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 On (he Reverse. 
 
 Surimono : 
 
 A Crow Stealing a Sword. 
 
 This sword is a famous heirloom of the 
 
 ancient house of Genii, described in the old 
 
 romance known as "Genji Monogatori. 
 
 By Hokusai.
 
 : -a -fi -J 
 
 5 E3- 
 
 «15 e.c 'sea 
 
 .2-1 2 r° 
 CQ i U. 
 
 H$C^4
 
 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 Prest
 
 
 
 N. 
 
 
 
 TO 
 
 MY BROTHER AND BEST FRIEND 
 
 CHARLES WATSON JACKSON 
 
 179893

 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Contents. 
 
 The Rise of Ukiyo-ye (The Floating World) - 
 
 Genroku (The Golden Era of Romance and Art) - 
 
 The School of Torii (The Printers' Branch of Ukiyo-ye) 
 -'Utamaro (Le Fondateur de L'Ecole de la Vie) - 
 
 "The Romance of Hokusai (Master of Ukiyo-ye) ... 
 c Hiroshige (Landscape Painter and Apostle of Impressionism) 
 
 Analytical Comparisons between the Masters of Ukiyo-ye 
 
 Hints to Collectors of Ukiyo-ye Gems - 
 
 Bibliography, for Use of Students ,..-.. 
 
 Fac-similes of the Most Famous Signatures of the Ukiyo-ye Artists 
 
 Index -. - 
 
 Page I 
 
 .. ,3 
 
 " 25 
 
 " 35 
 
 " 47 
 
 " 57 
 
 " 69 
 
 " 77 
 
 " 78 
 
 " 80 
 
 " 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 
 
 * 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 Flyleaf 
 
 Yanagawa Shigenobu — The Ride of the Warrior Miura Kenisuke Last Fly-leaf 
 
 * From the Happcr Collection.
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 The Rise of Ukiyo-ye. 
 
 The Floating World. 
 
 ^■fe^HE 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 char- 
 acterization of Jarves sums up forcibly the motive of the masters of 
 Ukiyo-ye, the Popular School of Japanese Art, so poetically inter- 
 preted "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 pre- 
 tend 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 inhab- 
 itant 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 
 
 [1]
 
 
 IMPRESSIONS ^OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 study and research to speak with authority upon the form 
 The Rise of Japanese Art, which in its most concrete development 
 Ukiyo-ye. ^ e Ukiyo-ye print is now claiming the attention of the 
 art world. 
 
 The development of colour printing is, however, only the objec- 
 tive symbol of Ukiyo-ye, for, as our Western oracle, Professor Fen- 
 ollosa, said, "The true history of Ukiyo-ye, although including prints 
 as one of its most fascinating diversions, is not a history of the tech- 
 nical art of printing, rather an aesthetic 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 de- 
 velopment. 
 
 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 in- 
 directly 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 
 
 [2]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 for centuries dominated the art of Japan; the sweeping 
 calligraphic strokes of Hokusai mark the sway of The Rise 
 hereditary influence, and his wood-cutters, trained to Ukiyo-ye. 
 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 im- 
 perial 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 hal- 
 lowed entourage of the divinely descended Mikado. The ceremonial 
 of the court, its fetes 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 
 
 [31
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Japanese Art was ever dominated by the priestly 
 The Rise hierarchy, and also by temporal rulers, and of this 
 Ukivo-ve *^ e scno °l °f 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 cen- 
 tury 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 prelim- 
 inary practice with the brush in his valuable study, "Line and Form," 
 
 [4]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 but the Chinese and Japanese ideographs give a far 
 
 wider scope to initial brush work. The Rise 
 
 The early artists of Kano reduced painting to an Ukiyo-ye. 
 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 oC 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, repre- 
 sented 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 mediaeval 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 
 
 [5]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 to enumerate the masters who inaugurated schools, 
 The Rise for if an artist developed exceptional talent in Japan, 
 Ukiyo-ye ne 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 essen- 
 tially 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, minutiae 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 ring- 
 leader 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. 
 
 [6]
 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 The splendour of this beatific vision has never faded, 
 
 for the masters who followed in the footsteps of the The Rise 
 
 inspired monk reverently preserved the secret of these ukiy -ye. 
 
 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 tide 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 estab- 
 lished 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 Fesole." 
 
