the greedy official, leaving a present or bribe of -a thousand pieces of silver. This generous donation had the desired -effect. - -“You have come early to court, my lord,” was the suave welcome the -unconscious nobleman received the next morning. “I shall have the -honour of calling your attention to several points of etiquette today.” -The next moment the countenance of Kotsuki-no-Suke clouded, and, -turning haughtily toward his other pupil from whom no largesse had been -received, he cried, “Here, my lord of Takumi, be so good as to tie -for me the ribbon of my sock,” adding under his breath, “boor of the -provinces.” - -“Stop, my lord!” cried Takumi-no-Kami, and, drawing his dirk, he flung -it at the insolent nobleman’s head. Then a great tumult arose. His -court cap had saved from death Kotsuki-no-Suke, and he fled from the -spot, whilst Takumi-no-Kami was arrested, and to divert the disgrace of -being beheaded, hastily performed hari-kiri; his goods and castle were -confiscated and his retainers became Ronin (literally “Wave Men”), cast -adrift to follow their fortunes, roving at will. - -The vendetta, sworn to and carried out by these forty-seven faithful -servants, is the sequel of the story. Oishi Kuranosuki, the chief -of the Ronin, planned the scheme of revenge. To put Kotsuki-no-Suke -off his guard, the band dispersed, many of them under the disguise of -workmen taking service in the _yashiki_ of their enemy in order to -become familiar with the interior of the fortification. - -Meanwhile Kuranosuki, to further mislead his enemies, plunged into -a life of wild dissipation, until Kotsuki-no-Suke, hearing of his -excesses, relaxed his own vigilance, only keeping half the guard he had -at first appointed. The wife and friends of Kuranosuki were greatly -grieved at his loose conduct, for he took nobody into his confidence. -Even a man from Satsuma, seeing him lying drunk in the open street, -dared to kick his body, muttering, “Faithless beast, thou givest -thyself up to women and wine, thou art unworthy of the name of a -Samurai.” - -But Kuranosuki endured the contumely, biding his time, and at last, in -the winter of the following year, when the ground was white with snow, -the carefully planned assault was successfully attempted. The castle -of Kotsuki-no-Suke was taken, but what was the consternation of the -brave Ronin, when, after a prolonged search, they failed to discover -their victim! In despair, they were about to despatch themselves, in -accordance with their severe code of honour, when Kuranosuki, pushing -aside a hanging picture, discovered a secret courtyard. There, hidden -behind some sacks of charcoal, they found their enemy, and dragged him -out, trembling with cold and terror, clad in his costly nightrobe of -embroidered white satin. Then humbly kneeling, Oishi Kuranosuki thus -addressed him: “My lord, we beseech you to perform Seppuku (happy -despatch). I shall have the honour to act as your lordship’s second, -and when, with all humility, I shall have received your lordship’s -head, it is my intention to lay it as an offering upon the grave of our -master, Asano-Takumi-no-Kami.” Unfortunately, the carefully planned -programme of the Ronin failed to recommend itself to Kotsuki-no-Suke, -and he declined their polite invitation to disembowel himself, -whereupon Kuranosuki at one stroke cut off the craven head, with the -blade used by his master in taking his own life. - -So in solemn procession the Forty-seven Ronin, bearing their enemy’s -head, approached the Temple of Sengakuji, where they were met by the -abbot of the monastery, who led them to their master’s tomb. There, -after washing in water, they laid it, thus accomplishing the vendetta; -then praying for decent burial and for masses, they took their own -lives. - -Thus ended the tragic story, and visitors to the temple are still shown -the receipt given by the retainers of the son of Kotsuki-no-Suke for -the head of their lord’s father, returned to them by the priest of -Sengakuji. Surely it is one of the weirdest relics to take in one’s -hand, this memorandum, the simple wording of which but adds to its -horror: - -Item—One head. - -Item—One paper parcel, and then the signatures of the two retainers -beneath. - -Another manuscript is also shown, in which the Ronin addressed their -departed lord, laying it upon his tomb. It is translated thus by -Mitford: - -“The fifteenth year of Genroku, the twelfth month, and fifteenth day. -We have come this day to do homage here, forty-seven men in all, from -Oishi Kuranosuki, down to the foot soldier, Terasaka Kichiyemon, all -cheerfully about to lay down our lives on your behalf. We reverently -announce this to the honoured spirit of our dead master. On the -fourteenth day of the third month of last year our honoured master was -pleased to attack Kira-Kotsuki-no-Suke, for what reason we know not. -Our honoured master put an end to his own life, but Kotsuki-no-Suke -lived. Although we fear that after the decree issued by the Government, -this plot of ours will be displeasing to our master, still we who have -eaten of your food could not without blushing repeat the verse, ‘Thou -shalt not live under the same heaven nor tread the same earth with the -enemy of thy father or lord,’ nor could we have dared to leave hell and -present ourselves before you in paradise, unless we had carried out the -vengeance which you began. Every day that we waited seemed as three -autumns to us. Verily we have trodden the snow for one day, nay for two -days, and have tasted food but once. The old and decrepit, the sick and -ailing, have come forth gladly to lay down their lives. Having taken -counsel together last night, we have escorted my lord, Kotsuki-no-Suke, -hither to your tomb. This dirk by which our honoured lord set great -store last year, and entrusted to our care, we now bring back. If your -noble spirit be now present before this tomb, we pray you as a sign to -take the dirk, and striking the head of your enemy with it a second -time to dispel your hatred forever. This is the respectful statement of -forty-seven men.” - -There were forty-seven Ronin. Why, then, do forty-eight tomb-stones -stand beneath the cedars at Sengakuji? Truly the answer has caused -tears to fall from the eyes of many a visiting pilgrim, for the -forty-eighth tomb holds the body of the Satsuma man, who in an agony of -grief and remorse ended his life, and was buried beside the hero, whose -body he had scornfully trampled upon in the streets of sacred Kyoto. - -This history of the Forty-seven Ronin is an epitome of Japanese ethics, -for in it is exemplified their feudal devotion, their severe code -of honour, their distorted vision of duty and fealty to a superior, -justifying the most lawless acts. Thus the conduct of Kuranosuki during -his wild year of reckless abandonment, in which he threw off all moral -restraint in order to deceive his enemy, breaking the heart of his -faithful and devoted wife, was considered by his countrymen meritorious -and a proof of his devotion. The Ukiyo-ye artists, who loved to take -for models the beautiful denizens of the “Under World,” chose this -obsession of Kuranosuki as the subject for many of their illustrations, -so that at a first glance the series might almost be mistaken for -scenes from the life of the Yoshiwara. - -Here and there, however, we come across the Ronin engaged in terrific -conflict with Kotsuki-no-Suke’s retainers. Cruel and bloodthirsty are -the blades of their relentless katanas, which once unsheathed must be -slaked in human blood, and their garments, slashed into stiletto-like -points of inky blackness, forming a _chevaux de frise_ round their -fierce faces, seem scintillant with the spirit of vendetta. - -In examining the sets of impressions, illustrating the popular story, -it is hard to give preference to any special artist: to choose -between the Utamaro-like violets and greens of Yeisen; the rich -dark tints and fine backgrounds of Kunisada; the delicately massed -detail of Toyokuni, unlike the usual boldness of his style, and the -varied sword-play of the versatile Hiroshige, set in a frosted, snowy -landscape. Hokusai, who abjured theatrical subjects after breaking away -from the tutelage of Shunsho, published a series of prints illustrating -the famous vendetta, but as his great-grandfather had been a retainer -of Kotsuki-no-Suke, losing his life during the midnight attack, the -story formed part of his ancestral history. The series is signed Kako, -and the sweeping lines and contours of the female figures show the -Kiyonaga influence. Yellow preponderates, outlining the buildings and -long interior vistas, and the impressions are framed with a singular -convention of Hokusai at that period, drifting cloud effects in -delicate pink. Utamaro also illustrated the story, substituting for the -Ronin the forms of women, a favourite conceit of the artist of beauty. - -This digression in favour of the masters of the Popular School has -carried us over a hundred years, and we must return to the close of -the seventeenth century. Moronobu illustrated the carnival of Genroku, -but toward the end of the century, under the domination of a Shogun -who combined the qualities of extravagance and profligacy with the -delirious superstition of a Louis the Eleventh, a period of unbridled -license set in. The military men, who were the nation’s models, -forgot their fine traditions and fell from their estate, so that the -latter manners and customs of Genroku became a by-word. Then followed -a puritanical reaction. Under the eighth Shogun, the knights were -restricted from attending the theatre, just coming into favour, and the -looser haunts of pleasure were strictly under ban. The Ukiyo-ye print, -being the medium for illustrating these joys and pleasures, forbidden -to the great, but still indulged in by the people, was strictly -condemned, and to this day the aristocracy of Japan accord but grudging -and unwilling recognition to the merits of the masters of Ukiyo-ye, the -old caste prejudice still blinding their artistic sense. - -At this stage Ukiyo-ye broke into rival schools, the founders of both -belonging to the academy of Hishigawa Moronobu. The leader of the -first, the school of painting, was Miyagawa Choshun, who in order to -preserve aristocratic patronage and praise, eschewed the use of the -printing-block, still taking his subjects from the “floating world,” -and so being in one sense at unity with the other branch, that of -printing founded by Kiyonobu, the first master of the great Torii -School. As the Print artists are our subject matter we cannot follow -the other branch of Ukiyo-ye, founded by Miyagawa Choshun, but leaving -the atelier of the painters, we must devote ourselves to the fortunes -of the Torii School, the laboratory of the Ukiyo-ye print, working -parallel with the pictorial school for the first half of the eighteenth -century. - -The first sheets of Kiyonobu (about 1710), the founder of the Torii -School, were printed in ink from a single block. Part of the edition -would be issued in this uncoloured form, the rest being coloured by -hand. The colours most used were olive and orange, these prints being -called _Tan-ye_, whilst those in ink were named _Sumi-ye_. Urishi-ye -(lacquer pictures), was the generic term for hand-painted prints. -_Beni-ye_ (literally red pictures), followed the Urishi-ye. They were -printed in two tones, rose and pale green, enforced by black, a harmony -exquisite in delicacy. The use of the multiple colour blocks gave rise -to the title _Nishiki-ye_, or brocade paintings. The national mania for -the stage induced Kiyonobu and his followers to take for their subjects -popular actors, and the theatrical poster may be said to date from the -decade following Genroku. - -Later in the century the process of colour-printing by the substitution -of blocks for flat colours was gradually evolved, and to no special -artist or engraver can the credit be given, for all contributed to its -development, though the genius of Suzuki Harunobu drew to a focus in -1765 the achievements of his brother artists, and it was he who solved -the problem of uniting the skill of the engraver with the full palette -of Miyagawa Choshun and his follower Shunsui, thus uniting the two -branches of Ukiyo-ye art. - -The Popular School, however, is bound up with print development. -Japanese book illustration and single-sheet printing revolutionized the -world’s art. The great connoisseurs of colour tell us that nowhere else -is anything like it, so rich and so full, that a print comes to have -every quality of a complete painting. - -The other leaders of the Torii School were Torii Kiyomasu and Okumura -Masanobu, namesake of the great founder of Kano, who must not be -confounded with the later artist of the same name, belonging to the -school of Kitao. Masanobu deserves special mention, for his style being -chiefly pictorial, and his subjects not confined to the stage, he -formed a link between the painter’s atelier and his own. - - [Illustration: An illustration from “The Occupations of Women.” By - Suzuki Harunobu, who, though a worker in prints, styled himself - “Yamato Yeshi,” the title assigned to the great court painters.] - -He realized that book prints rather than actor prints ought to be the -most potent force