Chapter I: Part 1

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.

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._

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.

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.

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.