TORII KIYOHIRO.TORII KIYOHIRO.
TORII KIYOHIRO.
Torii Kiyotsune produced delicate and distinguished prints in two or three colours, much like those of Kiyomitsu. Most of his figures are characterized by a curious slenderness and exquisiteness; but they are somewhat lacking in vigour. After 1764 he fell under the influence of Harunobu and adopted full-colour printing, still retaining, however, that very individual type of face—a little scornful, a little fastidious in expression—which marks his designs. His work is rare.
Among the pupils of Kiyomitsu may be noted Torii Kiyosato, Torii Kiyoharu, Morotada, Kiyotoshi, Torii Kiyomoto, and Torii Kiyohide. Their work was almost contemporaneous with that of the master.
Amano Toyonaga, Ishikawa Toyomasu, and Ishikawa Toyokuma were probably pupils of Toyonobu.
IVTHE SECONDPERIOD:THE EARLYPOLYCHROMEMASTERSFROM THE INVENTIONOF POLYCHROME PRINTINGTO THE RETIREMENTOF SHUNSHO(1764-80)
From the Invention of Polychrome Printing to the Retirement of Shunsho (1764-80)
The transition from primitive to sophisticated art is very like the progression of a race from its heroic youth to its elaborately gifted maturity. Life grows more complex, the material riches and the machinery of living become more diversified; but it is still to the early days that one looks for the strongest development of personality and the most daring achievement in the face of great difficulties. Sophistication, in the history of an art as of a race, brings refinements and nuances unknown to the pioneers; but it cannot intensify and may often encumber the spiritual force and essential genius of the creators. The great individuals of the earlier time developed all that was essential as far as it could be developed; the later enlargement of scope is in the direction of the material and the accidental. In the Primitives we find the full stature of the spirit; in the art of later days, with all its parade of processes, we shall hardly find more.
In the First Period the initial impulse of print-designing manifested itself in work that was powerful and beautiful, but of simple technique. In the Second Period the barriers that confined the Primitives were swept away by new possibilities of expression. The three-colour prints gave place to prints in which an unlimited number of blocks could be employed; and this enlargement of the artist's resources produced a new and splendid blossoming. In this Second Period the art seemed to hesitate midway between the forces of the primitive inspiration, which was one of pure and stately decoration, and the more naturalistic forces that were making ready for the Third Period, with its fuller rendering of the lights and spaces of life. The presence of both groups of forces makes this Second Period possibly the most interesting of all.
The specific characteristics of the period are sharply marked. They consist, first of all, in technical advances—the mastery of full-colour printing and the realization through this process of the marvellous colour-dreams of the great masters. But beyond the technical advances there is a change in spiritual attitude; the artist, heretofore content to create a pure decoration, a masterful mosaic that expressed his æsthetic ideals, now begins to adopt a more personal attitude in his treatment of the forces and spectacles of daily existence. True, he disposes these elements arbitrarily; the picture he creates is a world of imagination; but as compared with the Primitives,he tells us more of his experience and is closer to our own. Even his most fanciful designs bring to us some remote and abstract echo of known voices. Lyric joy speaks through Harunobu, dramatic terror through Shunsho, splendour through Koriusai, mystery through Buncho; and though the medium be a symbol, and its connection with reality as remote as that of music, yet by the vividness of the emotion evoked in us we may judge of the definiteness of the artist's motive, and realize through colour and line an intangible human voice.
The stream of art history here flowed in two main channels. One was the Katsukawa School, headed by Shunsho, which like the older Torii School devoted itself chiefly to the representation of actors. The other was the school of Harunobu, whose gracious designs of women were the most novel productions of the period. A third school was founded by Toyoharu and a fourth by Shigemasa; but the real importance of these two schools developed only in a later epoch. During this period the great Torii School may be said to have remained dormant; it was to awaken in the Third Period to a new splendour in Kiyonaga.
There is a passage from a contemporary record that throws light on the temper of the people and the artists at this time. I have freely translated it, with the courteous permission of Dr. Julius Kurth (Kurth's "Harunobu," R. Piper & Co., Munich), from his German rendering of a unique manuscript book in his possession, which appears to have been written by the poet Yukura Sanjin, and illustrated byHarunobu in 1769. The book is a whimsical, devil-may-care production of the lightest sort; but from its pages the glitter and surge and laughter of Yedo holiday life rise with a far-away yet curiously distinct echo.