of Ukiyo-ye. - -Shigenaga followed in the footsteps of Masanobu, but his fame is -eclipsed by that of his great pupil Harunobu, whose genius was -displayed not only by the introduction of new colours upon the -printing-block, but by his schemes of arrangement, juxtaposition of -shades, and marvellous handling of the areas between the printed -outlines. This restriction of measured spaces does not cramp the -painter’s individuality and sweep of brush; rather, they set him free -to concentrate his genius upon blended harmonies, and interwoven -schemes of colour, and to surrender himself to the intoxication of the -palette. - -Suzuki Harunobu revolutionized the status of the Popular School, -pronouncing this dictum, “Though I am a worker in prints I shall -hereafter style myself ‘Yamato Yeishi,’” the title assumed by the -ancient court painters. A national painter he declared himself, let -him deny who dare, working through the new medium of the despised and -ostracized Ukiyo-ye print from which he determined to remove the stigma -of vulgarity. - -Now we see a strange transposition in the aims of the popular artists. -Harunobu, though a pupil of Shigenaga, the printer, took for his models -the subjects of the painter Shunsui, successor to Miyagawa Choshun, and -by rejecting stage motives discarded the Torii tradition. From Shunsui, -Harunobu borrowed the ineffable grace and refinement which breathe from -the forms of his women, from the painter he stole colour harmonies and -designs with landscape backgrounds, which the Torii School had hitherto -ignored. The introduction of genre painting, though attributed by -Walter Pater to Giorgione, applies equally to the work of Harunobu -and his follower Koriusai. “He is the inventor of genre, of those -easily movable pictures which serve neither for uses of devotion nor -of allegorical or historical teaching: little groups of real men and -women, amid congruous furniture or landscape, morsels of actual life, -conversation or music or play, refined upon and idealized till they -come to seem like glimpses of life from afar. People may move those -spaces of cunningly blent colour readily and take them with them where -they go, like a poem in manuscript, or a musical instrument, to be used -at will as a means of self-education, stimulus or solace, coming like -an animated presence into one’s cabinet, and like persons live with us -for a day or a lifetime.” Must not such an influence have descended -upon Whistler when, saturated with the atmosphere of Hiroshige, he -imagined that most beautiful of his “Nocturnes” described by Theodore -Child as “a vision in form and colour, in luminous air, a Japanese -fancy realized on the banks of the gray Thames”? - - - - - The School of Torii. - - The Printers’ Branch of Ukiyo-ye. - - -The Torii School was pre-eminently the exponent of the drama. It -was bound up with stage development and ministered to the emotional -temperament of the nation; leading in what may be considered a national -obsession, a mania for actors and actor-prints. - -A fascinating subject is this century of dramatic evolution fostered -by the printers’ branch of the Popular School. The actor had been -consigned, in dark feudal days, to the lowest rung in the ladder of -caste, ranking next to the outcast (_Eta_), as in early English days -the strolling player was associated with tinkers and the other vagrant -population. - -The _No Kagura_ and lyric drama,—suggesting the mediæval and passion -plays of Europe,—prefigured the modern drama in Japan, but the -immediate precursor of the present theatre was the Puppet Show, a -Japanese apotheosis of our Marionette performances. It is interesting -to note that Toyokuni, who M. Louis Gonse declared has carried further -than any one the power of mimetic art, and with whose theatrical scenes -we are most familiar, began his career as a maker of dolls, and these -puppets were eagerly sought for as works of art. - -If the aphorism “not to go to the theatre is like making one’s toilet -without a mirror,” be true, then the Japanese are justified in their -national stage passion, which overshadows the love of any other -amusement. Taking the phrase literally, it was to the persons of the -actors, and the printers who spread their pictures broadcast, that the -people owed the æsthetic wonders of their costume. The designers were -also artists, as instanced by Hishigawa Moronobu, the Kyoto designer -and Yedo embroiderer, the printer and painter, illustrator of books and -originator of Ukiyo-ye. - -Enthusiasm for the portraits of actors, fostered by the Torii printers -from the foundation of the school by Kiyonobu, about 1710, hastened -no doubt the development of colour-printing. As early as Genroku, the -portrait of Danjuro, the second of the great dynasty of actors, who by -their genius helped to brighten the fortunes of the playhouse, was sold -for five cash, in the streets of the capital. - -The combined genius of the artists, engravers and printers of Ukiyo-ye -evolved and perfected the use of the multiple colour-block. Toward the -middle of the century, under the waning powers of Torii Kiyomitsu, -successor to Kiyonobu, the school seemed sinking into oblivion, for -Harunobu, its rightful exponent, filled with visions of ethereal -refinement, scorned the theatrical arena. When most needed, however, -a prophet arose in the person of Shunsho, the painter, the pupil of -Shunsui and master of Hokusai, thus completing the transformation -begun by Harunobu. The great scions of the rival branches of Ukiyo-ye, -printing and painting, stepped into each other’s places and bridged the -chasm, which threatened the unity of the Popular School. - -Both branches were united, however, in the use of the multiple -colour-blocks, but although Shunsho followed Harunobu’s experiments in -colouring, varying his actor designs with domestic scenes and book -illustrations, Harunobu resolutely refused to portray the life of the -stage, and in this determination he was followed by his pupil and -successor, Koriusai. - -About the year 1765, the art of printing colours, by the use of -individual blocks, technically called chromo-xylography, was perfected. -It is an interesting reflection, from the standpoint of Buddhism,—which -teaches that in the fullness of time, the great masters in religion, -art and learning become reincarnated upon earth, for the benefit of -humanity, that at this period Hokusai was born, the crowning glory and -master of Ukiyo-ye. Had he appeared earlier in the century, his genius -might have been diverted to the technical development of printing, and -the world thus been the loser of his creative flights. - -Professor Fenollosa beautifully defines the inception of the Ukiyo-ye -print as “the meeting of two wonderfully sympathetic surfaces,—the -un-sandpapered grain of the cherry-wood block, and a mesh in the paper, -of little pulsating vegetable tentacles. Upon the one, colour can be -laid almost dry, and to the other it may be transferred by a delicacy -of personal touch that leaves only a trace of tint balancing lightly -upon the tips of the fibres. And from the interstices of these printed -tips, the whole luminous heart of the paper wells up from within, -diluting the pigment with a soft golden sunshine. In the Japanese print -we have flatness combined with vibration.” - -To the connoisseur, one of the most important considerations, scarcely -secondary to that of colouring, in the selection of Ukiyo-ye gems, is -this vibratory quality, depending equally upon the texture of the -paper and the magnetic pressure of the master printer’s fingers. This -characteristic seems to have vanished from the modern print, and cannot -be imitated, though the enthusiasm for fine specimens has flooded the -market with spurious antiques, deceptive to the uninitiated. In the -exquisite reproductions of the early Ukiyo-ye prints and paintings now -being issued,—though a joy to the student unable to acquaint himself -with the originals,—this ineffable effect of vibration is lost, -probably owing to the substitution of a less sympathetic medium than -the luminous vehicle of the early impressions. - -The actual process of wood-cutting seems a simple art, but a close -study of the making of prints will show the consummate skill required -to produce them. The artist’s design was transferred by tracing -paper, then pasted on to the face of the wood block, and the white -space hollowed out with a knife and small gouges. After the block had -been inked, a sheet of damp paper was laid upon it, and the back of -the paper was then rubbed with a flat rubber till the impression was -uniformly transferred. Where more than one block was employed, as in -colour-printing, the subsequent impressions were registered by marks -made at the corners of the paper. The colouring matter laid upon these -early blocks was extracted by mysterious processes from sources unknown -to the Western world, which, alas! by supplying the Eastern market -with cheap pigments, led to the deterioration of art in this essential -particular. - -From 1765 to 1780 the school of Ukiyo-ye was dominated by four great -artists and creators of separate styles: Harunobu, succeeded by -Koriusai, taking for motive the subjects of Shunsui; Shunsho of -Katsukawa (changed by Shunsui from its former title of Miyagawa), -upon whose shoulders had fallen the mantle of the Torii; Shigemasa, -working upon Shunsho’s lines, but breaking into a rival academy, the -Kitao; Toyoharu, pupil of old Torii Toyonobu, founder of the school of -Utagawa, whose most illustrious pupil was Toyokuni, the doll-maker, -and brother of Toyohiro, Hiroshige’s master. (Kunisada, noted for his -backgrounds, succeeded Toyokuni, and after the death of his master -signed himself Toyokuni the Second.) - -Shunsho is considered one of the greatest artists of Japan, both as -an inventor and powerful colourist. M. Louis Gonse says: “All the -collections of coloured prints which are today the delight of the -tea-houses; all the fine compositions showing magnificent landscapes -and sumptuous interiors; all those figures of actors with heroic -gestures and impassive faces behind the grinning masks, and with -costumes striking and superb,—came originally from the atelier of -Katsukawa Shunsho, who had for a time the monopoly of them.” While -the Torii artists were beguiling the Yedo populace with theatrical -portraiture, and aiding the growing tendency toward cosmopolitanism -by issuing printed albums, books of travel and encyclopedias, art was -also expanding at the ancient capital, Kyoto. Sukenobu, the prolific -artist, was bringing out beautifully illustrated books, and Okio, -from sketching on the earth with bamboo sticks, while following his -father and mother to their work in the fields, had risen to be the -great founder of the Maruyama school of painting, and the Shijo or -naturalistic school was named from the street in which was the studio -of the master. - -The Popular School, aided by Okio, effected a revolution in the laws -of painting at Kyoto, for the Torii artists forsook their academic -methods, painting birds, flowers, grass, quadrupeds, insects and fishes -from nature. Okio’s name ranks high among the great masters of Japanese -art, of whom so many fanciful legends are told. The charming artist -with brush and pen, John La Farge, says: “As the fruit painted by the -Greek deceived the birds, and the curtain painted by the Greek painter -deceived his fellow-artist, so the horses of Kanaoka have escaped -from their kakemonos, and the tigers sculptured in the lattices of -temples have been known to descend at night and rend one another in the -courtyards.” - -Then the story is told of a moonlight picture, which, when unrolled, -filled a dark room with light. A pretty legend of Tanyu, the great Kano -artist, and the crabs at Enryaku Temple, is given by Adachi Kinnotsuke. -Upon one panel of the _fusuma_, or paper screen, is seen a crab, -marvellously realistic, only with claws invisible. On the other panels -the artist had painted its companions, and at the bidding of his patron -furnished them with claws. “Nevertheless,” the master declared, “I warn -you that if I give these crabs claws they will surely crawl out of the -picture.” As the visitor glances from the wonderful counterfeit crab -to the four empty panels beside it, he knows the old master had only -spoken the truth. - - [Illustration: Under the Cherry Blooms. By Kiyonaga, the regenerator - of Torii, whose classic figures recall, in their dignity and - simplicity, the methods of the early Italian master.] - -And so with Okio. He breathed into his pictures the breath of life. -His animals live, and his flights of storks swoop across the great -kakemonos, each bird with an individuality of its own, though one of a -multitude of flying companions. To view Okio aright, we should see him -at home in his own environment, not in Europe, where so many copies of -his masterpieces abound. John La Farge gives us a glimpse of an Okio, -fitly set, framed in oriental magnificence, in the Temple of Iyemitsu -at Nikko: “All within was quiet, in a golden splendour. Through the -small openings of the black and gold gratings a faint light from below -left all the golden interior in a summer shade, within which glittered -on golden tables the golden utensils of the