Chats on Japanese Prints

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OD: KIYONAGA A

Kiyonaga to his Ret

perfection by the time of Harunobu's death, the colour-print took on a ne

periods are perilous; but we shall perhaps not be venturing too dangerously if we summarize the

the brain of the artist. The Primitives were inspired by what Von Seidlitz calls the desire of "presenting single characteristic motives of movement." Their creations had no rel

le longings of the heart. Yet it is all symbolistic, all fictional, and nothing real is portrayed; the sharply limited world of these prints is a world of imagination from which no paths of communication open to regions of everyday. The perception of these artists did not enter into and interpret the seen earth; absorbed in the creation of a personal dream, it impo

reports not only the idiosyncrasies of the artist, but also some sense of the deep nature of the elements themselves. The artists of this period, while mastering the decorative impulse of the Primitives and the imaginative freedom of the Early Polychrome masters, found reality more interesting and more worthy of faithful attention than did their prede

and spacially to the figures. The world of these designs is no longer the world of a lovely but private dream; we seem to enter a re

er extreme, realism; and in the centre, this narrow isle of quiet where the two forces join in harmony. Since man lives neither by bread alone nor by dreams alone, the moments when he reconciles the claims of his visions with the facts he must

n take pleasure in the Hermes of Praxiteles or the Fête Champêtre of Gio

on of the curious position of these women. Such an inquiry has not the unpleasant features that a similar inquiry would have were the scene Europe. In the Japan of the late eighteenth century the typical Oiran was no creature of the mire, but a cultivated and splendid figure whose men

URTESAN HANA-ōJI

f Spring Greenery." Size 1

te

d in the midst of an ancient "yoshiwara" or rush-moor. In 1657, after a fire that demolished all the buildings, the quarter was moved to a site half a mile north of the great Asakusa temple in the north-east outskirts of the city, where it remains to this day. Within this moated and walled enclosure about a quarter of a mile

a kind of maid-of-honour. Her attire, of a gorgeousness wholly different from the costume of the ordinary woman, bedecks her in many of the prints with truly royal splendour. Poets sang of her; artists painted her; the common people talked of her w

and ranked as a distinguished artist in both Chinese and Japanese verse. At one time, obeying the dictates of a profound attachment, she dared all perils and fled from the Yoshiwara with her lover. These facts, together with the filial piety for which she was renowned, doubtless augmented her romantic fame. Of her beauty and lo

n-portraits are not representations of low gutter creatures, but that they portray women of the highest degree of intellectual refinemen

ADY WITH TW

he East." Size 15 × 10. Signed

te

ove as we understand it might flourish-the one region where might arise those desperate attachments of heart for heart which we regard as heroic-was the isolated enclosure of the Yoshiwara. There no shrewd parents arranged the unwilling, blind match; there the hampered spirits of

ona

val S

hese, reborn fr

gardens with

elling? What br

one hour our

ssionate, wit

gh this clear a

and all its

masters of the

hese? or godlik

n a wisdom

es the boundar

destined mea

tal sweetness

omesick for the

ted his period. All earlier print-designers were gradually driven into retirement by his colossal success, and the majority of his contemporaries adopted his style. In him all previously developed resources met; after him began that long decl

ONA

under Kiyomitsu, became the fourth head of the Torii School, produced the most important portion of his work between 17

mble Shunsho's more than his master's. In certain of his early works Harunobu's influence is evident; and the long-dead Moronobu's manner of line-work sometimes appears. From Masanobu he perhaps inherited the grand carriage of his women. Later, Shigemasa's style influenced him, and Koriusa