"Dohei hails from Oshu. Upon his head he wears a cap; and his mouth sends up a song when in the Capital of the East he vends his honey-sweetmeats. His cape is of tiger-skin, and bears a suspicious resemblance to the loin-apron of the Devil. His umbrella is of scarlet crêpe, and recalls the plumed spears of the festival-guards. As his coat of arms he chose a Devil's head and a skeleton; upon his outer robe he wrote the sign, 'Dohei, Dohei.' While you buy his honey-sweetmeats, he sings a song of a new style, and ends it with the refrain, 'Dohei, Dohei!' Therefore the name of Dohei has become known everywhere. Even the smallest children all sing this song in chorus over and over a thousand times. If he sells his honey-sweetmeats in the Eastern part of the city, the people in the Western streets are furious; if he sells them in the Southern quarter, the people in the Northern streets are furious. For then they want to know why he came to them so late."If on the three hundred and sixty days of the year one goes, day in and day out, through all the eight hundred and eight streets, one finds a tavern at every five paces; and it is as if this city had beenchanged into a pond of rice-wine. One cannot take ten steps without coming upon a shop in which whole mountains of rice-cakes and other confections are offered. If one hears in the distance an almost heavenly music, it is the song of a lady to the strum of a guitar. If there is a rattling like peals of thunder, it is the ox-carts on the side streets. People with coiffures shaped like the leaf of the ginko-tree roll up their outer robes and jostle shoulder to shoulder. Ladies with girdles of spun gold and long-sleeved girlish dresses sway their hips; and their garments, coloured like the graining of wood, flow as do torrents of Spring. Their hats of green paper resemble a clump of trees in Summer. And as they wander along, the hems of their robes flutter open, and the blood-red silk linings gleam like maple foliage—though it is not yet Autumn! The festive white material of their inner robes shines like snow—though it is not yet Winter! If it were, they would be muffled to their very noses with crêpe veils. They have arranged their hair as if surmounted by a cap, like tiers of little chrysanthemums. At their thighs sparkle tobacco-wallets ornamented with silver and gold."The black-and-white prints of earlier days are antiquated now, and the only thing people care for is the newly-devised gorgeousness of the Eastern Brocade Pictures. Musical plays are no longer to be seen; instead, you go to the music-girls and the dancing-girls in the taverns. The young people want lively entertainment, and visit the wine-shops. Out of a vase in which, according to the ancient custom,flowers were formerly placed, lots are now drawn to fix upon the day for a party; while according to the fashionable arrangement of flowers in the hanging jars, the flowers look like arrows from a bow. The vendors of fritters call out, 'Celebrated Pasties! Celebrated Pasties!' and boast upon the brilliant paper signs of the just-opened booths, 'Headquarters! Headquarters!' Handkerchiefs at four coppers apiece hang at the loins of the servants of Samurais. The song of the New Year's dancers rings out among people who hitherto had sung only folk-songs. The caligraphist studies the Nagao style; the poet learns by heart the poems of the Chinese epoch, and the minstrel the style of the Manyo anthology. To obtain new remedies for his stock the doctor draws upon the old school for all kinds of herbs, and cures eyes and noses with them—just as pumpkins are perfected into melons. Often the priest of Buddha wanders, an object of derision, through the streets in the darkness of night in search of a girl. To be sure, he is a very learned man; but what leads more easily to dangerous labyrinths than love?"The theatres in the Sakai Street give performances continuously. The reconstruction of the Yoshiwara is to be finished in a few days, and people come and go there only to drink and to sing. They draw water from the floods of the Sumida River, but it will not be drained dry! They view again and again the flowers of the Asuka River, but these also are without end! The Shenshuraku Theatre enlivens the public, and upon the Banzairaku stage man's life is idealized. So all are happy—like green firs thatbecome thicker and thicker and put forth new needles."
"Dohei hails from Oshu. Upon his head he wears a cap; and his mouth sends up a song when in the Capital of the East he vends his honey-sweetmeats. His cape is of tiger-skin, and bears a suspicious resemblance to the loin-apron of the Devil. His umbrella is of scarlet crêpe, and recalls the plumed spears of the festival-guards. As his coat of arms he chose a Devil's head and a skeleton; upon his outer robe he wrote the sign, 'Dohei, Dohei.' While you buy his honey-sweetmeats, he sings a song of a new style, and ends it with the refrain, 'Dohei, Dohei!' Therefore the name of Dohei has become known everywhere. Even the smallest children all sing this song in chorus over and over a thousand times. If he sells his honey-sweetmeats in the Eastern part of the city, the people in the Western streets are furious; if he sells them in the Southern quarter, the people in the Northern streets are furious. For then they want to know why he came to them so late.
"If on the three hundred and sixty days of the year one goes, day in and day out, through all the eight hundred and eight streets, one finds a tavern at every five paces; and it is as if this city had beenchanged into a pond of rice-wine. One cannot take ten steps without coming upon a shop in which whole mountains of rice-cakes and other confections are offered. If one hears in the distance an almost heavenly music, it is the song of a lady to the strum of a guitar. If there is a rattling like peals of thunder, it is the ox-carts on the side streets. People with coiffures shaped like the leaf of the ginko-tree roll up their outer robes and jostle shoulder to shoulder. Ladies with girdles of spun gold and long-sleeved girlish dresses sway their hips; and their garments, coloured like the graining of wood, flow as do torrents of Spring. Their hats of green paper resemble a clump of trees in Summer. And as they wander along, the hems of their robes flutter open, and the blood-red silk linings gleam like maple foliage—though it is not yet Autumn! The festive white material of their inner robes shines like snow—though it is not yet Winter! If it were, they would be muffled to their very noses with crêpe veils. They have arranged their hair as if surmounted by a cap, like tiers of little chrysanthemums. At their thighs sparkle tobacco-wallets ornamented with silver and gold.