 The two great schools, Tosa and Kano, flourished independently 
 until the middle of the eighteenth century, when the genius of the pop- 
 ular artists, forming the school of Ukiyo-ye, gradually fused the tradi- 
 tions 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, 
 
 [7]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Kiyonaga and Hiroshige were the crowning glory of all 
 The Rise the schools, — the artists whose genius told the story 
 
 Ukiyo-ye °^ t ^ ie ' r countr y» day by ^ a y« 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 con- 
 sciousness, which culminated in the revolution of 1 868, — a revolu- 
 tion, 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, Pro- 
 fessor 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 con- 
 sidered to be the originator of the Popular School. The spontaneous 
 
 [8]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 growth of great movements and the mystery of the 
 
 source of genius are illustrated in the career of Matahei. The Rise 
 
 His environment fitted him to follow in the footsteps of Ukiyo-ye. 
 
 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 con- 
 temptuously disowned by Tosa for depicting scenes from the life of 
 his countrymen, yet the technique of Kano and Tosa were the birth- 
 right 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 colour- 
 ing of Kano had faded, tending continually toward monochrome, but 
 the Ukiyo-ye painters restored the use of gorgeous pigments, pre- 
 serving 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 
 
 [91
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Ukiyo-ye art. This art of printing, which originated 
 The Rise in China and Corea, had, until the beginning of the 
 •ji 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 coun- 
 trywomen 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 
 
 [10]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 the modern poster, we see perpetuated the degenerate 
 offspring of the genius of Moronobu, of whom it is The Rise 
 remarked that his enlarged compositions have the plas- Uluyo-ye. 
 ticity 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 resume 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 
 
 MM
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 of the most beautiful classic poems are ascribed to them. 
 
 The Rise Well might the Japanese fight fiercely for his altar and 
 
 Ukiyo-ye. 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: 
 
 B 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 Phoebus sprung I " 
 
 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. B 
 
 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. 
 
 [12]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Genroku. 
 
 The Golden Era of Romance and Art. 
 
 ^■Ab^'HE Nen-go of Genroku, from 1 688 to 1 703, was that 
 
 £ period of incomparable glory which the Japanese revere 
 
 ^f 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 
 
 [13]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 screens for the tombs of trie 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 conse- 
 crated 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 mediaeval tale of bloodthirsty 
 vengeance and feudal devotion. This Japanese vendetta of the sev- 
 enteenth 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 
 
 [14]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 thou- 
 sand 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 to- 
 day." 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 faith- 
 ful servants, is the sequel of the story. Oishi Kuranosuki, the chief 
 
 [15]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 yashifyi 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 con- 
 fidence. 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 consterna- 
 tion 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 be- 
 seech you to perform Seppuku (happy despatch). I shall have the 
 
 [16]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Genroku. 
 
 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." Unfortu- 
 nately, the carefully planned programme of the Ronin failed to recom- 
 mend 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 accomplish- 
 ing 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 re- 
 tainers 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 
 
 [17]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 is- 
 sued by the Government, this plot of ours will be displeasing to our 
 master, still we who have eaten of your food could not without blush- 
 ing 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 
 
 [18]
 
 Genroku. 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 blood- 
 thirsty are the blades of their relentless katanas, which once un- 
 sheathed must be slaked in human blood, and their garments, slashed 
 into stiletto-like points of inky blackness, forming a cheveaux de frisc 
 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 
 
 [191
 
 Genroku. 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 break- 
 ing 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 prepon- 
 derates, 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 prof- 
 ligacy 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 
 
 [20]
 
 Genroku. 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 eighth Shogun, the knights were restricted from attend- 
 ing 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 print- 
 ing 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 1 710), 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 
 
 [21]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 hand-painted prints. Beni-ye (literally red pictures), 
 
 followed the Urishi-yc. 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 Nishil^i-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 substi- 
 tution 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 1 765 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 develop- 
 ment. Japanese book illustration and single-sheet printing revo- 
 lutionized 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. 
 
 [22J
 
 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. 

 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 ar- 
 rangement, 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 har- 
 monies, 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 land- 
 scape backgrounds, which the Torii School had hitherto ignored. 
 
 [23]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 pres- 
 ence 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"? 
 
 124]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 The School of Torii. 
 
 The Printers" Branch of Ukiyo-ye. 
 
 ^■Ap^ HE Torii School was pre-eminently the exponent of the 
 
 £ drama. It was bound up with stage development and 
 
 ^S 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 mediaeval 
 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 
 
 [25]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 of the actors, and the printers who spread their pictures 
 
 The broadcast, that the people owed the aesthetic wonders 
 
 VoriL °f t^"" 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 trans- 
 formation 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 experi- 
 ments in colouring, varying his actor designs with domestic scenes and 
 
 [26]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 book illustrations, Harunobu resolutely refused to 
 portray the life of the stage, and in this determination The 
 
 he was followed by his pupil and successor, Koriusai. Torii. 
 