Buddhist ceremonial. The -narrow passage makes the center, through whose returning walls project, -in a curious refinement of invention, the golden eaves of the inner -building beyond. Gratings, which were carved, and gilded trellises of -exquisite design, gave a cool, uncertain light. An exquisite feeling of -gentle solemnity filled the place. In the corridor facing the mountain -and the tomb, a picture hangs on the wall. It is by Okio. Kuwannon, the -Compassionate, sits in contemplation beside the descending stream of -life.” - -About 1775 arose a legitimate successor to the school of Torii in -the adopted son of Kiyomitsu, Kiyonaga. He discarded the theatrical -tradition of his school, but the boldness of his drawing was foreign to -the style of Harunobu. “His brush had a superhuman power and swing.” -He rivalled the three great masters, Koriusai, Shigemasa, founder of -Kitao, and Toyoharu of Utagawa, and the masters of Ukiyo-ye, forsaking -their individual predilections, flocked to his studio. - -The simplicity and dignity of the early Italian masters, sought after -and adored by the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, their noble lines and -contours, are again realized in the panels of Kiyonaga. Professor -Fenollosa said that “classic” is the instinctive term to apply to -Kiyonaga, and that his figures at their best may be placed side by side -with Greek vase painting. Ideally beautiful is the fall of his drapery, -determining the lines of the figure in the fewest possible folds. In -indoor scenes he almost rivalled Harunobu, but he loved best to paint -in the open air. In imagination we see Kiyonaga, the lover of beauty, -gazing at the wealth of lotus blooms which fill the moats of feudal -Yedo, and in the crucible of his fancy transmuting them into the forms -of women. The lotus, of all flowers, has the deepest art significance, -and is the oldest motive. The author of “Greek Lines,” Henry Van -Brunt, said: “The lotus perpetually occurs in oriental mythology as -the sublime and hallowed symbol of the productive power of nature. The -Hindu and the Egyptian instinctively elevated it to the highest and -most cherished place in their Pantheons.” - -It is the flower of religion, of beauty, and of love. From the ocean -the Hindu Aphrodite, Lachsmi, ascended. Isis in Egypt reigned, crowned -by the lotus, and there the tender, flowing lines became sublime, -monumental, fitted to symbolize death and eternal repose. In Japan its -joyous curves represent life, immortality, and, delicately sensuous, -they conjure up visions of ideal beauty. The lotus, sweetly blooming -before the artist’s eye, expanded into a vision of fair women, whose -lissom forms he clothed with swirls of drapery. And the women of Japan, -enamoured of these enchanting poses, endeavoured to assume the curves -of Kiyonaga, sheathing their delicate limbs in silken draperies, and -simulating in their enchanting slenderness the stems of flowers—or, -to borrow a beautiful simile from Lafcadio Hearn, “looking like a -beautiful silver moth robed in the folding of its own wings.” - -It is said that every Japanese actor-print was a potential poster, and, -alas! the fashion-plate is endeavouring to mold itself upon the most -exaggerated type of the degenerate offspring of the genius of the Torii -School. - -The Japanese woman, with her untrammelled form arrayed in draperies -designed by consummate artists, may dare to follow classic -Kiyonaga—youth and grace may acquire oriental plasticity. But let -fashion rest there. Pitiful and ludicrously futile is the effort of -embonpoint to attain sinuosity. Lines of beauty cannot be manufactured; -as well imagine the slender stem of the lotus encircled in steel, its -curves determined by a multiplicity of wires and tapes. - -Although the leaders of Ukiyo-ye followed so closely in the footsteps -of Kiyonaga that his type of face stamps the years from 1780 to 1790, -yet his style was too classic, too noble to suit the taste of the Yedo -populace, which, in its thirst for realism, had become depraved. Rather -than lower his standard he chose to resign, leaving the field to his -followers, Yeishi, Utamaro and Toyokuni. These masters, at first as -dignified in their method as Kiyonaga, now yielded to the public craze -for the exaggerated, the abnormal and grotesque. It was an apotheosis -of ugliness and vulgarity, a “Zolaism in prints.” - -Coarse pictures of actors, masquerading in female dress, replaced the -charming little domestic women of Harunobu and Koriusai,—the ladies of -Japan, as we see them in reality,—and the noble figures of Kiyonaga. -Gigantic courtesans, bizarre and fantastic, with delirious headgear, -took the place of Shunsho’s fair children of the “Underworld,” who, in -the modesty of their mien, seemed to belie the calling they so often -deplored, as the songs of the Yoshiwara testify, plaintively sung to -the syncopated rhythm of the samisen, tinkling through the summer -nights. - -The school of Ukiyo-ye was sinking into obscurity, when Hiroshige -and Hokusai appeared, two children of light, dispersing the gloom: -Hiroshige, the versatile painter, lover of landscape and ethereal -artist of snow and mist; Hokusai, the prophet, and regenerator of -Ukiyo-ye. He was the artisan-artist, in the land which recognizes no -inferior arts, and the Mang-wa, consisting of studies as spontaneously -thrown off as those in the sketch-book Giorgione carried in his girdle, -was published for the use of workmen. Living in simplicity and poverty -he gave his life to the people, and the impression of his genius is -stamped upon their work. A true handicraftsman was Hokusai,—the Mang-wa -a dictionary of the arts and crafts, as well as the inspired vehicle -of art. In it “balance, rhythm and harmony, the modes in which Beauty -is revealed, both in nature and art,” were manifested,—for he was a -vital artist, laying bare the enigma of evolution, and the mystery of -creation. - - [Illustration: The Actor Kikugoro. By Toyokuni I, the great - Actor-Designer and Master of Mimetic Art.] - - - - - Utamaro. - - Le Fondateur de L’École de la Vie. - - -The above title is quoted from the work of M. Edmond de Goncourt, “as -one having authority,” there being many claimants to the leadership of -Ukiyo-ye (the floating world), the Popular School of Japanese Art. In -the life of Utamaro, M. de Goncourt, in exquisite language and with -analytical skill, has interpreted for us the meaning of that form of -Japanese art which found its chief expression in the use of the wooden -block for colour-printing, and to glance appreciatively at the work of -both artist and author is the motive of this sketch. - -The Ukiyo-ye print, despised by the haughty Japanese aristocracy, -became the vehicle of art for the common people of Japan, and the -names of the artists who aided in its development are familiarly -quoted in every studio, whilst the classic painters of “Tosa” and -“Kano” are comparatively rarely mentioned. The consensus of opinion -in Japan during the lifetime of Utamaro agrees with the verdict of -M. de Goncourt. No artist was more popular. His atelier was besieged -by editors giving orders, and in the country his works were eagerly -sought after, when those of his famous contemporary, Toyokuni, were but -little known. In the “Barque of Utamaro,” a famous surimono, the title -of which forms a pretty play upon words, _maro_ being the Japanese -for vessel, the seal of supremacy is set upon the artist. Here he is -represented as holding court in a gaily decorated barge, surrounded by -a bevy of beauty paying homage to his genius. He was essentially the -painter of women, and though M. de Goncourt sets forth his astonishing -versatility, he yet entitles his work, “Outamaro, le Peintre des -Maisons Vertes.” - -The beautiful inhabitants of these celebrated houses of the Yoshiwara -(the flower quarter) of Yedo had ever been sought as models by -the artists of Ukiyo-ye. But, alas! the sensuous poetic-artistic -temperament of Utamaro, undisciplined and uncontrolled, led to his -undoing. The pleasure-loving artist, recognizing no creed but the -worship of beauty, refusing to be bound by any fetters but those of -fancy, fell at last into the lowest depths of degradation, physical -and moral. And this debasement of their leader, tainting his art, was -reflected in the work of his brother artists and hastened the decadence -of the Popular School. - -To understand the influences which sapped the self-control of the -gay and beauty-loving Utamaro, we have only to glance at the text by -Jipensha Ikkou of “The Annuary of the Green Houses,” two volumes of -prints in colour, so marvellously beautiful that they caused the artist -to be recognized as, in a sense, the official painter of the Yoshiwara. -The writer thus sums up the fatal fascination of the inmates, the -courtesans of highest rank, who alone were depicted by Utamaro. “The -daughters of the Yoshiwara are brought up like princesses. From -infancy they are given the most finished education” (from the Japanese -standpoint, be it observed). “They are taught reading, writing, art, -music, _le thé_, _le parfum_” (in the game of scents, the art is to -guess by inhaling the odour of burning perfumes the secret of their -composition). “Their entourage is that of princesses, brought up in the -seclusion of the palace. Coming from all parts of the ‘Land of the -Rising Sun,’ they must discard their individual patois and learn to -speak the archaic tongue, slightly modified, the poetical, the noble -language of the court from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.” - -In the home of the celebrated Tsutaya Juzabro, who edited the most -beautiful books of the time, in his early impressionable youth -lived Utamaro, within a stone’s throw of the great gate leading -to the Yoshiwara. By day he devoted himself to his art, by night -he surrendered himself to the fatal enchantment of that brilliant -“Underworld,” until, like Merlin, ensnared by Vivian, with the charm of -“woven paces and waving hands,” his art sapped by excesses, he became -“lost to life, and use, and name, and fame.” - -Let us, forgetting this sad sequel, glance at the works which testify -to the life of high artistic endeavour led by Utamaro in the early part -of his career. In the preface to the “Yehon Moushi Yerabi” (Chosen -Insects), the master of Utamaro, Toriyama Sekiyen, throws so charming -a sidelight upon the youth of the artist, that the temptation to quote -is irresistible. The value of these Japanese prefaces to the world, to -workers in every field, is incalculable. At the outset of his work, M. -de Goncourt alludes to the well-known preface of Hokusai in the “Fugaku -Hiak’kei,” and doubtless fortified himself by the stimulating example -of the old master, when undertaking at the age of seventy the great -task of presenting to the Western world, under the title of “L’Art -Japonais,” a history of five noted painters, besides that of other -artists in bronze and lacquer, pottery and iron—artists in a land where -the terms artist and artisan are interchangeable, the only country -where art industrial almost always touches grand art. - -The translator of the preface of Sekiyen is gratefully referred to by -M. de Goncourt as “l’intelligent, le savant, l’aimable M. Hyashi.” It -may be considered a revolutionary manifesto of the Profane School, -the school of real life, in opposition to the hierarchical Buddhist -academies of Kano and Tosa, which had become stultified by tradition -and stifled by conventional observances. - -“Préface écrite par Toriyama Sekiyen, le maître d’Outamaro, célébrant -le naturisme (sorti du cœur) de son petit, de son cher élève Outa.” -“Reproduire la vie par le cœur, et en dessiner la structure au pinceau, -est la loi de la peinture. L’étude que vient de publier maintenant, -mon élève Outamaro, reproduit la vie même du monde des insectes. C’est -la vraie peinture du cœur. Et quand je me souviens d’autrefois, je me -rappelle que dès l’enfance, le petit Outa, observait le plus infini -détail des choses. Ainsi à l’automne, quand il était dans le jardin, -il se mettait en chasse des insectes, et que ce soit un criquet où une -sauterelle, avait-il fait une prise, il gardait la bestiole dans sa -main et s’amusait à l’étudier. Et combien de fois je l’ai grondé dans -l’appréhension qu’il ne prenne l’habitude, de donner la mort à des -êtres vivants. Maintenant qu’il a acquis son grand talent du pinceau, -il fait de ces études d’insectes, la gloire de sa profession.” - -The enthusiastic master of _le petit Outa_ proceeds to rhapsodize upon -his pupil’s genius and intimate knowledge of the structure of insects. -“He makes us hear,” he says, “the shrilling of the tamamoushi,” the -cicada of Japan, whose endless peevish twanging upon one string forms -an underlying accompaniment to the harmonies of long summer days. -“He borrows the light weapons of the grasshopper for making war; he -exhibits the dexterity of the earthworm, boring the soil under the -foundations of old buildings; he penetrates the mysteries of nature in -the groping of the larvæ, in the lighting of his path by the glow-worm, -and he ends by disentangling the end of the thread of the spider’s web.” - -The colour-printing of these insects is a miracle of art, says M. de -Goncourt, and there is nothing