"The black-and-white prints of earlier days are antiquated now, and the only thing people care for is the newly-devised gorgeousness of the Eastern Brocade Pictures. Musical plays are no longer to be seen; instead, you go to the music-girls and the dancing-girls in the taverns. The young people want lively entertainment, and visit the wine-shops. Out of a vase in which, according to the ancient custom,flowers were formerly placed, lots are now drawn to fix upon the day for a party; while according to the fashionable arrangement of flowers in the hanging jars, the flowers look like arrows from a bow. The vendors of fritters call out, 'Celebrated Pasties! Celebrated Pasties!' and boast upon the brilliant paper signs of the just-opened booths, 'Headquarters! Headquarters!' Handkerchiefs at four coppers apiece hang at the loins of the servants of Samurais. The song of the New Year's dancers rings out among people who hitherto had sung only folk-songs. The caligraphist studies the Nagao style; the poet learns by heart the poems of the Chinese epoch, and the minstrel the style of the Manyo anthology. To obtain new remedies for his stock the doctor draws upon the old school for all kinds of herbs, and cures eyes and noses with them—just as pumpkins are perfected into melons. Often the priest of Buddha wanders, an object of derision, through the streets in the darkness of night in search of a girl. To be sure, he is a very learned man; but what leads more easily to dangerous labyrinths than love?
"The theatres in the Sakai Street give performances continuously. The reconstruction of the Yoshiwara is to be finished in a few days, and people come and go there only to drink and to sing. They draw water from the floods of the Sumida River, but it will not be drained dry! They view again and again the flowers of the Asuka River, but these also are without end! The Shenshuraku Theatre enlivens the public, and upon the Banzairaku stage man's life is idealized. So all are happy—like green firs thatbecome thicker and thicker and put forth new needles."
Into this crowded world of exuberant life came Harunobu and his contemporaries—into this underworld, if you will, but an underworld more beautiful and sun-drenched than any known to our great Western cities. Instead of the bar in the slum they had the tea-house on the river-bank; instead of the prize-fight they had the cherry festival; for them, vice put on robes of a certain stately beauty; their stage was marked by the same ennobling absence of realism that distinguished the stage of the Greeks. The holiday spirit of the hour seems more spontaneous than ours; their hearts seem less troubled by spiritual confusions. And manifestly their underworld knew beauty and brought forth an art that is now a universal human treasure; while our underworld has been, with the rarest of exceptions, wholly sterile.
One of the most important of the underworld institutions which the prints of this period depict is the theatre. Though Harunobu turned aside from it, his great contemporary Shunsho and the whole body of Shunsho's followers found most of their material there.
The popular theatre had sprung into importance in the days of Moronobu. Previous to that time, the classic lyric drama of the aristocracy, called the Nō, had flourished in the secluded palaces of great nobles; but the mob was obliged to divert itself with nothing more interesting than jugglers and street performers.Therefore when the theatre first came into being, in the river-bed of Kyoto, it achieved great popularity; and when later it was transferred to Yedo, it rose during the Genroku Period (1688-1703) to a position of passionate favour. It appears never to have had a very savoury moral odour; and before long it became associated with so much corruptness that it presented a serious problem for the Tokugawa rulers. In 1643, as a corrective measure, they had decreed the exclusion of female actors from the stage. From this time on, only men trod the Japanese boards; the female rôles were taken by male actors whose skill in this impersonation is said to have been extraordinary.
The status of a great actor in the hearts of the people was not very different from that of a successful prize-fighter among us to-day. He was a popular idol; his movements were the subject of the eager curiosity of the gaping multitude; but his social rank was of the lowest. The prints of a later date show us pictures of actors with their gay companions on boating-parties or tea-house picnics, surrounded by inquisitive throngs of spectators. Famous and greatly sought after as these actors were, they occupied positions of even less esteem than the English players in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Nothing so well illustrates their ostracism from any kind of society as the words used by one of the greatest of actor-painters, Shunsho, in the preface to a book of drawings representing actors: "To be sure, I love the theatre, and greatly enjoy being a spectator,but I have no connection with the actorsthemselves, and do not know them in private life." Even Shunsho, who had created the heroic designs of these men in their great rôles, dared not acknowledge himself as their familiar.
When they appeared on the stage, the faces of the actors were frequently painted with startling streaks of red and white, an effect reproduced in some of the prints. The elaborate robes worn when they represented heroic figures of bygone ages formed superb material for the designs of the artists. The Japanese stage of to-day probably does not differ very much from what it was in Shunsho's time; and we still see on it that florid elaboration of gesture, bombastic delivery, and intensification of facial expression which the prints have perpetuated.