 About the year 1 765, 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 
 
 [27] 

 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 of the paper and the magnetic pressure of the master 
 The printer's fingers. This characteristic seems to have 
 
 Torii. 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 paint- 
 ings now being issued, — though a joy to the student unable to ac- 
 quaint 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 mys- 
 terious 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 1 765 to 1 780 the school of Ukiyo-ye was dominated by 
 four great artists and creators of separate styles: Harunobu, suc- 
 ceeded by Koriusai, taking for motive the subjects of Shunsui; 
 
 [28]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Shunsho of Katsukawa (changed by Shunsui from its 
 
 former title of Miyagawa), upon whose shoulders had The 
 
 fallen the mantle of the Torii; Shigemasa, working C Torii° 
 
 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. (Kuni- 
 
 sada, 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 land- 
 scapes 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 the- 
 atrical portraiture, and aiding the growing tendency toward cos- 
 mopolitanism by issuing printed albums, books of travel and encyclo- 
 pedias, 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 paint- 
 ing, and the Shijo or naturalistic school was named from the street 
 in which was the studio of the master. 
 
 [29]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 The Popular School, aided by Okio, effected a 
 The 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 Japan- 
 ese 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 sculp- 
 tured 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 un- 
 rolled, 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 in- 
 visible. On the other panels the artist had painted its companions, 
 and at the bidding of his patron furnished them with claws. "Never- 
 theless," 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, 
 
 [30]
 
 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 masters. 
 
 * 
 
 &1
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 we should see him at home in his own environment, not 
 in Europe, where so many copies of his masterpieces The 
 
 abound. John La Farge gives us a glimpse of an Tom. 
 
 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 grat- 
 ings 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 Com- 
 passionate, sits in contemplation beside the descending stream of 
 life." 
 
 About I 775 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 
 
 [31]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 and contours, are again realized in the panels of 
 The Kiyonaga. Professor Fenollosa said that "classic" 
 
 «j* or jj 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 ele- 
 vated 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 be- 
 came sublime, monumental, fitted to symbolize death and eternal re- 
 pose. 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 deli- 
 cate limbs in silken draperies, and simulating in their enchanting slen- 
 
 (32]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 derness the stems of flowers — or, to borrow a beautiful 
 
 simile from Lafcadio Hearn, "looking like a beautiful The 
 
 silver moth robed in the folding of its own wings." Tom. 
 
 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 manu- 
 factured; 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 
 1 780 to 1 790, 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 vul- 
 garity, 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 
 
 [33]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 figures of Kiyonaga. Gigantic courtesans, bizarre and 
 The fantastic, with delirious headgear, took the place of 
 Torii. 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 re- 
 generator 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 im- 
 pression of his genius is stamped upon their work. A true handi- 
 craftsman 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. 
 
 F34]
 
 r 
 
 
 
 ^m 
 
 Kt 
 
 The Aclor Kikugoro. 
 
 By Toyokuni 1, 
 
 the great 
 
 Actor-Designer and 
 
 Master of Mimetic 
 
 Art. 
 
 f 
 
 tl 
 
 @
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Utamaro. 
 
 Le Fondateur de L'Ecole de la Vie. 
 
 ^9w^ HE above title is quoted from the work of M. Edmond 
 
 LW 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 aris- 
 tocracy, became the vehicle of art for the common people of Japan, 
 and the names of the artists who aided in its development are fa- 
 miliarly 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 con- 
 temporary, 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, 
 
 [351
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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, recog- 
 nizing 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 de- 
 picted 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 the, 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 prin- 
 cesses, brought up in the seclusion of the palace. Coming from 
 
 [36]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 nine- 
 teenth 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 "Under- 
 world," 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 Seki- 
 yen, throws so charming a sidelight upon the youth of the artist, 
 that the temptation to quote is irresistible. The value of these Japan- 
 ese 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 undertak- 
 ing 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 in- 
 
 [37] 
 
 L79RB3
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 terchangeable, the cnly country where art industrial 
 almost always touches grand art. 
 
 The translator of the preface of Sekiyen is grate- 
 fully referred to by M. de Goncourt as ? T intelligent, 
 le savant, l'aimable M. Hyashi." It may be considered a revolution- 
 ary manifesto of the Profane School, the school of real life, in oppo- 
 sition to the hierarchical Buddhist academies of Kano and Tosa, 
 which had become stultified by tradition and stifled by conventional 
 observances. 
 
