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From a print in ten colors by Suzuki Harunobu (1747-1818). 
 
The Color-Prints of Old Japan 
 
 By 
 WM. DALLAM ARMES 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1901 
 
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[Reprinted from the UNIVERSITY CHRONICLE, Vol. IV, No. 1] 
 
THE COLOR-PRINTS OF OLD JAPAN.* 
 
 "What are they?" is a question often asked by those 
 looking for the first time at a collection of Japanese prints. 
 To say that they are chromoxylographs, is to give an 
 answer strictly accurate. But as this is more concise than 
 simple, it may be well to say in non- technical, popular 
 language that they are prints in colors from engraved wooden 
 blocks, as many blocks and impressions ordinarily being 
 required as there are colors. 
 
 In Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century 
 similar prints were produced, but as their reception by the 
 public was not such as to encourage their makers, there 
 was no development of the art comparable with that in Japan 
 in the same century. 
 
 The Japanese name for these prints in general is nishiki- 
 ye, but separate names distinguish the three principal 
 kinds: the long narrow prints are termed hachiraJcaki; the 
 large "broadsides" are ichimai-ye; and the smaller, more 
 nearly square prints are surimono. Usually each broad- 
 side is an independent picture; but often two or three, and 
 sometimes five, six, seven, or nine icJiimai-ye must be 
 united to get the whole design. 
 
 * A lecture accompanying an exhibition of prints held at Stiles Hall under 
 the auspices of the Art Association of the University of California, Feb- 
 ruary 7, 1901. (The lecture has been expanded somewhat and quotations 
 and foot-notes freely inserted for the guidance of those wishing to read 
 further on the subject.) 
 
These prints were usually the result of the combination 
 of the talents of three individuals; the painter, the engraver, 
 and the printer generally being different persons. The 
 painter drew the design in outline on a sheet of thin, semi- 
 transparent paper, that was pasted face downwards on a 
 slab of wood, usually cherry, cut with the grain, not 
 across it, as are the blocks used by our wood-engravers. 
 Having oiled the paper so that every brush- mark was 
 plainly visible, the engraver carefully cut around the lines 
 of the design with a sharp knife held in the right hand 
 and guided by the left, and with small chisels removed the 
 superfluous wood. After this outline-block had been 
 washed to remove all paper, as manj^ proofs were taken 
 from it as there were to be colors in the finished picture, 
 and on these the artist indicated his color-scheme. Each 
 of these proofs was pasted on a block and a cut for each 
 color made as before. In precisely the same places at the 
 bottom of each were cut a right- angle and a short horizontal 
 line to guide the printer in securing register. 
 
 The pigment was applied dry and was mixed and adjusted 
 on the block with a broad, flat brush loaded with rice-paste. 
 A dampened sheet of a tough, fibrous paper, made from 
 the inner bark of the mulberry and admirably adapted for 
 producing the most delicate effects, was then placed on the 
 block, and the ink transferred to it by pressure with the 
 haren, a flat disc of twisted paper rolled spirally and covered 
 with a piece of the dried sheath of a bamboo sprout. 
 Sometimes the ink was partially wiped from the block with 
 a cloth or brush or the ball of the thumb, as is done by our 
 printers of etchings, and what is termed a "gradation 
 print" produced. 
 
 Ordinarily, as has been said, as many blocks and 
 impressions are required as there are colors, and in some 
 modern work, as the Kokkwa, the great art-work in which 
 Mr. Ogawa of Tokyo is reproducing masterpieces of the 
 various schools of Japanese art, the finished picture is 
 said to be the result in some cases of no less than ninety 
 
printings.* But in the old work new shades and tints were 
 often produced by superimposing two or more colors, and 
 Dr. Anderson states that "the effect of printing from two or 
 more blocks was obtained in some cases by preparing a 
 single block with ink of different colors. "t Sometimes a 
 deeplj^ incised, uninked block was used to emboss certain 
 parts of the design; waves, foliage, the patterns of cloths, 
 and the folds of Mmonos being thus treated. This is not 
 as common in the ichimai-ye as in the surimono. These 
 small prints were usually printed with greater care on a 
 finer quality of paper, and were frequently given added rich- 
 ness by the use of gold, silver, and bronze powders, 
 powdered mother-of-pearl, and flakes of gold leaf. 
 