The actors were divided into clans or schools; the name of a famous head of a clan would be handed down for generations from master to pupil. Thus there were many of the name of Danjuro, Hanshiro, and Kikunojo in succession, who were not related to each other by blood. Certain clans such as the Kikunojo specialized exclusively in women's rôles. Each clan had itsmonor crest, worn on the sleeve, and each actor had a personalmon; in the prints these generally appear. InPlate 20, for example, the circle with eight crossed arrow-buts indicates themonof Nakamura Matsuye; in other prints, the three great concentric squares of Danjuro, the trisected concentric circles of Hanshiro, or the iris within a circle of Kikunojo (Plate 9), are easily identified.
In the hands of Shunsho and his followers the figures of these actors were used as the material forbrilliant designs. For the moment, however, we must return to the foremost artist of this period—one who never loved the actors—Harunobu.
Figure of a Girl.
Ye winds that somewhere in the West—In gulfs of sunset, isles of rest—Rise dewy from prenatal sleepTo strew with little waves the deep—Surely it is your breath that stirsThese fluttering gauzy robes of hers!Come whence ye may, I marvel notThat ye are lured to seek this spot;Your tenuous scarcely breathèd powersSway not the sturdier garden flowers,And had unmanifest gone bySave that she feels them visibly.O little winds, her little handsIn time with tunes from fairy-landsAre moving; and her bended headKnows nothing of the long years spedSince heaven more near to earth was hung,And gods lived, and the world was young.Her inner robe of tenderest fawnIn cool, faint fountains of the dawnWas dyed; and her long outer dressBorrows its luminous lovelinessFrom some clear bowl with water filledIn which one drop of wine was spilled.Peace folds her in its deeps profound;Her shy glance lifts not from the ground;And through this garden's still retreatShe moves with tripping silver feetWhose trancèd grace, where'er she strays,Turns all the days to holy days.Come! let us softly steal away.For what can we, whose hearts are grey,Bring to her dreaming paradise?A chill shall mock her from our eyes;A cloud shall dim this radiant air:Come! for our world is otherwhere.But O ye little winds that blowFrom golden islands long agoLost to our searching in the deepOf dreams between the shores of sleep—Ye shall her happy playmates be,Fluttering her robes invisibly.
Ye winds that somewhere in the West—In gulfs of sunset, isles of rest—Rise dewy from prenatal sleepTo strew with little waves the deep—Surely it is your breath that stirsThese fluttering gauzy robes of hers!
Come whence ye may, I marvel notThat ye are lured to seek this spot;Your tenuous scarcely breathèd powersSway not the sturdier garden flowers,And had unmanifest gone bySave that she feels them visibly.
O little winds, her little handsIn time with tunes from fairy-landsAre moving; and her bended headKnows nothing of the long years spedSince heaven more near to earth was hung,And gods lived, and the world was young.
Her inner robe of tenderest fawnIn cool, faint fountains of the dawnWas dyed; and her long outer dressBorrows its luminous lovelinessFrom some clear bowl with water filledIn which one drop of wine was spilled.
Peace folds her in its deeps profound;Her shy glance lifts not from the ground;And through this garden's still retreatShe moves with tripping silver feetWhose trancèd grace, where'er she strays,Turns all the days to holy days.
Come! let us softly steal away.For what can we, whose hearts are grey,Bring to her dreaming paradise?A chill shall mock her from our eyes;A cloud shall dim this radiant air:Come! for our world is otherwhere.
But O ye little winds that blowFrom golden islands long agoLost to our searching in the deepOf dreams between the shores of sleep—Ye shall her happy playmates be,Fluttering her robes invisibly.
HARUNOBU: YOUNG GIRL IN WIND.HARUNOBU: YOUNG GIRL IN WIND.Polychrome, from eight blocks. Size 11 × 8. SignedSusuki Harunobu ga.Gookin Collection.Plate 11.
HARUNOBU: YOUNG GIRL IN WIND.Polychrome, from eight blocks. Size 11 × 8. SignedSusuki Harunobu ga.Gookin Collection.
Plate 11.
SUSUKI HARUNOBU.SUSUKI HARUNOBU.
SUSUKI HARUNOBU.
The few available fragments of information about the life of Susuki Harunobu can be briefly stated. Born between 1725 and 1730, he lived in Yedo all his life in a house near the river. In 1764 he perfected a new and epoch-making treatment of colour-print technique, and died in 1770, not much more than forty years of age. We may, where so little is known, willingly follow Dr. Kurth in his ingenious tracing of a romantic link between Harunobu and the hamlet of Kasamori, whose pine-trees, red temple-torii, and beautiful tea-house waitress O-Sen haunt his work recurrently; but we must be content to regard this as at least half fancy. Harunobu's direct teacher was Shigenaga, and he was influenced early by Toyonobu; but it was to Sukenobu and Kiyomitsu that he turned for the inspiration of those characteristic figures which hecreated during the six great years of his real activity.
Harunobu's work before the year 1764 is relatively unimportant. It consists of prints of actors and legendary subjects, printed in two or three colours; a few of hishoso-yeprints of this period have charming delicacy of line and colour, and at least one of his actor pillar-prints is a work of notable dignity; but upon the whole his work is not very individual. Any one of a dozen of Shigenaga's pupils might have done almost as well. Before 1764 these men were all his equals; after 1764 he took a step which few could keep pace with and which none could outstrip.