 "Preface ecrite par Toriyama Sekiyen, le maitre d'Outamaro, 
 celebrant le naturisme (sortit du cceur) de son petit, de son cher eleve 
 Outa." "Reproduire la vie par le cceur, et en dessiner la structure 
 au pinceau, est la loi de la peinture. L'etude que vient de publier 
 maintenant, mon eleve Outamaro, reproduit la vie meme du monde 
 des insectes. C'est la vraie peinture du , cceur. Et quand je me 
 souviens d'autrefois, je me rappelle que des l'enfance, le petit Outa, 
 observait le plus infinie detail des choses. Ainsi a l'automne, quand 
 il etait dans le jardin, il se mettait en chasse des insectes, et que ce 
 soit un criquet ou une sauterelle, avait-il fait une prise, il gardait le 
 bestiole dans sa main et s'amusait a l'etudier. Et combien de fois 
 je l'ai gronde dans l'apprehension qu'il ne prenne l'habitude, de 
 donner la mort a des etres vivants. Maintenant qu'il a acquis son 
 grand talent du pinceau, il fait de ces etudes d' insectes, la gloire de 
 sa profession." 
 
 The enthusiastic master of le petil 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 taman- 
 
 1381
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 oushi," the cicada of Japan, whose endless peevish 
 twanging upon one string forms an underlying accom- 
 paniment 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 larvae, 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 marvel- 
 lously 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 Raisonne" of M. de Goncourt is a prose master- 
 piece. His descriptive touches, like pastels set in jewels, captivate 
 
 [39]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 4 
 
 the imagination. Through him we see the albums, the 
 
 fans, the kakemonos, the surimonos. Oh, the prints, 
 
 with their wondrous backgrounds, the delight of Uta- 
 
 maro! Sometimes straw-yellow, the uniformity broken 
 
 with clouds or 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 a travers 
 
 un tulle; l'azur — delave, et comme noye 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 aesthetic temperament of a nation is most 
 subtly felt in the use of colour. Purity, coldness, sensuality, bright- 
 ness, 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 fetes, feasting their eyes upon cherry blooms or 
 trailing clusters of the wistaria. 
 
 Utamaro planned schemes of colour and devised harmonies — 
 themes which, improvised upon and endlessly imitated by his artist 
 confreres, filled his own countrymen with delight and ravished the 
 hearts of Parisian painters. The influence of Utamaro, Hiroshige 
 
 [40]
 
 While Mother Sleeps. 
 
 By Utamaro, 
 
 named by 
 
 M. de Goncourt: 
 
 n Le Fondateur de 
 
 L'Ecole de la Vie." 
 
 1
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 tete, sur le dos de sa 
 main, quand elle reflechit, dans ses agenouillements, les paumes de 
 ses mains appuyes sur les cuisses, quand elle ecoute, dans sa parole, 
 jetee de cote, la tete un peu tournee, et qui la montre dans les aspects si 
 joliment fuyants d'un profil perdu; vous l'avez dans sa contemplation 
 
 [41]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Utamaro. 
 
 amoureuse des fleurs qu'elle regarde aplatie a terre; 
 vous l'avez dans ses renversements ou lagerement elle 
 pose, a demi assise, sur la balustrade d'un balcon; vous 
 Favez dans ses lectures, ou elle lit dans le volume, tout 
 pres de ses yeux, les deux coudes appuyes sur ses genoux; vous l'avez 
 dans sa toilette qu'elle fait avec une main tenant devant elle, son petit 
 miroir de metal, tandis que de 1' autre main passee derriere elle, elle se 
 caresse distraitement la nuque de son ecran; vous l'avez dans le con- 
 tournement de sa main autour d'une coupe de sake, dans l'attouchement 
 delicat et recroqueville 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 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 aesthetically 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 embroid- 
 ered draperies dissolve deliciously. Oh, those dreams of dresses! — 
 the warp and woof of the visions of the masters of Ukiyo-ye, 
 
 [42]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 of Harunobu and Kiyonaga, Toyokuni and Kuni- 
 sada, and all the rest, the idols of Parisian colourists! 
 "For us," says M. de Goncourt, "Utamaro painted 
 violet dresses, where, upon the border, degradation rosee n 
 (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 alpha- 
 bet, — 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,' be- 
 neath 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 scin- 
 tillating 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 
 
 [43]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 Ki- 
 yonaga, 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 tra- 
 ditions. 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 composi- 
 tions, said M. de Goncourt, the technique and mannerisms of Ki- 
 yonaga "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 genera- 
 tion 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 
 
 [44]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 absinthe, which blot the brilliant pages of De Mau- 
 passant 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 eschappe, enfantes des chimeres." The blasphemous impieties 
 of this culte, deplored by all true Frenchmen, in the country of Hugo 
 and Moliere, were distanced by Utamaro, who suborned his art, his 
 cynical brush caricaturing under the distorted figures of noted cour- 
 tesans 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 lese-majeste brought him into dis- 
 favour 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 1 806, 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, "le petit 
 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 declasse, 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." 
 145]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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." 
 