 The method of printing seems to us slow and crude, but 
 the results leave little to be desired. The impression is 
 much more thoroughly under the control of the printer than 
 in even the best of our machine-presses, and seldom is there 
 a fault in the register. Much of the success of the finished 
 picture depended on the care taken by the printer, and 
 prints from the same blocks vary quite decidedly in value. 
 The method of applying the ink to the block accounts for 
 the fact that it is almost impossible to find two prints 
 from the best period that are precisely alike: sometimes 
 there is but a slight difference in the colors, sometimes the 
 whole color-scheme is different. 
 
 Gradation- printing came into use comparatively late and 
 is to be found mainly in the landscapes of Hiroshige and his 
 imitators. A cheap, late print representing a huge fire 
 burning in the foreground of a snow- clad landscape, is in 
 this respect noteworthy. The column of smoke from the 
 fire extends across three-quarters of the picture, and the 
 gradual loss of density of the smoke as it rises is admirably 
 represented : the red of the flames shades off into the gray 
 smoke, so dense that the ridge of snow just back of the fire 
 cannot be seen through it; the whiteness of the next 
 
 * Hill-Burton, M. R. : Photography and Color-Printing in Japan. Inter- 
 national Studio, 5:250. 
 
 t Anderson, Wm. : Japanese Wood Engravings. London, 1895, p. 64. 
 
ridge can faintly be perceived; the next is quite apparent, 
 as is the distant cone of Fuji; the red glow of the sunset 
 sky is also seen through the dark gray; and near the top of 
 the picture the gradually deepening blue of the sky is visible 
 through the gradually lightening gray of the smoke. What- 
 ever may be its shortcomings otherwise, as a specimen of 
 gradation-printing, the picture is a great success. 
 
 These color-prints first became known to Europeans 
 generally in 1862. In the Japanese section of the Inter- 
 national Exposition held in London that year. Sir Rutherford 
 Alcock exhibited a small collection of rather late examples 
 that attracted considerable attention. Mr. John Leighton 
 made it the subject of a lecture at the Royal Institution 
 that he later printed as a pamphlet and illustrated with a 
 reproduction of a print by Kunisada. In the same year a 
 number of artists resident in Paris — Stevens, Whistler, 
 Diaz, Fortuny, Legros, et al — became interested in the 
 prints and began to collect and study them. Naturally 
 they had considerable influence on their work. Whistler in 
 particular having in his early works almost as much in 
 common with the masters of Ukioye as in his later he has 
 with the great Spanish painter with whom he is so 
 frequently associated. One of his "symphonies" is hardly 
 more than a transcript of "The Balcony" of Kiyonaga, and 
 in another he follows Toyokuni so closely that even the 
 little red decorative label on which the Japanese artist 
 placed his signature is reproduced. His "nocturnes" are 
 Hiroshiges done in pastel or oils. 
 
 As interest in the prints increased there arose a desire 
 to know the history of the artists who had produced them. 
 The revolution of 1868 opened Japan to foreigners, and 
 a number of educated, appreciative connoisseurs were 
 attracted thither. These studied with more or less 
 thoroughness the art of the country and on their return to 
 their homes published works on the subject. Other con- 
 noisseurs without the advantage of residence in Japan, but 
 with the aid of Japanese lovers of their country's art who 
 
had become domiciled in Europe and with access to the 
 large collections that had been formed by museums and by 
 private collectors, added to the literature of the subject. 
 The publications of Anderson, Strange, and Holmes in 
 England, Gonse, Bing, de Goncourt, and many others in 
 France, Gierke, Brinckmann, and von Seidlitz in Germany, 
 Madsen in Denmark, and Jarves, Morse, and Fenollosa in 
 America have made accessible a mass of information in 
 regard to Japanese painting in general and the especial 
 school now under consideration in particular. 
 