In 1764 he brought forth that synthesis of the resources of his art which was to shake the Ukioye world. Whether he was the actual inventor of polychrome printing is not certain; some authorities attribute the invention to an engraver named Kinroku; but it is very clear that Harunobu was the first to seize upon and realize the possibilities of the discovery. Some technical hindrance, such as the difficulty of securing perfect register from many blocks on the wet stretching sheets, had prevented the earlier completion of the process; and it is possible that it was a printer who discovered the simple device needed to overcome the difficulty. This, however, is a matter of mere mechanics and has no bearing upon the question of the real glory of Harunobu. What is important is that he seized the new technique and made out of it an instrument responsive to every subtlest breath of his beauty-haunted spirit.
HARUNOBU: LADY TALKING WITH FAN-VENDOR.HARUNOBU: LADY TALKING WITH FAN-VENDOR.Polychrome. Size 11 × 7½. SignedHarunobu ga. Chandler Collection.Plate 12.
HARUNOBU: LADY TALKING WITH FAN-VENDOR.Polychrome. Size 11 × 7½. SignedHarunobu ga. Chandler Collection.
Plate 12.
The old three-colour prints had achieved fine effects by means of powerfully conceived but essentially simple mosaics of colour. Now Harunobu turned the three-stringed lute into the violin, capable of expressing the most delicate modulations of tone. Beginning with combinations of only four or five colours, he gradually increased the number of blocks used. It is certain that he used eight blocks on at least one 1765 calendar print. In the end he had at his command a palette which, by the use of no less than twelve or fifteen blocks, and with the limitless number of shades obtainable by superimposing one colour upon another, made the whole rainbow his. Constant experiment marked his further progress. We have, for example, one print which he originally printed from eight blocks, and later varied by increasing the blocks to ten, and still later to thirteen. From year to year an ever fresh succession of complex colour-harmonies emanated from his fertile brain.
Until the invention of polychrome printing, Harunobu had not adequately expressed himself; now, having found his true instrument, he played divinely. The year 1765 was a Jubilee year, celebrating the nine-hundredth anniversary of the entrance of Sugawara Michigane, the great statesman, painter, and humanist, to the Court of the Emperor. This circumstance, in connection with the desire of literary men to present to their friends specimens of the new prints as New Year cards, led Harunobu to produce a number of dated calendar-prints of this year—a fortunate occurrence which has been of great aidto students of his work. The theory that these dated prints are the expression of Harunobu's naïve exultation over the new discovery is now generally discredited. Since the calendars are dated 1765, Mr. Gookin's suggestion that they were probably made in the last months of 1764 seems reasonable; and this date must therefore be regarded as marking the beginning of polychrome printing.
The brilliant new prints fittingly ushered in the festal year. And the public was not too busy with its celebrations to take note of the change. The new manner with its wealth of colour-beauty won instant popularity; and under the name of "Brocade Pictures of the Eastern Capital" grew to such fame that by 1767 prints in the old style were almost driven out of the market, and Harunobu was unquestioned lord of Ukioye.
It is not strange that in the glow of success and ambition he should have put behind him his old actor-pictures. "I am a Japanese painter," he wrote proudly; "why should I paint the portraits of this vulgar herd?" And at this moment feeling himself akin to the great classical tradition whose refined beauties had been handed down from ancient China mingled with the beauties of poets and sages, he determined that he would lift from the Ukioye School the stigma of vulgarity which the theatre had given it, and invest it with some of that gentle cultivation which fills like light the old Chinese paintings of Ming gardens. Therefore he turned his energies to the depiction of another world than the theatre—the life of aristocratic ladies, of younglovers, of those famed beauties who in humbler station were the flowers and sunshine of the tea-house and the festival.Plate 14portrays one of these. His method of handling the figures—a peculiar mingling of naïveté and sophistication, like that of a minstrel singing incredible enchanted legends with complete seriousness—was a new and never-recovered note in the history of Ukioye.
HARUNOBU: GIRL VIEWING MOON AND BLOSSOMS.HARUNOBU: GIRL VIEWING MOON AND BLOSSOMS.Size 11 × 8. SignedHarunobu ga. Chandler Collection.Plate 13.
HARUNOBU: GIRL VIEWING MOON AND BLOSSOMS.Size 11 × 8. SignedHarunobu ga. Chandler Collection.
Plate 13.
