Japanese Woodblock Prints in Miniature: The Genre of Surimon. Kurt Meissner

faces, etc., was easier than carving characters. First the figures and forms were outlined on the first printing plate, and ten to twenty copies were made. Then the painter decided on the colours. If they were ōban ukiyo-e, the censor's stamp appeared on the printing plate, which only showed black outlines. However, surimono which, were privately commissioned and given to friends did not have to pass this censorship. As soon as the printing plate with outlines was finished and the painters had decided on the colours, the carvers cut a separate printing plate for each colour. Then the paint was applied to the plate with a brush, and finally the paper was placed on the plate and rubbed with a brush or pad made of bamboo sheath—the so-called baren.

      The beauty of each print depended upon the skill of the person who rubbed the paper on the printing plate; it required a very sensitive touch. It was not possible to make more than 200 copies at the very most. The number of the printed surimono did not have to be large, since they were commissioned by art-conscious citizens from their artist friends and distributed as presents only to a small circle of close acquaintances. In old Edo two, three, or more citizens got together and distributed the same picture. At any rate, the number of ōban ukiyo-e, which as mentioned were ordered by publishers and sold to everyone, was much greater than the number of surimono privately distributed. Consequently, collectors always discover surprisingly few copies of their own surimono in other collections.

      A very good quality of thick paper called hōsho was used. The surimono size varied; after the year 1800 it was normally 20X 18 cm. (7¾ X 7 in.), but there are many smaller surimono in existence, especially from the eighteeth century. The 20 X 18 size is called shikishiban. Such a small size necessitated art miniatures at which the Japanese are especially gifted. The thickness of the hōsho paper made good blind printing (gaufrage) possible, which was often used on surimono for producing special ornamental effects.

      Not only beautiful colours and better paper, but also more luxurious printing distinguished the surimono from other ukiyo-e pictures. Mica backgrounds, gold, silver, and copper dust—particularly the blind-printing technique and everything that the woodblock carver and printers had learned in the course of the years— were lavishly applied in the making of surimono. Costs were of no consequence here. When, at the end of the nineteenth century the Japanese multicoloured prints (nishiki-e) became known in France, one admired among other things the marvelously precise fittings (registers) which were achieved by simple means. No colour fields spilled over into the neighbouring areas of colour.

      The painters of ukiyo-e used as their colours blue, four kinds of red, five kinds of yellow, lilac-blue, white, black, yellowish brown (the colour of the persimmon fruit), grass green, spice brown, and orange. Blue was made from the leaves of the indigo plant which thrives in Awa on Shikoku. The different shades of red are crimson (beni), Chinese vermilion (shu) , Indian red, or red oxide of iron, (benigara) , and minium (tan). Crimson was made from the juice of safflower petals, vermilion from sulphuretted mercury, Indian red was made from burnt green vitriol, and minium from lead oxide. There were also five shades of yellow (kuchinashi, kihada, shiō, sekiō, and ukon), some of which were taken from plant substances like tree bark and roots, and some from mineral substances such as sulphur and arsenic. White (gofun) was either lead white or pulverized oyster shells. Lilac (sumire) was extracted from the tsuyu-kusa (Commelina communis). Black was the colour of Chinese ink with glossy additives. The persimmon colour was a mixture of crimson and sekiō or Indian red and a little black (sumi). Chōji-iro (spice-brown) was another mixture of sekiō and vermilion. Green (kusa-iro, meaning grass green or dark green) was made by mixing sekiō and the said lilac. Orange was made by mixing zumi, a yellow pigment from a tree bark, with crimson. Of course the nineteenth-century pigments were probably different from those used in the eighteenth century, and even Osaka pigments differed from those in Edo. The Japanese used hues made mostly from plants and a few of metallic composition, until Japan opened its harbours to foreign trade (1859). Colours made from tar were introduced from Europe, but they did not lend themselves well to ukiyo-e.

      Painting and Poetry

      At the turn of the eighteenth century customers ordered more and more pictures without the usual numbers of long and short months but with poems (generally kyōka) which they themselves had composed. Surimono pictures were often the product of a fine collaboration between professional artists and talented lay customers. When the eighteenth century neared its end, poems replaced the numbers of calendar months but the paper, colours, and technique of printing remained the same as formerly used for calendar prints.

      The standard-sized surimono was popular for those printed in Edo (Tokyo). The surimono printed in Osaka were huge in size as the number of club members who immortalized themselves with their poems on them was also very high. On the surimono of Edo, for example, two or occasionally four poems never disturbed the beautiful impression which the pictures made. Fifty or more poems, however, with the names of club member "poets" take up the greater part of the surimono of Osaka so that the picture is limited in size and thus of secondary importance.

      Poems on Surimono

      It has been mentioned already that the poems on surimono are only of secondary interest to the foreign collector today. About 150 years ago, however, the poems were just as important as the picture. The men who wrote the lines were not actually poets; most were laymen schooled in literary clubs—merchants, shop-owners, and the like, while the surimono pictures were by great artists.

      The poems—kyōka or sometimes haiku—were limited to 31 or 17 syllables. Today we do not know what feelings the giver and receiver had in common or what they had experienced together. Consequently, no matter how we try, we probably will never quite understand the full meaning and nuance that lie behind most of the poems. Besides, it is difficult to translate the lines into European languages so that the grace of the original poem can be felt.