 [46'
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 certainty 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, Hhe old man, mad about drawing. 1 " 
 
 RS 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 I 849, at the age of eighty-nine, and the continual 
 increase in his powers, it is easy to believe that had his life been ex- 
 tended to the limit he craved, the prophecy would have been fulfilled. 
 M. Louis Gonse says of Hokusai, "He is the last and most bril- 
 liant figure of a progress of more than ten centuries — the exuberant 
 and exquisite product of a time of profound peace and incomparable 
 refinement." 
 
 [471
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 From the standpoint of Buddhism, Hokusai was 
 
 The the crowning glory, the supreme efflorescence of count- 
 
 Romance of I .• T I ' 1 ' * 1 
 
 Hokusai. ,ess P revl °us incarnations. In his career he epitomized 
 the theory of evolution, the embryonic stages being ex- 
 emplified 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 aca- 
 demic 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 execu- 
 tion 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 
 
 [48]
 
 ^^^ r 
 
 
 Two Ladies. 
 By Hokusai.

 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 the school which liberated Japanese art from the 
 shackles of centuries of tradition. The 
 
 Ukiyo-ye is the supreme expression, the concentrated Hokusai 
 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 lovefs, 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 
 
 149]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 and no influence. His father was a maker of metal 
 
 The mirrors, Hokusai's real name being Nakajima Tetsu 
 
 Hokusai. J* r0, 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 illus- 
 trious 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 
 
 [50]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 into life at the touch of the creator. All who 
 know his work can in imagination picture the grand The 
 sweeping curves and graduated shadings that the magic Hokusai. 
 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 demi- 
 gods 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 
 
 [51]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 with a red pigment, and let it run over the wet colour, 
 
 The when the Shogun and his astonished courtiers beheld a 
 
 Hokusai flowing stream of liquid blue, upon which appeared to 
 
 float frlmy 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 <T 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 un- 
 consciously 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 composi- 
 tions of Hokusai, and there is no complete catalogue of his works, 
 the one nearest to accuracy being M. Edmond de Goncourt's Cata- 
 logue rahonne. 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 com- 
 
 [52]
 
 5*^ t 
 
 » B 5 ^ _ o - 
 
 rr| - P
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 positions being ruled across for exact reduction. 
 
 Ukiyo-ye art is bound up with print development, The 
 
 and the climax of xylography had been reached in the Hokusai. 
 time of Hokusai. Japanese book illustration, and 
 single-sheet printing, revolutionized the world's art. The great con- 
 noisseurs 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 com- 
 plete painting. 
 
 Hokusai had served a four years' apprenticeship to the school of 
 engraving, and his practiced eye was ever ready to detect any in- 
 accuracy 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 deli- 
 cate 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 
 
 [531
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Views of Fuji" (of which the finest edition was 
 
 The brought out in London with a commentary by Mr. 
 
 Hokusai. 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 tomoye 
 — 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, 
 
 [54] 

 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 flashing into countless sea-birds born of the froth of 
 ocean. He is the painter of chimera, the prophet of cata- The 
 
 clysm; he "gives the world a shake and invents chaos." Hokusai. 
 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 con- 
 vention 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 down- 
 pour! 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 con- 
 temporaries. 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: — 
 
 [551
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 1 Far along 
 The From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, 
 
 Romance of Leaps the loud thunder ! not from one lone cloud, 
 Hokusai. 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 pas- 
 sionate desire. 
 
 [56]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Hiroshige. 
 
 Landscape Painter and Apostle of Impressionism. 
 
 3F THE lovely "Land of the Rising Sun" should, during one of 
 those volcanic throes which threaten her extinction, sink for- 
 ever beneath the depths of ocean, she would yet live for us 
 through the magic brush of Hiroshige. Gazing at his land- 
 scapes, 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 lan- 
 tern'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 ori- 
 ental 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. Af- 
 frighted coolies running this way and that. A mountain full of echoes 
 and horror. Down it splash rivulets, running into inky pools. Dark- 
 ness 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 
 
 [571
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 she dons her mantle of snow they hesitate, even when ne- 
 cessity compels, to sully its purity. In one of Utamaro's 
 prints, sweetly entitled by M. Edmond de Goncourt "La 
 Nature Argentee," a little musiime 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, with- 
 out 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 land- 
 scape 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 in- 
 genuity, his fineness of gradations and opposition, his boldness and 
 infinity of device, and in spite of the limitations which hamper him, he 
 
 [58]
 
 Wistaria Viewing at 
 
 Kameido. 
 