From this time on, during six years, Harunobu produced a series of prints whose grace is unsurpassable. The firm and refined strokes of his brush endowed with a fresh charm all that was lovely in the flowing draperies and serene faces of the young girls of Japan. He was the painter of youth. The type which he introduced was the slender and gracious embodiment of youthful girlhood. And an indescribable delicacy and purity of manner clothes as with clear light these girl-figures of his. His draperies, as inPlate 11, are never drawn naturalistically, but always with a certain conventionalization that produces folds and swirls more abstractly beautiful than a literal rendering. He for the first time in colour-printing made a practice of giving to his figures a background that exhibited fully the scene of their daily lives. Instead of the heroic figures of the Primitives, stalking through space in colossal grandeur, he drew the familiar forms of everyday existence nestling among their natural surroundings. The world he pictures is, however, one of mortals who hardly know the burdens of mortality. Like the women of Botticelli, they seem to poise in an atmosphere of more rarefied lovelinessthan anything we know in reality. Rich as may have been the beauty of the tea-house girl, O-Sen, whom Harunobu loved and painted, and of the little seller of cosmetics, O-Fuji, who appears many times in his pictures, they were but the starting-point, the exciting agency, from which Harunobu passed on into a secret fanciful world of his own to evoke his dream-maidens. Half of the charm of these figures, such as the one inPlate 12, lies in this unreal and unhuman impression they make; they are not Japanese women or any women, but living fairy-tales, butterfly creatures out of nowhere. All that is joyous and playful in the Japanese spirit lifts them on wings of fantasy into regions of universal delight. They are the most fragrant flowers of Japanese art.
It follows that Harunobu's subjects are almost always light and trivial scenes—a girl playing with a cat, a young man and a maiden walking amiably together, young girls engaged in some delicate occupation, or, as inPlate 13, pausing in pensive reverie. A gentle joy pervades most of them, or at least a gravity so light that it is nearer joy than melancholy. Harunobu does not handle these scenes with any especial insight into life; they are not windows through which we may look and see the human souls of the people he portrays. They are nothing more than gay, pleasing moments—records of fortunate hours—froth and foam over the real deeps of life.
HARUNOBU: COURTESAN DETAINING A PASSING SAMURAI.HARUNOBU: COURTESAN DETAINING A PASSING SAMURAI.Size 11 × 8. SignedHarunobu ga.Plate 14.
HARUNOBU: COURTESAN DETAINING A PASSING SAMURAI.Size 11 × 8. SignedHarunobu ga.
Plate 14.
Yet as the spectator allows the pure and delicate atmosphere of one of these creations to enter his spirit, he gradually becomes aware that not thistrivial scene, not this light episode, was Harunobu's real theme; his real theme was the great harmonics of colour and line. Out of colour and line his immeasurable genius evoked lofty improvisations. He dedicated the fervour of his passion and his vision to the creation of these orchestrations of tone, these modulated arabesques of contour. Beyond his cheerful groups, beyond his felicitous arrangements, lies the history of his prodigious essay to impose his sense of beauty upon one section of chaos. Kurth is quite right when he calls him "the great virtuoso of colour."
Most of Harunobu's prints are of small size, almost square. In this form his refinement found its most perfect expression. If we would see an aspect of Harunobu that is of more impressive proportions, and realize that scope as well as daintiness was in him, we must turn to certain rare pillar-prints which were done chiefly in the years immediately preceding his untimely death. Here dignity combines with grace, and an exalted sweep of composition adds nobility to that exquisite colour which here no less than in his small prints finds place. Two of these pillar-prints, reproduced inPlate 15, may serve to illustrate this last phase of Harunobu's greatest triumph.
The first print is a soft grey and lavender study of a girl. Within the long, narrow space, against a background of cool unbroken grey, rises the figure, whose bent, pensive head looks down at the ball she is dangling before a cat at her feet. Her hair, a mass of strong black against the clear grey background, is drawn in a conventionalized manner thatis perhaps the noblest formula ever devised for the painting of hair—as pure of line as a Greek helmet. Drooping from her slender shoulders fall robes whose slow curves seem moulded by the touch of faint and gentle airs that breathe around her. The long drapery is interwoven with hints of mauve melting into rose—more like ghosts of the palette than colours—and touches of translucent salmon and amber and grey are repeated like an arabesque of lights down the folds. The folds sweep in great restful curves like those of vines hanging in festoons from summer branches. At the girl's girdle a strong note of dull green strikes like a bass chord across the composition; and smaller spots of the same colour carry this motive diminishingly down to the bottom of the picture.
It is a sentiment, an emotion, a dream—as much an abstraction as a musical composition. In the lines of the dress, in the poise of the head, in the limpid tones of the whole picture, is secreted the dwelling-place of a peace, a solemnity, an awe never to be forgotten. It is reminiscent of the grandeur of the Primitives, but more etherialized; and there lingers about it still, persisting from earlier times, the penumbra of that hierarchal purity and spirituality peculiar to archaic art. Like those strange and memorable archaic statues of the Priestesses in the Museum of the Akropolis at Athens, like the frescoes of Giotto at Assisi, it holds the secret of an untainted beauty that is lost to later artists.
HARUNOBU: SHIRAI GOMPACHI DISGUISED AS A KOMUSO.HARUNOBU: SHIRAI GOMPACHI DISGUISED AS A KOMUSO.Size 27 × 4½.SignedSusuki Harunobu ga.HARUNOBU: GIRL PLAYING WITH KITTEN.Size 26 × 4½.SignedSusuki Harunobu ga.Plate 15.
HARUNOBU: SHIRAI GOMPACHI DISGUISED AS A KOMUSO.
HARUNOBU: SHIRAI GOMPACHI DISGUISED AS A KOMUSO.Size 27 × 4½.SignedSusuki Harunobu ga.