IZUKA WITH ATTENDANTS IN T

triptych. Size 15 × 1

te

e of Koriusai; but he combined with Koriusai's richness a monumental quality to find the equal of which we must go back to the Primitives. It is his union of the pre-Harun

of art. The primitive artist expresses himself in figures whose mannerisms and constraint suggest the limitations of his technique; the decadent artist, as we shall see later, pours his visions into figures of a

istic yet highly imaginative convention, ennobles the forms he portrays as did the convention of the Greek sculptors; and he comes nearer to the Greek sentiment toward the nude than does any other Japanese artist except Toyonobu. His nudes themselves are not what I now refer to, but rather to that sense of bodily presence, that consciousness of the limbs beneath the draperies, which, as in Plate 28, one finds rec

ch, where a group of women and a seated man are gathered on the terrace of a tea-house overlooking the seashore, vigour of spiritual sanity and refinement of pictorial composition touc

A TEA-HOUSE WAITRESS B

Size 15 × 10. Signed Kiyo

te

wish you had?" These figures are serene, supernatural, Olympian; fictional, just as Harunobu's are but differing from his in that

ity he was a realist. Yet he was never the dupe of that realism which attempts to report photographically. In his renderings fact took a harmonious place alongside of those idealizations which were personal to him. K

n to Ukioye art. Consequent upon it he

provisations that have never been equalled. Harunobu customarily elaborated every portion of his sheet with these inlayings of beautiful tones, enriching his fi

pe that was the need of his specific genius. He discarded all those lovely tricks of the engraver and the printer which had been almost an end in themselves to Harunobu. He abstained from giving to his backgrounds Harunobu's exquisite ne

a, he derived a style that is one of his chief glories. No use of line was ever more virile than his. The brush seems to vibrate in his hand; the strokes are instinct with life along every fraction of their length; the line narrows

UNE SERENADING TH

e 15 × 10. Signed Kiyonaga

te

y Shunsho. His most important work is in the form of the large full-size sheets which he adopted from Koriusai. In these he rose to a height unparallele

grasp of the full possibilities of pictorial composition. But proceeding to other series, the gap widens. In the series "Present Day Beauties of the Yoshiwara," he advanced to his own unique field. Possibly he touched the supreme height in the gre

a's invention; many artists in the First and Second Periods had produced hoso-ye sheets in sets of three that could be joined together to form one picture. In fact, each set of three was originally one sheet printed from one set of blocks; and it was con

ace by the Sea," are all dominated by an indigenous rhythm of line and colour. These designs have not Shunsho's startling force, nor Harunobu's minutely detailed grace, nor Koriusai's richness; all these elements Kiyonaga sacrifices for a broader sweep and a more unified pictorial quality. His designs co-ordinate the elem

WITH SERVANT CA

27

Kiyon

MAN PAINTING

27

Kiyon

te

em are treasures; for though they combine into still greater compositions, each one, as we may see in Plate 27, or in any one of the sheets of Plat

s characteristic of the coming decadence. Therefore his retirement from print-designing, a little after 1790, was not, as in the case of Harunobu's untimel

aller prints, and his pillar-prints in particular, are among the most attractive acquisitions remaining for the collector. The large single sheets, if fine

printed masterpieces which once belonged to Fenollosa, and which is now one of the glories of the Spaulding Collection in Boston. Similarly, the Mansfield Collection in New York

of Ki

a. His work, produced between 1810 an

sugi, Kiyohisa, Kiyokatsu, Kiyotei, Kiyot

Kiyonaga; among those difficult to classif

somewhat in the manner of Shuncho. Delicacy rather than strengt

noted on the margin of it: "A rare man. Name may be also read Shunkō, but not the same as the pupil of Shunsho. A follower of K

ROUP AT A

e 15 × 10. Signed Shuncho

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ladies sha

's moated w

ust, and nig

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coming of

comes not, w

long the hal

ce-golden

ll Nikko cr

worn, its glo

y winters.

t Ieyasu's

omb now tak

eagle's youn

ardens ca

ra, where

Buddha fro

waves may s

nd flat the

ancholy a

e to hearts

iscovered

Yedo sh

ikko prais

ightier t

he world in

shall be spr

when Buddha

issant hand

anew life's

comes who

that so ma

ight him thro

l from your

art shall

ery of

ur wreath in

ladies sha

l under the influence of Kiyonaga and became that artist's most notable follower. His main work lies between the years 1775 and 1800; it is thought that he stopped designing prints before the latter ye