 By Hiroshige. 


 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 realizes absolute values in the narrowest range, by 
 virtue of his knowledge of lines and spaces. 
 
 "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 con- 
 summate 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. 
 n L'ecole, n said M. de Goncourt, n des audaces et de la bravoure du 
 faire, iecole tantot aux ecrasements du pinceau, tantot aux tenuitis 
 d'un c/ieveu." 
 
 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 charac- 
 teristic touch of the school with which they affiliate. The brush is 
 their genie, subservient to their imagination; they master and "juggle 8 
 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 
 
 [591
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 or suggesting movement. Undulating lines always sug- 
 
 gest 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 peer- 
 less 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. 
 
 [60]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 mur- 
 mur 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 land- 
 scape painter, Hiroshige the Great. 
 
 The pupils, — notably one, who, among other names, signed Shi- 
 genobu, until after his master's death, when he took the title of Hiro- 
 shige the Second, gradually assuming his full nom-de-pinceau, Hiro- 
 shige 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. Hiro- 
 shige also associated himself at times with other artists, one set of 
 the Kisokaido, for example, being in part the work of Keisai Yeisen. 
 
 [611
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 and he supplied many backgrounds to the prints of Kuni- 
 sada and Kuniyoshi. 
 i o$ ige. j^ ^ e cata j g ue Q f tne "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 Hiro- 
 shige," 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 con- 
 sidered 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 Hiro- 
 shige, and displaying his wonderful skill with the brush, to the admi- 
 
 [62]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 ration of the world. He passed away, to the world be- 
 yond, 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. 1 (Dropping the brush at Azuma, East- 
 ern Capital, I go the long journey to the Western Country, Buddhist 
 Heaven is in the West, to view the wonderful sceneries there; per- 
 chance 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 beau- 
 tifully 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 de- 
 scription 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. Al- 
 though 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 
 
 [63]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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 
 
 [64]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 t 
 
 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 be- 
 cause 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 paint- 
 ers of India and China. 
 
 These visions of colour are taking the place of obscurity and 
 gloom, for the great impressionists, Claude Monet, Manet, the Bar- 
 bizon 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, 
 
 [651
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 "they are of rare and special temperaments, and through 
 their temperament they look at nature and see beautiful 
 * e ' 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 
 aesthetic 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 realiae that though they pre- 
 sent objects in hues intrinsically foreign to them, yet the result justifies 
 this arrangement, and its integrity is recognized, for the impression 
 
 [66]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 we receive is the true one. And this chaotic massing of 
 colour we notice in a landscape by Hiroshige was em- 
 ployed by many of the old masters. Of the stormy "im- 
 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 out- 
 ward manifestation in the Sistine Madonna rested there. The poets 
 realized this colour vision, for Dante cried — 
 
 1 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 lin- 
 gering 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 ware- 
 
 [671
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 houses are palaces in the night and the whole city hangs 
 in the heavens, and fairyland is before us!" 
 
 Hiroshige. . 1 1 • i 
 
 Leaning upon the bridge, the sweet influence of Hiro- 
 shige 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. 
 
 [68]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Analytical Comparisons 
 
 between the Masters of Uluyo-ye. 
 
 3T IS difficult rightly to determine the distinguishing charac- 
 teristics of the noted artists of Ukiyo-ye: but the connois- 
 seurs speak of the extreme grace of pictorial line in Morono- 
 bu: the sweeping areas of pattern in the garments of Kiyo- 
 nobu 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 Gon- 
 court 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, Kori- 
 usai 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 naive 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 
 
 [69]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Japanese artists, he idealizes his countrywoman through 
 
 Analytical tne mmi i cr y °f ner gracious humanity." 
 Comparisons. The women of Kiyonaga have a more than human 
 
 dignity and grace, the classic folds of his drapery re- 
 calling 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 Jap- 
 anese 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 propor- 
 tions, for they planned dresses in which every separate part is welded 
 into one harmonious whole. They solved theories in colour, and de- 
 lighted 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. 
 
 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 
 
 [70]
 
 Two Ladies. 
 