HARUNOBU: GIRL PLAYING WITH KITTEN.Size 26 × 4½.SignedSusuki Harunobu ga.
Plate 15.
The second pillar-print is one which, following the opinion of Professor Fenollosa and Mr. Gookin, may be regarded as one of the supreme triumphs ofHarunobu's career, and one of the greatest prints we know. It represents Shirai Gompachi, the white-robed lover of the beautiful Komurasaki, wandering in disguise with the basket-hat and flute of akomusoor dishonoured Samurai. There is no background; against the clear white paper the long lines of the tall figure flow in curves of jet black and purple-grey, with here and there lights of orange and white. By a simplicity of selection that is more than Greek, Harunobu has woven from these few curves an effect that is like an incantation. It has in it the power to reach into the secret storehouses of the spectator's emotion and awaken echoes from those intimations of eternal perfection which haunt every heart. Fenollosa writes: "There is something unearthly about its line themes, orchestrated in black and ghost-tints, which lifts one to the infinities of Beethoven's purest melodies. The dreamy clarinet-player seems to droop and melt away into regions of sublimity where no earthly ear shall follow his dying chords. Thus indeed we are glad at last to have Harunobu pass, transfigured, from our vision."
Pillar Print by Harunobu.
From an infinite distance, the ghostly music!Few and slender the tones, of delicate silver,As stars are broidered on the veil of evening....He passes by, the flute and the dreaming player—Slow are his steps, his eyes are gravely downcast;His pale robes sway in long folds with his passing.Out of the infinite distance, a ghostly musicReturns—in slender tones of delicate silver,As stars are broidered on the veil of evening.
From an infinite distance, the ghostly music!Few and slender the tones, of delicate silver,As stars are broidered on the veil of evening....
He passes by, the flute and the dreaming player—Slow are his steps, his eyes are gravely downcast;His pale robes sway in long folds with his passing.
Out of the infinite distance, a ghostly musicReturns—in slender tones of delicate silver,As stars are broidered on the veil of evening.
Certain puzzles for the collector and student arise in connection with Harunobu.
This is the first knotty point. Shiba Kokan, a contemporary artist who outlived Harunobu by forty-eight years, is obscurely connected with Harunobu's work. "Look out when you buy Harunobu prints!" he writes in his memoirs, published long after his death. "A great portion of the most popular ones are skilfully forged, and the forger was I, Shiba Kokan!" This warning holds good to-day, and in many cases no one can say with confidence whether certain sheets are by Shiba Kokan or Harunobu. Kokan claims, in particular, to have been the author of those with transparent draperies, those done in the Chinese manner, and those in which snow on bamboos is rendered by embossing without outline blocks. All these and other characteristic beauties of Harunobu's work he would annex, and it is doubtful if we shall ever know whether he is the greatest liar or the greatest forger in history. Probably his statements must be regarded as partly true. Until we know, however, every print signed Harunobu is suspect; for if Shiba Kokan could deceive the public of that day, we shall not be likely to detect his forgeries. There is only one consolation for the collector: if the prints of Shiba Kokan, signed Harunobu, are as beautiful as those of Harunobu, then not the collector is the sufferer, but only the unfortunate person who tries to write an accurate account of this hopeless entanglement.
Other forgers, contemporaneous or slightly later, probably took advantage of Harunobu's popularity:coarse reprints from recut blocks turn up frequently in the market; and, worst of all, very fine modern forgeries and imitations of his work abound. These last two classes are the only ones that need cause the collector anxiety; they should of course be guarded against with the utmost care, for they are quite worthless. Their impure and muddy colours generally betray them to the practised eye. No means of detecting them is safe for the inexperienced amateur except a minute comparison with an unquestioned original impression of the same print. On the other hand, the contemporaneous forgeries, if beautiful, are no inconsiderable treasures.
KYOSEN.KYOSEN.
KYOSEN.
The name Kyosen furnishes another puzzle. It is signed to prints unmistakably by Harunobu, to prints unmistakably not by him, and to prints which he also signs. The solution seems to be that Kyosen is simply the name of the printer or engraver who did work for Harunobu and for other designers. Kyosen himself sometimes designed prints, but in such cases he signed distinctly as artist. The signature Kyosen does not, therefore, indicate a separate artist, and its presence on Harunobu's prints need not cause doubts as to Harunobu's authorship. Senga, a printer, and Takahashi Gyokushi and Takahashi Rosen, engravers, also signed certain of Harunobu's prints.
A further difficulty arises in the relation of Harunobu to Koriusai, an artist whom we shallsoon treat by himself. At times his work comes so close to Harunobu's style that earlier authorities believed his name to be merely a later signature of Harunobu. This position is now entirely discredited, and it is agreed that Koriusai was a distinct person, a friend and successor of Harunobu. But it is not so sure that Koriusai may not have signed certain of his own designs with Harunobu's name after Harunobu's death; the striking resemblances of some such sheets to Koriusai's work makes one unwilling to regard the relation between the two as settled. In the case of certain unsigned prints, it is impossible to determine with assurance which of the two was the creator. As a rule, however, the colour-schemes of the two are totally different, Koriusai running characteristically to schemes in which blue and orange are dominant. Dr. Kurth seems to think it barely possible that prints signed "Koriu" may be by Harunobu; but this theory is untenable, both because the internal evidence of the prints is against it, several of Koriusai's most characteristic prints being thus signed, and because of the difficulty of believing that Harunobu, the greatest of living Ukioye artists, should at the height of his fame have signed to his work the name of a younger and less noted contemporary.