comparable to it in Europe. Of the -methods by which these colour prints are brought to such a height of -perfection, it is almost impossible to speak authoritatively. They are -the result of a threefold combination: of a paper marvellously prepared -from the bark of the shrub, _Kozo_, diluted with the milk of rice flour -and a gummy decoction extracted from the roots of the hydrangea and -hibiscus; of dyes, into the secret of whose alchemy no modern artist -can penetrate, it being safe to say the early “Tan-ye” and “Beni-ye” -prints can never be reproduced; of the application of those colours by -the master engraver’s fingers—that wizard hand of the Orient into whose -finger-tips are distilled the mysteries of bygone centuries. A portion -of the colour by means of this calculated pressure is drunk, absorbed -into the paper, and only the transparency is left vibrating upon the -fibres, like colour beneath the glaze. - -The “Catalogue Raisonné” of M. de Goncourt is a prose masterpiece. -His descriptive touches, like pastels set in jewels, captivate the -imagination. Through him we see the albums, the fans, the kakemonos, -the surimonos. Oh, the prints, with their wondrous backgrounds, the -delight of Utamaro! Sometimes straw-yellow, the uniformity broken -with clouds of ground mica; sometimes gray in tint, like the traces -of receding waves upon the beach. Some silvered backgrounds throw -moonlight reflections upon the figures; some are sombre, bizarre—all -are marvellous beyond words. And the colours! we cannot define them in -English. The “bleus” (malades des mauves), the “rose” (beni) “si peu de -rose, qu’ils semblent s’apercevoir à travers un tulle; l’azur—délavé, -et comme noyé dans l’eau,”—not colours, but nuances, which recall the -colours. And the “Gauffrage,” so effective with the print artists, with -us a mere confectioner’s touch! - -It is said that “the æsthetic temperament of a nation is most subtly -felt in the use of colour. Purity, coldness, sensuality, brightness, -dullness of tints, are significant terms correlated to mental and -physical human phenomena.” The assertion of Ruskin, that “the bodily -system is in a healthy state when we can see hues clearly in their -most delicate tints, and enjoy them, fully and simply, with the kind -of enjoyment children have in eating sweet things,” is brought to -mind in viewing the Japanese people upon the occasion of one of their -great flower fêtes, feasting their eyes upon cherry blooms or trailing -clusters of the wistaria. - - [Illustration: While Mother Sleeps. By Utamaro, named by M. de - Goncourt: “Le Fondateur de L’École de la Vie.”] - -Utamaro planned schemes of colour and devised harmonies—themes which, -improvised upon and endlessly imitated by his artist confrères, filled -his own countrymen with delight and ravished the hearts of Parisian -painters. The influence of Utamaro, Hiroshige and the other masters -of Ukiyo-ye revolutionized the colour-sense of the art world, so that -Theodore Child, writing in 1892, remarks of the Japanese influence: -“The Paris Salon of today as compared with the salon of ten years ago -is like a May morning compared with a dark November day.” - -The same keen observation and technical skill which would have made -Utamaro a famous naturalist is shown in his marvellous studies -of women. He was the first Japanese artist who deviated from the -traditional manner of treating the face. The academic style demanded -the nose to be suggested by one calligraphic, aquiline stroke, the eyes -to be mere slits, the mouth the curled up petal of a flower. Utamaro -blent with this convention, so little human, a mutinous grace, a -spiritual comprehension; he kept the consecrated lines, but made them -approach the human. These “effigies of women” became individuals; in -one word, he is an idealist, he “makes a goddess out of a courtesan.” -No detail of her anatomy escapes his eye, no grace of line or beauty -of contour. M. de Goncourt, in detailing the great prints of Utamaro, -transports us to the Orient. He unrolls the film of memory, so that -again the Japanese woman stands, reclines, and lives before us. - -“Vous avez la Japonaise en tous les mouvements intimes de son corps; -vous l’avez, dans ses appuiements de tête, sur le dos de sa main, quand -elle réfléchit, dans ses agenouillements, les paumes de ses mains -appuyées sur les cuisses, quand elle écoute, dans sa parole, jetée de -côté, la tête un peu tournée, et qui la montre dans les aspects si -joliment fuyants d’un profil perdu; vous l’avez dans sa contemplation -amoureuse des fleurs qu’elle regarde aplatie à terre; vous l’avez -dans ses renversements où légèrement elle pose, à demi assise, sur la -balustrade d’un balcon; vous l’avez dans ses lectures, où elle lit -dans le volume, tout près de ses yeux, les deux coudes appuyés sur -ses genoux; vous l’avez dans sa toilette qu’elle fait avec une main -tenant devant elle, son petit miroir de métal, tandis que de l’autre -main passée derrière elle, elle se caresse distraitement la nuque -de son écran; vous l’avez dans le contournement de sa main autour -d’une coupe de saké, dans l’attouchement délicat et recroquevillé -de ses doigts de singe, autour des laques, des porcelaines, des -petits objets artistiques de son pays; vous l’avez enfin, la femme de -l’Empire-du-Lever-du-Soleil, en sa grace grâce languide, et son coquet -rampement sur les nattes du parquet.” - -To translate is to travesty, for the French language seems to be the -only medium through which can be filtered the nuances of Japanese -thought, which elude the ordinary elements of language, like the -perfume of flowers, the bouquet of delicate vintages. Our blunt -Anglo-Saxon mars that picture language, where one flexible, curved -calligraphic stroke conveys to the æsthetically receptive oriental -imagination what stanzas of rhyming rhapsody fail to define. Sir Edwin -Arnold and Lafcadio Hearn approach the French, are, so to speak, -orientalized. Ordinary English fails to give a Japanese equivalent. -It is too emphatic, too objective; it suggests the dominant British -hobnail upon the delicate Tea-house tatami—that immaculate, beautiful -matting, into whose uniform lines embroidered draperies dissolve -deliciously. Oh, those dreams of dresses!—the warp and woof of the -visions of the masters of Ukiyo-ye, of Harunobu and Kiyonaga, Toyokuni -and Kunisada, and all the rest, the idols of Parisian colourists! - -“For us,” says M. de Goncourt, “Utamaro painted violet dresses, where, -upon the border, _degradation rosée_” (fading into Beni, that mystic -tint, the spirit of ashes of rose), “birds are swooping,—violet -dresses, across which woven in light, zigzag insect characters, -composing the Japanese alphabet,—violet dresses, where Corean lions, -grim and ferocious, crouch, gleaming in shading of old bronze within -the purple folds! Dresses of mauve, smoky, shading into bistre, where -the purple iris unsheathes its head from the slender gray-green stalk!” -Mourasiki-ya (maison mauve) was the name of the atelier of Utamaro. -“Robes of that milky blue the Chinese call ‘blue of the sky after the -rain,’ beneath clusters of pale rose peonies; dresses of silvery gray, -fretted with sprays of flowering shrubs, making a misty moonshine; -pea-green dresses, enamelled with rosy cherry blooms; green dresses, -fading into watery tints, hidden by groups of the pawlonia, the coat -of arms of the reigning family; purple costumes, channelled with water -courses, where mandarin ducks pursue each other around the hem. Oh, -the beautiful black backgrounds, controlling the scintillating mass -of colour! Black robes sown with chrysanthemums, or showered with -pine-needles, worked in white. Black dresses, where finely woven -baskets are mingled with sceptres of office! ‘Oh! les belles robes!’ he -cries, where flights of cranes dissolve into the distance, where birds -are fluttering, where lacy fretwork of fans and little garlands are -interwoven!—a motive delighted in by Utamaro as a framework for beloved -faces.” All that is beautiful in nature and art lived and breathed in -these dresses, upon which the loving hand of the painter left a grace -in every fold. - -The early inspirer of Utamaro’s genius was Kiyonaga, who had restored -the glory of the school of Torii—the printer’s branch of Ukiyo-ye, -which had sunk into temporary oblivion under the waning powers of -Kiyomitsu. The atelier of Kiyonaga became the sanctuary of the artists -of Ukiyo-ye, who, upon entering, forsook their individual traditions. -There worshipped Toyokuni of Utagawa; Yeishi, the scion of classic and -aristocratic Kano; and at the master’s feet sat the Young Utamaro, -absorbing his methods until, in his early compositions, said M. de -Goncourt, the technique and mannerisms of Kiyonaga “saute aux yeux.” - -The influence of Kiyonaga pervades his most beautiful work; but later, -under a life of constant self-indulgence, amongst associations all -tending to demoralization, his genius suffered an eclipse. His loss -of self-control affected his art, until the sweeping lines and noble -contours which his brush had acquired in the atelier of Kiyonaga were -lost or widely travestied into a “delirium of female tallness.” In -these wild flights his brother artists followed in headlong pursuit, -and the contagion of the movement swept the studios of Paris. In the -modern poster we see the degenerate offspring of the genius of Utamaro, -and of Toyokuni. Professor Fenollosa said, “The generation of Aubrey -Beardsley prefer these tricks to the sober grace of Harunobu, Kiyonaga -and Koriusai.” It is art born of excess, a “Zolaism in prints.” - -The horrors of diseased imagination, the visions begotten of absinthe, -which blot the brilliant pages of De Maupassant and the verse of Paul -Verlaine, were reflected by Utamaro in his studies of the loathsome -and the abnormal, where Montaigne declares, “L’esprit faisant le -cheval eschappé, enfante des chimères.” The blasphemous impieties of -this culte, deplored by all true Frenchmen, in the country of Hugo and -Molière, were distanced by Utamaro, who suborned his art, his cynical -brush caricaturing under the distorted figures of noted courtesans -the saints and sages of the sacred Buddhist legends. Trading upon his -vast popularity, he issued a pictorial satire upon one of the famous -Shoguns, but this act of lèse-majesté brought him into disfavour with -the reigning Shogun, the Louis XV of Japan, an artistic voluptuary, -like his prototype, the subject of Utamaro’s cartoon, and the artist -was condemned and cast into prison. From his cell the gay butterfly of -the Yoshiwara emerged, spent and enfeebled, daring no more flights of -fancy, and dying in 1806, before he reached his fiftieth year, from the -effects of his confinement and the misuse of pleasure. - -Oh, the pity of it! the profound pathos in the picture, in Sekiyen’s -preface of the little “Outa” holding his treasured prize, “la petite -bestiole,”—the childish artist-hands of the embryo master clasping the -insect so gently to preserve its ephemeral life, yet later plunging -into the dissipation and excesses which shortened his own. Living with -the déclassé, however we may gloss their imperfections and cover with -the cloak of charity their sorrowful calling, he became himself a -cynic, an outcast, an iconoclast, learning that “hardening of the heart -which brings - - “Irreverence for the dreams of youth.” - -Though Utamaro was one of the greatest of the popular artists, his -demoralization led to the decadence of his school, which later was -regenerated by the great master of Ukiyo-ye, Hokusai, the artist of -the people. In Hokusai, “Dreaming the things of Heaven and of Buddha,” -breathed the pure spirit of art,—that Spirit of poetry and purity which -calls to us in Milton’s immortal lines: - - “Mortals, that would follow me, - Love Virtue; she alone is free. - She can teach ye how to climb - Higher than the sphery chime; - Or if Virtue feeble were, - Heaven itself would stoop to her.” - - - - - The Romance of Hokusai. - - Master of Ukiyo-ye. - - “_From the age of six, I had a mania for drawing the forms of things. - By the time I was fifty, I had published an infinity of designs, but - all I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking - into account. At seventy-five I have learned a little about the real - structure of nature,—of animals, plants and trees, birds, fishes and - insects. In consequence, when I am eighty, I shall have made still - more progress. At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at - a hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvellous stage, and when - I am a hundred and ten, everything I do—be it but a line or dot—will - be alive. I beg those who live as long as I, to see if I do not keep - my word. Written at the age of seventy-five by me,—once Hokusai,—today - Gwakio-rojin, ‘the old man, mad about drawing.’