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xpress his own peculiar and mild sense of beauty, with a perfection that makes him stand out unique among Kiyonaga's disciples. Other pupils of Kiyonaga followed the master for a longer or shorter while; but all the others sooner or later developed styles of their own or copied the styles of other leaders-often eccentric and decadent leaders, far inferior to him whom they had abandoned. But Shuncho, having adopted the Kiyonaga manner at its noblest, when the proportions in the drawing of the figure were most natural and dignified, never departed from it except to make it sligh

O LADIES UN

17

Shunc

ANA-ōJI-THE SUMIDA RIVER

27

Shunc

te

uld ill afford to sacrifice even for Kiyonaga's strength. Kiyonaga brings down the gods in all their noble dignity to walk the earth in calm magnificence; but Shuncho leads us into a secret heaven where the loveliest and most flower-like of the gods have remained behind. His is a softer beauty, touched with remote half-lights, vibrant with faint wistfulness; his superb women turn in mid-joy as though far and grave music had suddenly drifted to their hearing; their perfection passes over into the region where beauty becomes sadness. No women

IES IN A BOAT ON

26

ign

COURTESANS A

25

d Yei

te

of eternal happiness. His colour-schemes in these natural settings are artfully contrived to produce, through the limited agency of flat tints, an impression of crystal-clear atmosphere around and behind the figures. In both his triptychs and his pillar-prints there o

himself, the observer and recorder. He is detached even from his own most perfect work. Compare him with Harunobu or

in absolute beauty his work deserves a place beside that of the master. As a

are almost unknown. In this particular he is in striking contrast to many of his contemporaries; and one may perhaps trace his care to the training of Shunsho,

un

out great vigour. Even in these early pieces Shunzan's leaning towards sweetness and suavity suggests that he was not at home in the Shunsho manner; and it is not strange to find that he later turned to Kiyonaga, under whose powerful influence he produced his best-known work-b

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as been even less than normally kind to

un

his style; yet on the whole his work resembles Kiyonaga very little. An individual touch dominates all his compositions. He may be called the symphonist of greys; for a large part of his most notable production is done in modulated shades of this colour, heightened and made luminous here and there by carefully calculated

SHU

the feeling of supernatural forces that it awakens. As Fenollosa says: "Everything he does has a strange touch. The Kiyonaga face becomes distorted with a sort of divine frenzy; trees grope about with their branch-tips like sentient beings; flowers seem to exhale unknown perfumes, and the waters of his streams writhe and glide w

ur than that of most Ukioye artists. Some obscure quality of restraint and imagination relates him to the

h all the great collectors in the world compete. His smaller prints and book-illustrations are, however, procurable; and his surim

Masa

Wo

at sky-paven places have ope

ugh summerward spaces watc

touched your faces-w

longing unspoken who dream

the pitcher is broken: y

of the dreamer as token

ame of Kyōden, for his highly popular novels and comic poems. He produced very few prints, but those few are of distinguished quality, all of them probably the product of his early years, before he reached the age of thirty. At least one of these, reproduced in Plate 31, is an unsurpassable triumph. His resemblance to his first maste

OBU (

ed to it in dealing with the great illustrated book of Shunsho and Shigemasa. It consists of seven large double-page illustrations in many colours, and is a highly praised work, sheets of which are oft

Masanobu as an artist second to only the very greatest. Spirituality is a clumsy word to use in describing work so definitely embodied as this;

re he finds an important print by t

ayo

neous with Kiyonaga, his work was little influenced by the great master. His designs are marked chiefly by the vividness of his observation of flowers, animals, and landscape, and by his technical skill in recording them. His books of sketches are his best-known works-drawings in a manner new to wood-engraving; he seldom employs any key-block, but leaves the main body

ANOBU: TH

ned Masanobu ga. S

te

re very rare. His book-sheets are