Those prints in the Harunobu manner which are unsigned and unsealed also offer perplexities, since we must look entirely to internal evidence to discover whether they are by Harunobu.
Harunobu's work is among the most highly prized in the whole list. The great collections have manyof his prints, but in the market one finds the fine ones to be limited in number. In his case, even more than in the case of other artists, perfect condition is a vital requirement. For, in the process of fading, his prints lose that delicate colour-orchestration which is their supreme glory. The same changes in tone that would hardly detract from the beauty of a fine Kiyomitsu might easily rob a fine Harunobu of most of its significance. If one has once seen the copies in such collections as that of Mr. Frederick W. Gookin, of Chicago, Mr. Charles H. Chandler, of Evanston, Messrs. William S. Spaulding and John T. Spaulding, of Boston, or Mr. Howard Mansfield of New York, one loses all interest in the battered riff-raff of the dealers' counters.
Koriusai speaks.
Let whoso will take sheets as wideAs some great wrestler's mountain-backSpace cannot hideHis lack.Take thou the panel, being strong.'Tis as a girl's arm fashioned right—As slender and divinely longAnd white.That tall and narrow icy spaceGives scope for all the brush beseems.And who shall ask a wider placeFor dreams?It is an isle amid the tide—A chink wherethrough shines one lone star—A cell where calms of heaven hideAfar.One chosen curve of beauty wooedFrom out the harsh chaotic worldShall there in solitudeBe furled.The narrow door shall be so straitLife cannot vex, with troubled din,Beauty, beyond that secret gateShut in.Lo! I will draw two lovers there,Alone amid their April hours,With lines as drooping and as fairAs flowers.I will make Spring to circle themLike a faint aureole of delight.Their luminous youth and joy shall stemThe night.And men shall say: Behold! he chose,From Time's wild welter round him strown,This hour; and paid for its reposeHis own.
Let whoso will take sheets as wideAs some great wrestler's mountain-backSpace cannot hideHis lack.
Take thou the panel, being strong.'Tis as a girl's arm fashioned right—As slender and divinely longAnd white.
That tall and narrow icy spaceGives scope for all the brush beseems.And who shall ask a wider placeFor dreams?
It is an isle amid the tide—A chink wherethrough shines one lone star—A cell where calms of heaven hideAfar.
One chosen curve of beauty wooedFrom out the harsh chaotic worldShall there in solitudeBe furled.
The narrow door shall be so straitLife cannot vex, with troubled din,Beauty, beyond that secret gateShut in.
Lo! I will draw two lovers there,Alone amid their April hours,With lines as drooping and as fairAs flowers.
I will make Spring to circle themLike a faint aureole of delight.Their luminous youth and joy shall stemThe night.
And men shall say: Behold! he chose,From Time's wild welter round him strown,This hour; and paid for its reposeHis own.
Koriusai's life is shrouded in those mists prevalent in the cases of most Ukioye artists. It is known that he was a Samurai, or feudal retainer of knightly rank; upon the death of his master, Tsuchiya, he became, as was the custom, a ronin—that is, a retainer without a lord—and established himself near the picturesque Ryogoku Bridge in Yedo as a painter. He originally used the name Haruhiro. Shigenaga was his first teacher, Harunobu his second; his work can safely be dated between 1770 and 1781. By the end of this period Kiyonaga was beginning to advance achievements that eclipsed Koriusai's. As Fenollosa points out, it was Koriusai's misfortune to collide with Harunobu at the beginning and with Kiyonagaat the end of his career; could we obliterate those two, we might think of Koriusai as "the most beautiful Ukioye designer."
KORIUSAI: MOTHER AND BOY.KORIUSAI: MOTHER AND BOY.Size 28 × 4½.SignedKoriu gaKORIUSAI: TWO LOVERS IN THE FIELDS—SPRING CUCKOO.Size 27 × 4½.SignedKoriusai ga.Plate 16.
KORIUSAI: MOTHER AND BOY.
KORIUSAI: MOTHER AND BOY.Size 28 × 4½.SignedKoriu ga
KORIUSAI: TWO LOVERS IN THE FIELDS—SPRING CUCKOO.Size 27 × 4½.SignedKoriusai ga.
Plate 16.
Koriusai was already working in Harunobu's manner at the time of the master's death; and afterward he continued Harunobu's experiments. His characteristic device in colour is the predominance of a strong orange pigment, based on lead, which when originally applied had the utmost brilliance, but which now is frequently changed by chemical decomposition into a rich mottled black. Combining this orange with a blue of his own devising, he obtained novel and striking effects.