_” - - -“_Ars longa, vita brevis_,” though a time-worn aphorism, seems -the best comment upon these words of Hokusai, which preface the -“Fugaku Hiak’kei” (Hundred Views of Fuji). Judging from what he had -accomplished, before his death in 1849, at the age of eighty-nine, and -the continual increase in his powers, it is easy to believe that had -his life been extended to the limit he craved, the prophecy would have -been fulfilled. - -M. Louis Gonse says of Hokusai, “He is the last and most brilliant -figure of a progress of more than ten centuries—the exuberant and -exquisite product of a time of profound peace and incomparable -refinement.” - -From the standpoint of Buddhism, Hokusai was the crowning glory, the -supreme efflorescence of countless previous incarnations. In his career -he epitomized the theory of evolution, the embryonic stages being -exemplified by his progress through the schools. Trained in the atelier -of Shunsho, the most skillful exponent of Ukiyo-ye art, he rapidly -absorbed the methods of his master; but even the Popular School was -trammelled by convention, and Hokusai’s genius, rejecting academic -fetters, winged its flight through all the realms of oriental art. - -He drank at the fountain-head of China, then absorbed the traditions of -the “two great streams of Kano and Tosa, which flowed without mixing -to the middle of the eighteenth century.” Kano, springing from Chinese -models, was transformed by the genius of Masanobu and his followers, -and became the most illustrious school of painting in Japan. It was the -official school of the Shoguns, in opposition to “Tosa”—that elegant -and exquisite appanage of the Mikados, which represented aristocratic -taste. - -The Tosa school is characterized by extreme delicacy of execution -and fine use of the brush, as in Persian miniature painting. The -splendour of the screens of Tosa has never been surpassed, with their -precious harmonies in colour and delicate designs (so often imitated in -lacquer), against glorious backgrounds in rich gold-leaf. - -He studied the technique of Okio, founder of the school of realism, -which, maturing at Kyoto, led up to “Ukiyo-ye,” the popular art of the -masses of Yedo. Ukiyo-ye, literally “The Floating World,” despised by -the ascetic disciples of Buddha and Confucius for picturing the gay -world of fashion and folly, was the name of the school which liberated -Japanese art from the shackles of centuries of tradition. - - [Illustration: Two Ladies. By Hokusai.] - -Ukiyo-ye is the supreme expression, the concentrated essence of -the schools, a river of art whose fount was India, Persia and China. -For centuries it was forced into narrow channels by the haughty and -exclusive aristocracy; but ever widening, its branches at last united -and swept into their joyous current the common people of Japan, who, -intuitively art lovers, had ever thirsted for the living stream. Now -they beheld themselves reflected, in all the naturalness of daily life, -yet with a spiritual rendering, “appealing,” said Jarves, “to those -intuitions with which the soul is freighted when it first comes to -earth, whose force is ever manifested by a longing for an ideal not of -the earth, and whose presence can only be explained as an augury of -a superior life to be, or else the dim reminiscence of one gone; and -the recognition of this ideal is the touchstone of art—art which then -becomes the solution of immortality.” - -The originators of Ukiyo-ye, which included in its scope painting -proper, book illustration and single-sheet pictorial prints, were -Iwasa Matahei and Moronobu, followed in long succession by Shunsui, -the precursor of Hokusai’s master, Shunsho; and united with it were -the engravers of the Torii school, culminating in Kiyonaga (with whose -grace and beauty of line Hokusai could never compete), the refined -offshoot of the Kitao, and the elegant scion of Kano—Yeishi. - -Hokusai’s individuality and independence long galled his master, and -a final rupture was caused by the pupil’s enthusiasm for the bold and -sweeping, black-and-white, calligraphic strokes of Kano. Then began -a hard struggle for the youthful artist, who had no money and no -influence. His father was a maker of metal mirrors, Hokusai’s real -name being Nakajima Tetsu Jiro, but his pseudonyms were legion. In -the atelier of Shunsho, he was called Shunro,—taking with the other -disciples of this school of Katsukawa, the first syllable of his -master’s name. - -Cast adrift upon the streets of Yedo, he sold red pepper, and hawked -almanacs, at the same time constantly studying, and seizing the best -ideas from all the schools. Blent with an intuitive instinct for art, -the Japanese nature is essentially histrionic, and throughout the whole -career of Hokusai there is an element which is genuinely dramatic. -C. J. Holmes, in his beautiful work on Hokusai, gives many romantic -incidents in the artist’s life, and was it not by a theatrical _tour de -force_ that he first won popular favour? - -He chose no doubt a national holiday, perhaps the festival of “Cherry -Viewing,” when Uyeno Park is thronged with sightseers of every station -in life. Here in the heart of the great city of Tokyo is a hallowed -spot—majestic, grand and peaceful, where in mystic solemnity the sacred -cedars enshrine that wondrous necropolis of illustrious dead,—for at -Uyeno lie buried six of the famous Shoguns. - -In the courtyard of one of the temples, Hokusai erected a rough -scaffolding, upon which was spread a sheet of paper, eighteen yards -long and eleven in width. Here in the sacred heart of Japan, with -tubs of water and tubs of ink, the master and predestined genius of -his country manifested his power. He swept his huge brush this way -and that, the crowd constantly increasing in density, many scaling -the temple roof to see the marvellous feat,—a colossal figure, -springing into life at the touch of the creator. All who know his work -can in imagination picture the grand sweeping curves and graduated -shadings that the magic broom evolved; and the artistic people gazed -spell-bound, while many a murmured “Naruhodo!” (Wonderful) and sibilant -inhalation of the breath marked their recognition of the master’s power. - -Displaying less of the artist than the genius at legerdemain were -Hokusai’s street tricks—almost reprehensible did we not know the dire -straits to which genius is often reduced. An eager expectant crowd -dogged his footsteps and watched with delighted curiosity, while he -sketched landscapes, upside down, with an egg or a bottle, or a wine -measure, anything that came to his hand,—changing with bewildering -effect from huge figures of Chinese heroes and demigods to microscopic -drawings on grains of rice, and pictures made out of chance blots of -ink. - -His fame was noised abroad, and at last reached the ears of the Shogun, -and now an unprecedented honour was conferred upon the humble apostle -of the artisan, for he was summoned before the august presence to -give an exhibition of his skill. The Japanese are ever imitative, and -Hokusai may have borne in mind the legend of his prototype Sesshiu, an -artist-priest of the fifteenth century, who sketched before the Emperor -of China a marvellous dragon, with splashes from a broom plunged in ink. - -Still more spectacular and theatrical was Hokusai’s debut, for, -spreading a sheet of paper before the feet of the monarch, he covered -it with a blue wash,—then seizing a live cock, he daubed its feet with -a red pigment, and let it run over the wet colour, when the Shogun -and his astonished courtiers beheld a flowing stream of liquid blue, -upon which appeared to float filmy segregated petals of red maple -leaves. A mere trick!—unworthy of genius, we might say, but Hokusai had -gauged his countrymen, and knew that his _jeu d’esprit_ would arouse -and impress these aristocratic connoisseurs, jaded with ceremonial -observances, more than any display of technical knowledge,—for the -Japanese, as a nation, are naively childish in their love of novelty -and amusement, and of the unusual and bizarre. - -Is it not possible that this trickery of the master may have -unconsciously supplied the motive for Hiroshige’s famous print of a -Yedo suburb, chosen by Professor Fenollosa, in his beautiful work on -Ukiyo-ye,—where he so poetically says, “the orange fire of maples -deepens the blue of marshy pools”? - -Space does not permit any detailed description of the compositions -of Hokusai, and there is no complete catalogue of his works, the -one nearest to accuracy being M. Edmond de Goncourt’s _Catalogue -raisonné_. His fecundity was marvellous. He illustrated books of all -kinds, poetry, comic albums, accounts of travels,—in fact his works -are an encyclopedia of Japanese life. His paintings are scattered, and -countless numbers lost, many being merely ephemeral drawings, thrown -off for the passing pleasure of the populace. The original designs -for the prints were transferred to the blocks, and lost, though the -master rigidly superintended the reproduction of his works, and his -wood-cutters were trained to follow the graceful sweeping curves with -perfect accuracy, many of his compositions being ruled across for exact -reduction. - - [Illustration: A River Scene. By Hok’kei, the faithful pupil of - Hokusai, who strove to follow in the footsteps of the Master.] - -Ukiyo-ye art is bound up with print development, and the climax of -xylography had been reached in the time of Hokusai. Japanese book -illustration, and single-sheet printing, revolutionized the world’s -art. The great connoisseurs of colour tell us that nowhere else is -there anything like it,—so rich and so full, that a print comes to have -every quality of a complete painting. - -Hokusai had served a four years’ apprenticeship to the school of -engraving, and his practiced eye was ever ready to detect any -inaccuracy in his workmen. “I warn the engraver,” he said, “not to add -an eyeball underneath when I do not draw one. As to the nose, these two -are mine,”—here he draws a nose in front and in profile,—“I will not -have the nose of Utagawa.” The greatest difference exists in the beauty -and colouring of the impressions, and the amateur, in his search for -Ukiyo-ye gems, should not trust his unaided judgment. - -M. Louis Gonse said of the surimono, “To me they are the most seductive -morsels of Japanese art.” They are small, oblong prints, composed as -programmes for festive occasions with a text of verse enriched by -exquisite illustration. The surimono of Hokusai showed the influence of -Tosa, the decoration being very elaborate, and delicate as a Persian -miniature. In places, the surface of the print is goffered for ornament -in relief, and the colouring is enforced by inlaying in gold, silver, -bronze and tin. - -Some of the best examples of Hokusai’s art are the “Waterfalls,” the -“Bridges,” “Thirty-six Views of Fuji,” the “Gwafu,” the “Hundred -Views of Fuji” (of which the finest edition was brought out in London -with a commentary by Mr. F. V. Dickins), and the fifteen volumes of -the “Mang-wa,”—a term hardly translatable, but signifying fugitive -sketches, or drawing as it comes, spontaneously. The preface best gives -us the intention of the master. - -“Under the roof of Boksenn, in Nagoya, he dreamed and drew some three -hundred compositions. The things of Heaven and of Buddha, the life of -men and women, even birds and beasts, plants and trees, he has included -them all, and under his brush every phase and form of existence has -arisen. The master has tried to give life to everything he has painted, -and the joy and happiness so faithfully expressed in his work are a -plain proof of his victory.” - -Hokusai has been called the king of the artisans, and it was for them -especially that he composed the drawings of Mang-wa. His influence is -expressed in all their works: in the structure of the roofs of temples, -in houses and their interiors; upon the things of every-day life, as -upon flowers and landscapes, upon lacquer, inros and netsukis, bronzes -and ivory. - -Gustave Geffroy truly gauged the genius of Hokusai in speaking of his -“flights beyond the horizon.” In the master we recognize the creator. -He feels the mystery of the birth of mountains, as in that weird -composition of Fuji, where the great cone is seen rising above circle -upon circle of serpentine coils, forming the mystic tomoyé—symbol of -creation and eternity. He feels the pulsation of the universe, and the -life of ocean, and in a frenzy of creative power, beneath his hand -the curved crests of foaming waves break into life, flashing into -countless sea-birds born of the froth of ocean. He is the painter of -chimera, the prophet of cataclysm; he “gives the world a shake and -invents chaos.” How vivid is Holmes’ description of the wave in the -seventh Mang-wa! - -“Man becomes a mere insect, crouching in his frail catamaran, as the -giant billow topples and shakes far above him. The convention of black -lines with which he represents falling rain is as effectual as his -conventions for water are fanciful. The storm of Rembrandt, of Rubens, -or of Turner, is often terrible but never really wet; Constable gets -the effect of wetness, but his storms are not terrible. Hokusai knows -how a gale lashes water into foam, and bows the tree before it; how -the gusts blow the people hither and thither, how sheets of drenching -rain half veil a landscape, how the great white cone of his beloved -Fuji gleams through a steady downpour! His lightning is rather odd in -comparison with the realistic studies of the great artists of Europe, -but what European ever tried an effect so stupendous as that recorded -in ‘Fugaku Hiak’kei,’ where the snowy top of Fuji is seen at evening, -crimson