About 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-e. 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-e 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.”
The 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 this essential skill.
From 1765 to 1780 the school of Ukiyo-e was dominated by four great artists and creators of separate styles: Suzuki Harunobu, succeeded by Isoda Koryūsai, taking for motive the subjects of Shunsui; Katsukawa Shunshō (changed by Shunsui from its former title of Miyagawa), upon whose shoulders had fallen the mantle of the Torii; Kitao Shigemasa, working upon Shunshō’s lines, but breaking into a rival academy, the Kitao; Utagawa Toyoharu, pupil of old Torii Toyonobu, founder of the school of Utagawa, whose most illustrious pupil was Utagawa Toyokuni, the doll-maker, and brother of Utagawa Toyohiro, Hiroshige’s master. (Utagawa Kunisada, noted for his backgrounds, succeeded Toyokuni, and after the death of his master signed himself Toyokuni the Second.)
Keisai Eisen, Landscape under the Moon, c. 1835.
Colour woodblock print, 71.9 × 24.9 cm.
Baur Collection, Geneva.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Kasumigaseki, from the series Famous Places of the Oriental Capital [Edo], c. 1830–1844.
Colour woodblock print, 25.6 × 37.7 cm.
Chiba Art Museum, Chiba.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Distant View of Mount Fuji from Shōhei Hill, from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji from Edo, c. 1843.
Colour print from woodblocks, 38 × 25.5 cm.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Utagawa Toyoharu, Fireworks at Ryōgoku Bridge, 1820–1825.
Woodblock print on paper, 38 × 25.5 cm.
Utagawa Toyokuni, Fireworks on Ryōgoku, 1830–1844.
Colour woodblock print, 72.7 × 74 cm.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Shunshō is considered one of the greatest artists of Japan, both as an inventor and powerful colourist. Louis Gonse used to say: “All the collections of coloured prints which are today the delight of the teahouses; 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 Shunshō, who had for a time the monopoly of them.” While the Torii artists were beguiling the Edo populace with theatrical portraiture, and aiding the growing tendency toward cosmopolitanism by issuing printed albums, books of travel, and encyclopaedias, art was also expanding at the ancient capital, Kyoto. Nishikawa Sukenobu, the prolific artist, was bringing out beautifully illustrated books, and Okyo Maruyama, 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 after the street of the master’s studio.
The Popular School, aided by Okyo, effected a revolution in the laws of painting at Kyoto, for the artists forsook their academic methods, painting birds, flowers, grass, quadrupeds, insects and fishes from nature. Okyo’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, said: “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 Kanō Tanyu, the great artist, and the crabs at Enryaku-ji 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 spoken the truth.
Utagawa Toyoharu, View of a Harbour on the Sumida River, Catching Fresh Air on the Eitai Bridge, Fukugawa, c. 1770.
Colour woodblock print, 24.1 × 35.5 cm.
Utagawa Toyokuni, Akatsutaya in the Temporary Quarters, 1800.
Brocade triptych, 50 × 20 cm.
Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo.
Miyagawa Chōshun, Genre Scene at Edo (detail), 1716–1736.
Ink and colours on silk, 34.4 × 782.7 cm.
Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo.
So it was also with Okyo. He breathed the breath of life into his pictures. 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 Okyo correctly, we should see him at home in his own environment, not in Europe, where so many copies of his masterpieces abounded. John La Farge gave us a glimpse of an Okyo, 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 centre, through whose returning walls project, in a curious refinement