 By Yeishi, who gave 
 
 to his (aces 
 
 a mystic, even religious 
 
 expression, 
 
 like the wonv n of the 
 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 *9

 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 represented out of doors, flowers seem to be shed upon 
 the dresses, as if the wearer passed beneath blossoming Analytical 
 trees. If the artist paints butterflies on a costume, they Comparisons, 
 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 com- 
 pares with Utamaro in the grace with which he portrays women, 
 and Yeizan's lines are stronger, but show a marked similarity. Hart- 
 mann 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 
 
 [7!]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 of the Ukiyo-ye artists, he employs caricature, but his 
 Analytical figures are living, sentient. 
 Comparison*. M. de Goncourt says: "In comparing two books by 
 
 Utamaro, and Toyokuni, illustrating the occupations of 
 the women of the ^ oshiwara 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 replendent personality. His pictures lack the spirit, the life, 
 the 'trick' of voluptuousness of the women of the 'Flower Quar- 
 ter.' 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 con- 
 templating nature he sketched in freedom, — his execution became 
 fairy like. 
 
 The landscape of Hiroshige, though confined to the narrow 
 
 [72]
 
 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.
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 range of the wood-cut, have all the qualities of Impres- 
 sionism, the details are subordinated, only the salient Analytical 
 points of the scene being represented, but the atmosphere Comparisons, 
 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 naive 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 indi- 
 viduality 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 
 
 [73]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 prints, the most marked is the suggestion of subjective, 
 Analytical unconscious skill that gives no impress of the objective. 
 Comparisons. 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 tempera- 
 ment 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 calli- 
 graphic 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. 
 
 [74]
 
 ■' 
 
 The Snowstorm. 
 By Kitugawa ^ eizan. 
 
 11 
 i
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 His best work is histrionic and is full of individuality, 
 
 breaking through the traditional stage attitudes, which Analytical 
 
 impressed the artists who developed along his lines. Comparisons. 
 
 "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 incomplete- 
 ness, but this is overcome when the simple harmony of the lines 
 is noted. Yeizan invariably breaks loose from his first reserve. Be- 
 ginning 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 minutiae. 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 
 
 f751
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 in their oily smoothness and sweeping grace. Giving the 
 
 Analytical impression of the middle distance, the artist has delicately 
 
 Compansons. approached with the most wonderful ease, the vapory 
 
 suggestion of the distant mountain line. He slips 
 
 from t^e 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 rugged- 
 
 ness, and above all a pervading sense of humour." 
 
 [76]
 
 
 . I 
 
 J 
 
 -^^va k>i 
 
 T c i o 
 
 8 H- 
 
 i.S:|f

 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Hints to Collectors 
 
 of Ukiyo-ye Gems. 
 ^f^f^ O TRULY appreciate Japanese prints, a knowledge of 
 / the language of the block must first be acquired, then 
 
 ^^^^^ the pursuit has an indescribable charm, inexplicable ex- 
 cepting 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. 
 
 [77]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 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.) 
 Hartman, Sadakichi: Japanese Art. (Boston: Page & Co., 
 
 1904.) 
 Hayashi, T. : Catalogue of the Hayashi Collection, with Illus- 
 trations. (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.) 
 
 [781
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 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. (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. 
 1904.) 
 
 New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 
 
 179]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 
 / S. 
 
 «*1 
 
 Fac-similes 
 
 of the most famous Signatures of Ukiyo-ye Artists. 
 
 i 
 
 A 
 
 Hishikawa Moronobu. Okumura Masanobu. Suzuki Hatunobu. 
 1643-1711-13. 1690-1720. 1747-1818. 
 
 * 
 
 n 
 
 w. 
 
 Koriusai. 
 1760. 
 
 Shunsho. 
 Died 1792. 
 
 -ft 
 
 ? 
 
 litsu (Hokuiai). 
 1760-1849. 
 
 Hokuiai. 
 1760-1849. 
 
 Gakio Rojin Manji 
 (Hokuiai). 1760- 1849- 
 
 [80] 
 
 i 
 
 Hok'kei. 
 1780-1856-9. 
 
 
 Kiyonaga. 
 Died 1814.
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 & 
 
 g 
 
 Utamafo. 
 1754-1806. 
 
 
 11 
 
 i 
 
 Toyolcuni. 
 1768-1825. 
 
 Kikugawa Yeizan. 
 Flouruhed 1810-30. 
 
 % 
 
 kunisada. 
 
 1785-1864. 
 
 
 Yei»hi. 
 Flouruhed 1754-1805. 
 
 £ 
 
 .1 
 
 
 Keisai Yeisen. 
 
 1790-1848. 
 
 If - 
 
 V % 
 
 
 Kuniyoshi. 
 
 1800-1861. 
 
 Hirorfuge 
 1793- 1858-60. 
 