with the last fiery rays of sunset, while all the flanks of the -mountain are hidden by a dark storm-cloud, through which the lightning -flashes!” - -Poetry and art are ever allied, and the vibrations of genius encircle -the globe. Byron and Ruskin and Hokusai were contemporaries. Possibly -at the very moment when the poet was immortalizing himself by composing -his “Storm in the Alps,” the grand “old man, mad about drawing,” was -sketching the peerless mountain:— - - “Far along - From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, - Leaps the loud thunder! not from one lone cloud, - But every mountain now hath found a tongue, - And Jura answers through her misty shroud, - Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud.” - -Lord Byron’s vivid pen also best describes the squally storms of both -Hiroshige and Hokusai,—where - - “The big rain comes dancing to the earth.” - -Was not Hokusai truly “a portion of the tempest”? as he represents -himself, drawing Fuji, in winter, working in a frenzy of haste,—for -the ground is covered with snow—two brushes in his hand, and wonder -of wonders! one held between his toes. This picture, also from “The -Hundred Views of Fuji,” prefaces Marcus B. Huish’s work on Japanese art. - -The closing scene in the drama of Hokusai’s life is full of pathos. -Though his whole career had been shadowed by poverty, and shrouded in -obscurity, his art still held him earth-bound. Upon his death-bed he -said, “If Heaven would only grant me ten more years!” - -Then, as he realized that the end approached, he murmured, “If Heaven -had but granted me five more years I could have been a real painter.” - -So ended the life of the master of Ukiyo-ye. His body lies beneath -the pines of Asakusa, but would we not gladly believe that his “soul -turned Will-o’-the-wisp, may ever come and go at ease, over the summer -fields,”—for this was the last expression of his passionate desire. - - - - - Hiroshige. - - Landscape Painter and Apostle of Impressionism. - - -If the lovely “Land of the Rising Sun” should, during one of those -volcanic throes which threaten her extinction, sink forever beneath the -depths of ocean, she would yet live for us through the magic brush of -Hiroshige. Gazing at his landscapes, the airy wing of imagination wafts -us to a land of showers and sunsets—a fairy scene, where the rainbow -falls to earth, shattered into a thousand prisms—where waters softly -flow towards horizons touched with daffodil or azure tinted. - -Here is a gliding _sampan_ with closed shutters. Inside, the lantern’s -diffused light throws a silhouette upon the bamboo curtain, a drooping -girlish head bending towards the unseen lover at her feet. Ripples play -upon the water, stirred by the amorous breath of oriental night. In -fancy we hear the tinkling of the samisen, touched by delicate fingers, -sweetly perfumed. - -Now we see rain upon the Tokaido. A skurrying storm. Affrighted coolies -running this way and that. A mountain full of echoes and horror. Down -it splash rivulets, running into inky pools. Darkness and terror and -loneliness, and longing for warmth and shelter and the peace of home. - -In marked contrast is one of the “Seven Impressions of Hakone.” A glad -reveille. The sun breaks out, the clouds have burst asunder, masses of -vapour float here and there. All is chaotic, untamed, a palette wildly -mingled. - -The Japanese so dearly love Nature, in all her moods, that when she -dons her mantle of snow they hesitate, even when necessity compels, -to sully its purity. In one of Utamaro’s prints, sweetly entitled by -M. Edmond de Goncourt “La Nature Argentée,” a little musüme is seen -searching the snowy landscape she loves, and, hating to blot the -beautiful carpet, she cries, “Oh, the beautiful new snow! Where shall -I throw the tea-leaves?” With Hiroshige, the artist of snow and mist, -we feel this love, and so successfully, does he deal with a snowy -landscape that we see the snow in masses, luminous, soft and unsullied, -as if Nature had lent a helping hand to portray her pure white magic. -So, without formula or technique, but absolutely and sincerely, he -unrolls the winter pageant before us. - -The Japanese landscape painter sums up nature in broad lines, to which -all details are more or less subordinated. This rendering of the -momentary vision of life and light,—the spirit, not the letter of the -scene,—is what is meant by Impressionism. Whereas, however the French -impressionists express light by modelling surfaces, the Japanese adhere -rigidly to line, and rely upon gradations of colour and the effect of -washes to produce the illusion of light. Their landscape is expressed -in clear-cut lines and flat masses of colour. In the prints this virtue -of abstract line is exemplified, the outline being the essential -element of the composition, for upon line and arrangements of balanced -colour the artist must depend, cramped as he is by the necessities -of the wood-cut. And here he displays his wonderful ingenuity, his -fineness of gradations and opposition, his boldness and infinity of -device, and in spite of the limitations which hamper him, he realizes -absolute values in the narrowest range, by virtue of his knowledge of -lines and spaces. - - [Illustration: Wistaria Viewing at Kameido. By Hiroshige.] - -“No scientifically taught artist,” said Jarves, “can get into as few -square inches of paper a more distinct realization of space, distance, -atmosphere, perspective and landscape generally, not to mention -sentiment and feeling.” - -This virtue of the line is the inheritance of the Japanese, the -consummate handling of the brush almost a racial instinct. From China, -far back in the centuries, came the sweeping calligraphic stroke, -of which in Japan the school of Kano became the noblest exponent. -“_L’école_,” said M. de Goncourt, “_des audaces et de la bravoure du -faire, l’école tantôt aux écrasements du pinceau, tantôt aux ténuités -d’un cheveu._” - -As soon as the tiny hand of the Japanese baby can grasp the brush its -art education begins. The brush is the Japanese alphabet—it is their -fairy wand, their playmate—they learn to paint intuitively, though -later the most assiduous study is given to acquire the characteristic -touch of the school with which they affiliate. The brush is their -_génie_, subservient to their imagination; they master and “juggle” -with it. For no foreign taught technique will they barter their -birthright. - -And our masters and instructors in art more and more recognize the -value of initial brush-work. The following excerpt from Walter Crane, -in _Line and Form_, might serve as a preface to a work on Hokusai or -Hiroshige: “The practice of forming letters with the brush afforded -a very good preliminary practice to a student of line and form. An -important attribute of line is its power of expressing or suggesting -movement. Undulating lines always suggest action and unrest or the -resistance of force of some kind. The firm-set yet soft feathers of a -bird must be rendered by a different touch from the shining scales of a -fish. The hair and horns of animals, delicate human features, flowers, -the sinuous lines of drapery, or the massive folds of heavy robes, -all demand from the draughtsman in line different kinds of suggestive -expression.” - -We are told that Hiroshige began his career by making pictures in -coloured sands on an adhesive background, to amuse the public, and -perhaps this artistic juggling helped him later in arranging his -schemes of colour, for the limitations of the block demanded almost -equal simplicity in composition. - -The impressions of Lake Biwa, one of Hiroshige’s finest series of -views, serve as a beautiful illustration of the almost exclusive use of -line in bringing out the salient characteristics of the landscape. His -sweeping brush shows us volcanic mountains, encircling the lake, like -rocky billows, torn and jagged, for legend says that as the peerless -mountain Fuji-san rose in one night, so the ground sank, and the space -was filled by the beautiful lake named from its resemblance in form to -the Japanese lute. The trees which fringe the shore, black and misty, -upon close inspection resolve themselves into a network of criss-cross -lines and blotches. The sampans’ sails, the waves, the rushes on the -shore, the roofs of the village nestling beneath the cliffs, are all -adroitly rendered by horizontal lines and skillful zigzags. The rest of -the composition is a wash of shaded blues and grays, fading towards the -horizon into smoky violets. - -Biwa, the beautiful, suggestive of mystery, the four-stringed lute -gives thee her name. Through the music of thy rippling eddies do sighs -well up in thee, the murmur of the lost? A pall of darkness hovers over -thee, pierced by a gleam of sunshine, beckoning like a lover’s hand. - -Much diversity of opinion exists with regard to the identity of the -artist, or artists, who designed the prints signed Hiroshige. The -latest research, however, justifies the assertion that there was but -one landscape painter, Hiroshige the Great. - -The pupils,—notably one, who, among other names, signed Shigenobu, -until after his master’s death, when he took the title of Hiroshige -the Second, gradually assuming his full _nom-de-pinceau_, Hiroshige -Ichiryusai,—faithfully imitated his style, also amplifying the -multitudinous designs and sketches made by the master, yet the genius -of the great artist is stamped upon his work, and as a clever critic -tersely says: “Everything he touched was his autograph.” - -Mr. John S. Happer, an indefatigable student of Ukiyo-ye and collector -of nishiki-ye gems, during diligent research, discovered a clew that -leads, beyond controversy, to the right attribution of the prints -signed Hiroshige, and which he intends later to make public. Nearly -all the important vertical sets, he says, most of which have been -ascribed to the second Hiroshige, are by the first artist, although -doubtless his pupils assisted him in his work, rendering their aid, as -did the pupils of Hokusai in the preparation of the Mang-wa. Hiroshige -also associated himself at times with other artists, one set of the -Kisokaido, for example, being in part the work of Keisai Yeisen, and -he supplied many backgrounds to the prints of Kunisada and Kuniyoshi. - -In the catalogue of the “Collection Hayashi” only two prints are -assigned to pupils of Hiroshige, one of them bearing the signature of -Shigenobu. - -The masterpieces signed Hiroshige are all by one great genius, the -Apostle of Impressionism. “Hiro, Hiro, Hiroshige, great is Hiroshige,” -cries Mr. Happer, in an outburst of enthusiasm. “Before Hiroshige there -was no Japanese landscape master,—after him there is none.” - -In the “Happer” Collection is a memorial portrait of Hiroshige by -Kunisada (Toyokuni), the inscription upon which is of especial -interest, confirming, as it does, the date of his death and proving -that the “Meisho Yedo Hiak’kei,” the vertical set of Yedo views, so -often ascribed to his successor, were by the master. - -The inscription is thus quaintly interpreted by a Japanese student: - -“Ryusai Hiroshige is a distinguished follower of Toyohiro, who was a -follower of Toyoharu, the founder of the Utagawa School. At the present -time, Hiroshige, Toyokuni and Kuniyoshi are considered the three great -masters of Ukiyo-ye,—no others equal them. Hiroshige was especially -noted for landscape. In the Ansei era, 1854-1859, he published the -‘Meisho Yedo Hiak’kei’ (‘Hundred Views of Yedo’), which vividly present -the scenery of Yedo to the multitude of admirers. - -“About this time also appeared a magazine entitled ‘Meisho Zuye’ -(‘Sonnets on Yedo Scenes’), a monthly, illustrated by Hiroshige, and -displaying his wonderful skill with the brush, to the admiration -of the world. He passed away, to the world beyond, on the sixth day -of the ninth month of this year, 1858, at the ripe age of sixty-two -(sixty-one by our count). He left behind a last testament, or farewell -sonnet, ‘_Azuma ji ni fude wo no-koshite tabi no sora; Nishi no mi kuni -no Meisho wo Mimu._’ (Dropping the brush at Azuma, Eastern Capital, I -go the long journey to the Western Country, Buddhist Heaven is in the -West, to view the wonderful sceneries there; perchance to limn them -too.) - -“This by Temmei Rojin, picture by Toyokuni. - -“Dated, Ansei 5, ninth month (October, 1858).” - -The best known prints by Hiroshige are the “Fifty-three Stations -between Yedo and Kyoto.” This Tokaido series was at first beautifully -printed, but the later impressions show a sad decay in the colouring. -The “Yedo Haik’kei” or “Hundred Views of Yedo,” give a panoramic vista -of the Shoguns’ capital. The pictorial description of Yedo, in black -and pale blue, is a lovely series. In many of these landscapes the -Dutch influence is very marked, for the master of Hiroshige, Toyohiro, -from whom he derived the first syllable of his _nom-de-pinceau_, had -experimented in landscape painting after the Dutch wood-cuts which -were scattered throughout the country. Although Hiroshige is best -known through his landscapes, he, like most Japanese painters, was -too universal an artist to confine himself solely to one branch. He -loved every phase of nature, and in one of his well-known prints, -“The Eagle,” his skill in the delineation of birds is best shown. In -the later impressions a pale yellowish tone takes the place of the -beautiful steel-blue background of the earlier prints, miracles of -colour printing. - -Athwart this background of ineffable blue, which loses itself in the -mists that veil the sacred mountain, is seen, sweeping and sailing -cruelly alert, the evil eagle of Hiroshige. His wicked gaze is set on -nests of murmuring wood-doves, he eyes the callow sea-birds in their -bed of rushes. The temple bell rings solemnly; the long vibrations -cleave the azure dusk. It is the hour of rest and dreams. Begone, base -harbinger of evil! - -In the early prints by Hiroshige the colours are most beautiful, one -soft tone fading imperceptibly into another, the blues and greens so -marvellously blended as to be almost interchangeable. We are told that -Michelangelo loved the companionship of the old workman who ground -his colours; and of the Japanese, it is said, “this making one family -of the greater artist and all who had to do with him has given that -peculiar completeness, that sense of peace and absence of struggle -which we feel in Japanese art.” - -In vain Hiroshige fought, towards the middle of the nineteenth century, -against introduction of cheap and inferior pigments, which were taking -the place of the native dyes—Nature’s gifts, distilled by her artist -children. Reds, yellows, blues and greens, intense and crude, were now -imported, and Western commercialism sapped the virtue of the sincere -and devoted artists and artisans of the Orient. - -In describing the effect of colour in one of the Nikko temples, W. -B. Van Ingen throws a searchlight upon the chemical secrets of this -splendour, which he tells us, if asked to describe in one word, that -word would be “golden.” “These colours,” he says, “are not imitations -of colours. If vermilion is used, it is cinnabar and not commercialized -vermilion which is employed, nor is something substituted for cobalt -because it is cheaper and will ‘do just as well.’ Each colour is used -because it is beautiful and frank as a colour, not because some other -colour is beautiful. If lacquer is the best medium to display the -beauty of the pigment, lacquer is used, and if water is better, lacquer -is discarded, and if these colours are not imitations of colours, -neither are they suggestions of colours. Pink is not used for red; if -it is used at all, it is used for its own beauty, and feeble bluish -washes are not made to do service for blue. The Oriental has not yet -learned the doctrine of substitution; he knows that substitution is -transformation.” - -The secrets of colouring of the early prints, the joy of Parisian -studios and which inspired Whistler, are lost. The delicious greens -of old mosses, the pale rose tints, the veinings and marblings, the -iridescent tints of ocean shells, the luminous colours of the anemone, -the _bleus malades des mauves_—that divine violet, a benison of the -palette handed down by those old Buddhist monks, the earliest painters -of India and China. - -These visions of colour are taking the place of obscurity and gloom, -for the great impressionists, Claude Monet, Manet, the Barbizon -school also and its disciples, have abjured the old dark shadows and -substituted violet washes, seeming to share the privilege with the -saints and sages of “seeing blue everywhere.” All true artists live -“within the sphere of the infinite images of the soul.” These seers are -their own masters, and, as Theodore Child says so exquisitely, “they -are of rare and special temperaments, and through their temperament -they look at nature and see beautiful personal visions. They fix their -visions in colour or marble and then disappear forever, carrying with -them the secrets of their mysterious intellectual processes.” Such a -special temperament was bequeathed to Whistler. He submitted himself to -the Japanese influence, not imitating but imbibing oriental methods, -and following them, notwithstanding Philistine clamour, for the -English art doctrines of the time were diametrically opposed to these -innovations. Regardless of sneers, he followed the bent of his genius, -which led him into oriental fields. He felt the sweet influence of such -artists as Hokusai and Hiroshige. He took advantage of the centuries -of thought given to drapery, in the land where, as with Greece, dress -is a national problem; where no fads and follies of fashion fostered -by commercialism are allowed; where the artists design dress, and the -people gratefully and sincerely adopt their ideas. - -When we can follow them and allow art to rule, then hideous vagaries -and vulgarities, distortions of the figure by hoops and wires, and -monstrosities in sleeves will cease. Then may we hope to be an æsthetic -nation. We need our American Moronobus to design and embroider and -paint dresses for their beautiful and intuitively tasteful countrywomen. - -The colour vision of the Oriental far surpasses our own. His eyes are -sensitive to colour harmonies which, applied to landscape, at first -seem unreal, impossible, until we realize that though they present -objects in hues intrinsically foreign to them, yet the result justifies -this arrangement, and its integrity is recognized, for the impression -we receive is the true one. And this chaotic massing of colour we -notice in a landscape by Hiroshige was employed by many of the old -masters. Of the stormy passion of Tintoret, Ruskin says: “He involves -his earth in coils of volcanic cloud, and withdraws through circle -flaming above circle the distant light of paradise.” - -There is a keynote to art, as to music, and to genius; through the -inner vision this harmony is revealed. It lies within the precincts of -the soul, beyond the reach of talented mediocrity, however versed in -the canon of art. Nor can this occult gift be handed down. The most -ardent disciples of Raphael tried in vain to express themselves after -his pattern. The sublime inspiration which found its fullest outward -manifestation in the Sistine Madonna rested there. The poets realized -this colour vision, for Dante cried— - - “Had I a tongue in eloquence as rich - As is the colouring in Fancy’s loom.” - -Inspiration must be sought by other than mechanical means. Have not the -most inspired revelations of colour come to the great master, William -Keith, when, invoking the aid of his old temple bell, its lingering -vibrations yielded to him rich secrets of colour harmony, as the song -of the bell revealed to the soul of Schiller the mystery of life and -birth and death, which he crystallized in his immortal poem? - -This is the keynote of Impressionism, the touchstone of art. What a -fairy wand was wafted by Whistler, standing upon Battersea Bridge! “The -evening mist,” he said, “clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a -veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the -tall chimneys become Campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the -night and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairyland is before -us!” - -Leaning upon the bridge, the sweet influence of Hiroshige permeating -his soul, in the crucible of his fancy he blent with the radiant Orient -a vision of old London, grimy and age-worn, and realized “a Japanese -fancy on the banks of the gray Thames.” To this picture he set the -seal of his brother artist, and so the two apostles of Impressionism, -Occidental and Oriental, in that loveliest nocturne, will together go -down to posterity. - - - - - Analytical Comparisons - - between the Masters of Ukiyo-ye. - - -It is difficult rightly to determine the distinguishing characteristics -of the noted artists of Ukiyo-ye: but the connoisseurs speak of the -extreme grace of pictorial line in Moronobu: the sweeping areas of -pattern in the garments of Kiyonobu and his followers, and their -forceful ways of outlining the folds of drapery, all full of meaning. - -Grace and delicacy mark the idyllic compositions of Harunobu and his -successor Koriusai (the face of the Japanese woman is the face of -Harunobu, Koriusai, Shunsho and his school). M. de Goncourt says: -“The Japanese woman is lithe, little, and rounded. Out of this woman -Utamaro created the slender, svelte woman of his prints,—a woman who -has the delicate outlines of an early Watteau sketch. Before Utamaro, -Kiyonaga had drawn women, larger than nature, but fleshy and thick. -The face of the ordinary Japanese woman is short and squat, and except -for the inexpressible vivacity and sweetness of the black eyes it is -the face which Harunobu, Koriusai and Shunsho represented. Out of -this face Utamaro created a long oval. He slid into the traditional -treatment of the features a mutinous grace, a naïve astonishment, a -spiritual comprehension; and he was the first artist who attempted, -while preserving the consecrated traditional lines, to blend with them -a human expression, so that his best prints become real portraits. -Studying them, we no longer see only the universal, but the individual -face, and, unlike the other Japanese artists, he idealizes his -countrywoman through the mimicry of her gracious humanity.” - -The women of Kiyonaga have a more than human dignity and grace, the -classic folds of his drapery recalling figures of the Renaissance. The -Japanese artist always has an underlying motive in the disposition of -his drapery. The most recognizable perhaps are those called “Guantai,” -signifying rude, with angular outlines, and “Rintai,” delicate, supple -and wavy, like the undulations of a river. - -In the “Guantai” motive we see the angles of the rocks, even in the -most delicate folds of drapery. In “Rintai” no angle is visible. Here -wavelike ripples descend, flowing around the feet of the wearer. In -these swirls of drapery are realized the Buddhist conceptions of Life -in everything,—the lines are moving, sentient, and all but the leading -folds that determine the lines of the figure are suppressed. The -Japanese painter knows that the true master selects, does not draw all -he sees, but concentrates his efforts towards reproducing the lines of -movement, and in figures, the lines of the limbs and flowing drapery. -In their designs for dresses the artists of Ukiyo-ye emphasized -the theorem that art is the love of certain balanced relations and -proportions, for they planned dresses in which every separate part is -welded into one harmonious whole. They solved theories in colour, and -delighted in selecting as trials for their skill the most unmanageable -patterns, such as plaids and checks. They extolled “Notan” or the -decorative use of values. - - [Illustration: Two Ladies. By Yeishi, who gave to his faces a mystic, - even religious expression, like the women of the Middle Ages.] - - -In the best prints the decoration of the dress fits in with the -scheme of the picture. M. de Goncourt says: “If the figures are -represented out of doors, flowers seem to be shed upon the dresses, as -if the wearer passed beneath blossoming trees. If the artist paints -butterflies on a costume, they harmonize with the background. If -peonies are used he alternates their whiteness with a purple tint. -And how admirable is their use of relief! Upon a blue or mauve gown, -how charming is the white relief of an embossed cherry petal, and -so marvellously executed is this goffering, that many of the oldest -impressions retain the impression as perfectly as if only printed -yesterday.” Utamaro at first equalled Kiyonaga in the majesty of his -figures, later he lost beauty and strength in exaggeration. Yeishi -shows a striking resemblance to Utamaro, and he, too, followed after -Kiyonaga: his studies of women are noted for their refined elegance. -Yeisen compares with Utamaro in the grace with which he portrays women, -and Yeizan’s lines are stronger, but show a marked similarity. Hartmann -says: “The linear beauties of the representations of Yeizan, Yeishi, -Yeisen, impress one like a Nautch, like some languid oriental dance in -which the bodies undulate with an almost imperceptible vibration. The -Japanese see in a woman, a glorification of all beautiful things—they -even study the natural grace of the willow, plum and cherry trees, to -find the correct expression of her movements.” - -Toyokuni was the master of mimetic art. In his actor faces he runs the -gamut of emotion,—jealousy, passion, fiendish fury and concentrated -cunning, rush at us from his prints. Toyokuni, the Marionette maker, -forced life into the forms of his puppets, and later the same power is -shown in his designs for the block. Like many of the Ukiyo-ye artists, -he employs caricature, but his figures are living, sentient. - -M. de Goncourt says: “In comparing two books by Utamaro, and Toyokuni, -illustrating the occupations of the women of the Yoshiwara Toyokuni, -often the equal of Utamaro in his triptychs is beaten by his rival. -His women have not the elegance, the willowy grace, the figures of -Utamaro possess, nor their resplendent personality. His pictures lack -the spirit, the life, the ‘trick’ of voluptuousness of the women of -the ‘Flower Quarter.’ Then the comic note which Toyokuni sought for in -representing these scenes, adds triviality to his work. In short, to -judge between the rival painters, one has only to place side by side -a woman painted by Utamaro and one by Toyokuni. The first is a little -marvel, the second only a commonplace print.” Kunisada followed in the -footsteps of his master Toyokuni, adding charming backgrounds, which -he borrowed from Hiroshige; in fact, the Hiroshige are said to have -supplied many backgrounds to the prints of Kunisada and Kuniyoshi. - -Hokusai used all methods, acknowledged no school. His lines flowing -out of the prescribed limits hint at vast stretches of country. Swirls -of waves foam up in the impressions, supplying an alphabet of motion. -In Mang-wa is blent sweetness and power, structure and the fundamental -vital motive, underlying all art. When working for the engraver he was -concise, rapid and impulsive, but when contemplating nature he sketched -in freedom,—his execution became fairylike. - - [Illustration: An Actor in the Miyako Dance. By Shunko, pupil of - Shunsho, nicknamed Ko-tsubo, or “The Little Jar,” from the seal used - by his master.] - -The landscape of Hiroshige, though confined to the narrow range of the -wood-cut, have all the qualities of Impressionism, the details are -subordinated, only the salient points of the scene being represented, -but the atmosphere supplies what is lacking, and this incommunicable, -subtle gift, the birthright of the artists, enabled them to conjure -living pictures from the hard medium of the wooden block. - -The following suggestive comparisons between the masters of Ukiyo-ye, -kindly volunteered by Mr. Morgan Shepard, are full of value to the -student, as the individual opinion of a refined amateur and art critic. - -Of Harunobu he says: “Though from the point of proportion his figures -seem to lack technic, the naïve artlessness of his lines perfectly -satisfies us. In this purpose of simplicity they almost suggest the -qualities of the fresco work by the early Tuscan masters, when the -spirit was striving for expression and working out individuality along -its own spiritual lines. The vigour of his stroke impresses one as -being untraditional. - -“In the figure of the Dancer by Shunko, the pupil of Shunsho, we -observe that, although through training and tradition the pupil has -gained a greater facility, yet the simplicity of the master is lost in -an excess of elaboration. The lines resemble those of Shunsho, though -there is more uniformity of stroke, with a greater delicacy, but the -simplicity of the first artist is merged in decorative purpose. Shunsho -is distinctly simple and his lines have a blended quality of relation, -giving a sense of repose which in the pupil is obscured by the tendency -to elaborate. - -“In epitomizing the cardinal qualities expressed in the Utamaro -prints, the most marked is the suggestion of subjective, unconscious -skill that gives no impress of the objective. Each line seems to come -directly from the fountain-head of the man’s spiritual or soul nature, -though this very soul nature expresses itself often along sensual -lines. Indeed, were the artist less of a spiritual genius, he would -often become revoltingly sensual. To the casual observer the lines of -Utamaro show wonderful facility, and still greater delicacy, yet we -cannot but observe underlying all his art, especially in its later -phases, this subtle sensuality. The lower draperies of the Utamaro -figures have an almost insinuating fullness. - -“The compositions of Yeishi, upon superficial study, suggest marked -facility and even some originality in line composition, with here and -there an eccentricity which gives character to his treatment. The -lines seem to be invariably broad and openly expressed. They lack the -strong personality and vigorous treatment of Hokusai, the suggestive -delicacy and voluptuousness of Utamaro, but seem to embody the vigorous -calligraphic stroke of Kiyonaga. We can place Yeishi upon a plane of -individuality because of his sensitive temperament which seemed to -be influenced by his environment and his master teacher. This varied -individuality was accompanied by a tendency towards imitation, yet -a generous discrimination would concede to him facility, technic, -refinement and rare judgment. - -“The lines of Toyokuni show technical skill, and his calligraphic -stroke is simple and vigorous, yet he lacks the spiritual and -suggestive delicacy of Utamaro, giving the impression that -externalities influenced him, rather than the finer shades of artistic -interpretation. - - [Illustration: The Snowstorm. By Kitugawa Yeizan.] - -His best work is histrionic and is full of individuality, breaking -through the traditional stage attitudes, which impressed the artists -who developed along his lines. - -“Yeizan’s treatment is peculiarly his own, having a simplicity almost -amounting to awkwardness expressed in a reserve of treatment. The -casual observer is impressed by a sense of incompleteness, but this -is overcome when the simple harmony of the lines is noted. Yeizan -invariably breaks loose from his first reserve. Beginning very -carefully he gradually loses his constraint, and the lower part of his -drapery shows greater impulse of treatment. - -“The work of Yeisen, showing much of Utamaro’s facility, with a -touch of the vigour of Kiyonaga, is yet distinctly conceived along -traditional lines. It bears the strong impress of decorative sense, but -nevertheless the lines, though simple and well controlled, show rather -the finished master of technic than the originative mind. In Yeisen -we are less conscious of that emanating quality of originality and -forceful personality that we feel in Harunobu, Hokusai and Utamaro.” - -In analyzing the composition of the celebrated work by Hokusai, -reproduced on the opposite page, Mr. Shepard comments: “In this, as -in all Hokusai’s pictures, we note the combination of vigour and -gentleness, characteristic aggression and insinuating suggestion, -an absolutely masterly touch, and yet painstaking in minutiæ. The -poise of the figure is admirable and absolutely satisfying in all -matters of drawing. The treatment of the waves, which are peculiarly -characteristic of the master’s touch, in their foamy sputter suggest -a comparison with the strength of Hiroshige’s huge billows, majestic -in their oily smoothness and sweeping grace. Giving the impression of -the middle distance, the artist has delicately approached with the -most wonderful ease, the vapory suggestion of the distant mountain -line. He slips from the vigour of the foreground with a parallel -stroke of astonishing freedom, seeming almost to remain poised, so -that we reach without violence the faintly suggested distance as if -we had unconsciously slid from reality into dreamland, unknowing of -the transition. Hokusai possesses a masterly technic, a characteristic -vigour, imagination, delicacy ofttimes opposed by a brutal ruggedness, -and above all a pervading sense of humour.” - - [Illustration: One of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. By Hokusai.] - - - - - Hints to Collectors of Ukiyo-ye Gems. - - -To truly appreciate Japanese prints, a knowledge of the language of the -block must first be acquired, then the pursuit has an indescribable -charm, inexplicable excepting to the initiated, but to those who have -fallen under the spell, the love of Ukiyo-ye gems becomes a veritable -passion. The collector of old prints must be guided in his selection -by the quality of the paper, which should be soft and vibrant, the -fibrous tentacles upon its surface often forming shadows where it has -been exposed to the dust. The register must be perfect, each colour -being confined absolutely to its prescribed space. Perfection in the -register is an infallible guide, and prints with a perfect register -will increase in value. The colours must be soft and melting, in many -cases one tone shading into another, not harshly determined by the -lines of the block, as in even the most beautiful reproductions. The -florid colouring of the later impressions by the Hiroshige are notable -examples of the deterioration caused by the use of cheap pigments and -the haste of the printer who had to supply the increasing demand for -cheap pictures. - -There are often exquisite examples of colouring to be found among the -later impressions from the old blocks, but the lovely colours and -nuances of colours conjured by the artists, designers and printers in -loving collaboration, before commercialism had invaded Japan, can never -be seen again, even as the disciples of William Morris seem unable to -reproduce the beautiful shades which the genius of the master workman -evolved from the dyeing-vat. - - - - - Bibliography, for Use of Students. - - - Anderson, William: Pictorial Arts of Japan. (London: Sampson Low, - 1886.) - - Anderson, William: Japanese Wood Engravings: Their History, Technique - and Characteristics. (London: Portfolio, 1895.) - - Bing, S.: Artistic Japan: Compiled by S. Bing, with the assistance - of Wm. Anderson, T. Hayashi, E. de Goncourt, and others. (New York: - Brentano’s, 5 Union Square.) - - Fenollosa, Ernest Francisco: An Outline of the History of Ukiyo-ye. - (Tokyo: Kobayashi.) - - Fenollosa, Mary McNeil: Hiroshige, the Artist of Mist, Snow, and Rain. - (San Francisco, 1901.) - - Goncourt, E. de: Outamaro, Le Peintre des Maisons Vertes. (Paris: 11 - Rue de Grenelle, 1891.) - - Gonse, Louis: L’Art Japonais. (Paris: A. Quartin, 1883.) - - Hartmann, Sadakichi: Japanese Art. (Boston: Page & Co., 1904.) - - Hayashi, T.: Catalogue of the Hayashi Collection, with Illustrations. - (Paris, 1902.) - - Holmes, C. J.: Hokusai. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1901.) - - Huish, Marcus B.: Japan and Its Art. (London: The Fine Arts Society, - 1893.) - - Jarves, James Jackson: A Glimpse of the Art of Japan. (New York, - 1875.) - - Okakura, Kakuzo: Essays on Japanese Art, in “Japan,” edited by F. - Brinkley. Also: Japanese Pictorial Art, in Vol. 7, “Japan and China,” - by F. Brinkley. (Boston and Tokyo: J. B. Millet Co.) - - Pepper, Charles Hovey: Japanese Prints. (Boston: Walter Kimball & - Company.) - - Perzynski, Friedrich: Farbenholzschnitt Der japanische - Farbenholzschnitt. (Berlin.) - - Revon, Michel: Etude Sur Hok’sai. (Paris, 1896.) - - Seidlitz, W. von: Geschichte des japanischen Farbenholzschnitts. - (Dresden: Gerhard Kuhtmann, 1897.) - - Strange, Edward F.: Japanese Illustration. (London: George Bell & - Sons, 1904.) - - Strange, Edward F.: Colour Prints of Japan. (Langham Series of Art - Monographs. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904.) - - - - - Fac-similes - - of the most famous Signatures of Ukiyo-ye Artists. - - -Hishikawa Moronobu. 1643-1711-13. - - -Okumura Masanobu. 1690-1720. - - -Suzuki Harunobu. 1747-1818. - - -Koriusai. 1760. - - -Shunsho. Died 1792. - - -Iitsu (Hokusai). 1760-1849. - - -Hokusai. 1760-1849. - - -Gakio Rojin Manji (Hokusai). 1760-1849. - - -Hok’kei. 1780-1856-9. - - -Kiyonaga. Died 1814. - - -Utamaro. 1754-1806. - - -Toyokuni. 1768-1825. - - -Kikugawa Yeizan. Flourished 1810-30. - - -Kunisada. 1785-1864. - - -Yeishi. Flourished 1754-1805. - - -Keisei Yeisen. 1790-1848. - - -Kuniyoshi. 1800-1861. - - -Hiroshige. 1793-1858-60. - - -Hiroshige. 1793-1858-60. - - - - - Index - - - _Page_ - - Beni, 22, 39 - - Botticelli, 13 - - Brunt, Henry Van, 32 - - - Child, Theodore, 24 - - Cho Densu, 6 - - Chromo-xylography, 27 - - Cimabue, 7 - - Crane, Walter, 4 - - - Danjuro, 26 - - - Eta, 25 - - - Forty-seven Ronin, 14 - - - Genroku, 13 - - Giorgione, 24 - - Giotto, 7 - - Guantai, 70 - - - Harunobu, Suzuki, 23-26 - - Hayashi, T., 38 - - Heizei, 3 - - Hiroshige, 34, 57 - - Hogen, 7 - - Hokusai, 34, 47 - - - Itcho, 13 - - Iyemitsu, 31 - - - Jipensha, Ikkou, 36 - - Josetsu, 4 - - - Kako, 20 - - Kano, 3, 4, 5 - - Kanaoka, 30 - - Kenzan, 13 - - Kitao, 29 - - Kiyomasu, Torii, 22 - - Kiyomitsu, Torii, 26 - - Kiyonaga, Torii, 32, 33 - - Kiyonobu, Torii, 26 - - Korin, 13 - - Koriusai, 28-33 - - Kozo, 39 - - Kunisada, 20 - - Kuranosuki, 16 - - - Leonardo da Vinci, 13-14 - - La Farge, 30 - - - Mang-wa, 54 - - Matahei, 8-9 - - Masanobu, 5-6 - - Meiji, 8 - - Ming Dynasty, 2 - - Mitford, 14 - - Miyagawa Choshun, 21 - - Mitsunobu, 7 - - Mitsunori, 9 - - Motomitsu, 3 - - Moronobu, 6, 9, 10, 11, 20, 21 - - Motonobu, 5, 6, 7 - - - Nishiki-ye, 22 - - No Kagura, 25 - - Notan, 70 - - - Okio, 30, 31 - - Okumura Masanobu, 22 - - Otsu-ye, 10 - - - Pater, 2, 24 - - Popular School, 2, 8, 9, 30 - - - Register, 77 - - Renaissance, 6 - - Rintai, 70 - - Ruskin, 40 - - - Sesshiu, 51 - - Sekiyen, 38 - - Shigemasa, 29 - - Shigenaga, 23 - - Shoguns, 4, 48 - - Shunro, 47-50 - - Shunsho, 26-29, 49 - - Shunsui, 22 - - Sotatsu, 13 - - Sukenobu, 29 - - Sumi-ye, 21 - - - Tan-ye, 21, 39 - - Tanyu, 11 - - Tokugawa, 13 - - Torii School, 21-34 - - Tosa School, 3, 4, 5, 9 - - Toyoharu, 29 - - Toyokuni, 33, 44 - - Toyonobu, 29 - - Tsunetaka, 4 - - - Utagawa, 29 - - Utamaro, 20, 33, 35-46 - - Uyeno, 50 - - - Yamato, 3 - - Yeisen, 75 - - Yeishi, 71 - - Yeitoku, 9 - - Yeizan, 71, 75 - - Yoshiwara, 36-37 - - - [Illustration: Surimono: The Ride of the Warrior Miura Kenisuke. The - inscription is a Poem he composed before setting out for Corea. By - Yanagawa Shigenobu, the Son-in-law of Hokusai.] - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE, THE -SCHOOL OF THE JAPANESE COLOUR-PRINT ARTISTS *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. 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