 Hirothige 
 1793-1858-60 
 
 [81]
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Ind 
 
 ex 
 
 Beni ... 
 
 Botticelli 
 
 Brunt, Henry Van 
 
 Child, Theodore 
 Cho Densu 
 Chromo-xylography 
 Cimabue 
 Crane, Walter - 
 
 Danjuro 
 
 Eta 
 
 Forty-seven Ronin 
 
 Genroku 
 
 Giorgione 
 
 Giotto 
 
 Guantai 
 
 ■ 
 
 Harunobu, Suzuki 
 
 Hayashi, T. - 
 
 Heizei 
 
 Hiroshige 
 
 Hogen 
 
 Hokusai 
 
 Itcho 
 lyemitsu 
 
 Jipensha, Ikkou 
 Josetsu 
 
 Page 
 
 
 22,39 
 
 Kako ... 
 
 13 
 
 Kano 
 
 - 32 
 
 Kanaoka 
 
 -* A 
 
 Kenzan 
 
 24 
 
 - 6 
 27 
 
 - 7 
 4 
 
 Kitao - 
 
 Kiyomasu, Torii - 
 
 Kiyomitsu, Torii 
 
 Kiyonaga, Torii - 
 
 Kiyonobu, Torii 
 
 - 26 
 
 Korin 
 
 
 Koriusai - 
 
 25 
 
 Kozo 
 
 - 14 
 
 Kunisada 
 
 
 Kuranosuki - 
 
 ■ 13 
 
 
 - 24 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci 
 
 7 
 
 La Farge 
 
 - 70 
 
 
 
 Mang-wa 
 
 23-26 
 
 Matahei 
 
 - 38 
 
 Masanobu 
 
 3 
 
 Meiji 
 
 34, 57 
 
 Ming Dynasty 
 
 7 
 
 Mitford - 
 
 34,47 
 
 Miyagawa Choshun 
 
 ■ 13 
 
 Mitsunobu 
 
 - 31 
 
 Mitsunori 
 
 
 Motomitsu 
 
 36 
 
 Moronobu - - 6, 
 
 - 4 
 
 Motonobu 
 
 [83] 
 
 9, 10, 
 
 Page 
 
 - 20 
 3,4,5 
 
 - 30 
 . 13 
 
 •- 29 
 
 . 22 
 
 . 26 
 
 32,33 
 
 - 26 
 
 - 13 
 28-33 
 
 - 39 
 20 
 
 - 16 
 
 13-14 
 
 - 30 
 
 54 
 8-9 
 
 - 5-6 
 
 - 8 
 
 - 2 
 
 - 14 
 21 
 
 7 
 
 - 9 
 3 
 
 I. 20, 21 
 5,6.7
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF UKIYO-YE 
 
 Nishiki-ye 
 No Kagura 
 Notan 
 
 Okio - 
 
 Okumura Masanobu 
 Otsu-ye - 
 
 Pater - 
 Popular School 
 
 Register 
 Renaissance 
 Rintai 
 Ruskin - 
 
 Sesshiu 
 
 Sekiyen 
 
 Shigemasa 
 
 Shigenaga 
 
 Shoguns 
 
 Shunro - 
 
 Shunsho 
 
 Shunsui 
 
 Index — Continued 
 
 Page p a g e 
 
 - 22 Sotatsu - ]3 
 25 Sukenobu .... 29 
 
 - 70 Sumi-ye - - - - - 21 
 
 - 30,31 Tan-ye 21.39 
 
 - 22 Tanyu - - - - - 1 1 
 10 Tokugawa - |3 
 
 Torii School - - - 21-34 
 
 2.6,9:30 ^School- - 3.4.5.9 
 
 I oyoharu 29 
 
 - 77 Toyokuni - - - - 33, 44 
 
 6 Toyonobu 29 
 
 . 70 Tsunetaka - 4 
 
 40 Utagawa ----- 29 
 
 . 5 , Utamaro - - 20,33,35-46 
 
 38 Uy eno 50 
 
 - 29 Yamato .... 3 
 23 Yeisen - - - - - 75 
 
 4, 48 . Yeishi 7| 
 
 - 47-50 Yeitoku - - ... 9 
 26-29,49 Yeizan - - - - -71,75 
 
 22 Yoshiwara - 36-37 
 
 [841
 
 
 i 
 
 
 * 
 
 W* 
 
 _ 
 

 
 On the Reverse. 
 
 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.

 
 
 k 
 
 30 
 33 
 
 A 
 
 -n 
 
 => 
 
 JO 

 
 
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 * so 
 
 &-5 
 
 
 
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