 It has been shown, as was to be expected, that there has 
 been a gradual evolution of the art of printing in colors 
 from wood-blocks, and, thanks mainly to the researches of 
 Mr. Fenollosa, the various steps in this evolution are now 
 accurately known. A brief resume will contribute to the 
 appreciation of the prints. 
 
 Japanese painting, like the other arts of Japan, its 
 poetry, and its science, is of Chinese origin,* and came to 
 the island kingdom by way of Corea in the fifth century, 
 A.D. At about the same time Corean painters made known 
 to the Japanese the Buddhist art that had arisen in north- 
 western India, apparently under late Greek influence. This 
 had much in common with Byzantine art, being stiff, 
 formal, and hieratic in character, and glorying in the lavish 
 use of gold and rich, but somewhat sombre, colors. The 
 Chinese school, on the other hand, produced mainly black 
 and white work that in the swift, easy flow of its lines gave 
 evidence of its calligraphic origin. "All Chinese and 
 Japanese critics," says Mr. Theodore Wores, "assert that 
 painting is but a species of writing. "t 
 
 By the union of these two and the peculiarly Japanese 
 idiosyncracies, Japanese painting was evolved, the various 
 schools depending on the varying proportions in which the 
 
 * Cf. Anderson, Wm. : The Pictorial Arts of Japan. London, 1886. 
 Bing, S. : The Origin of Painting Gathered from History. Artistic 
 Japan, Nos. 13 and 14. 
 
 t Wores, Theodore : An American Artist in Japan. Century Mag., 16 : 679. 
 
ingredients were combined: the Tosa, for instance, has a 
 preponderance of the Buddhist element; the Kano, of the 
 Chinese; the Shijo and Ukioye, of the Japanese. 
 
 The Tosa and Kano schools were aristocratic, courtly — 
 the first connected with the court of the Mikado at Kioto, 
 the second with the court of the Tokugawa Shoguns at 
 Yeddo, or as it is now called, Tokyo. About 1620 Iwasa 
 Matahei, who had been a student of the Tosa, and later of 
 Kano school, broke away from their formalism and tradi- 
 tions and painted in a freer, more vigorous, more realistic 
 style. Moreover, instead of confining himself to subjects 
 drawn from the courtly life, the history, and the aristo- 
 cratic literature of Japan and China, Matahei painted the 
 subjects that he saw in the every- day world about him. 
 His example apparently was not immediately followed, but 
 in the next century there arose a class of bourgeois artists 
 who looked back to Matahei as their master, and to the 
 school that was founded there was given the significant 
 name Ukioye — Painting of the Floating (or Passing) World. 
 This was, it must be remembered, distinctly the people's 
 art; its artists were despised by those of the aristo- 
 cratic schools, and to this day, when connoisseurs of all 
 lands are singing the praises of the Ukioye school, the 
 upper classes of Japan hold it somewhat in contempt. Mr. 
 John La Farge, on his visit to Japan, found that in talking 
 to artists of the Kano school, it was advisable to make no 
 reference to the work of Hokusai, whom all European 
 critics place among the world's master painters.* 
 
 Probably the fact that Matahei confined himself to paint- 
 ing, in part explains why his example was not at once 
 imitated. To produce works that did not appeal to the 
 class that could afford to buy and were necessarily too 
 expensive for those to whom they did appeal, was to pro- 
 duce "art for art's sake" in a sense that, even in those 
 days of uncommercial art, could not win many proselytes. 
 Not till late in the seventeenth century did Matahei have a 
 
 * La Farge, John : An Artist's Letters from Japan. Century Mag. , 24 :427. 
 
disciple. Then Hishigawa Moronobu followed his example 
 in abandoning the wornout classical themes and finding his 
 subjects in the commonplace, everyday life about him. To 
 popularize his work he availed himself of the art of the 
 wood-engraver, which had been introduced into Japan via 
 Corea in the twelfth or thirteenth century and had there- 
 tofore been used mainly for the production of portraits of 
 Buddhist saints whose woodenness was by no means confined 
 to the block from which they were printed. Moronobu, 
 however, produced books of pictures that mark the beginning 
 of artistic wood-engraving in Japan. In these the common 
 people, who could not afford original paintings, could 
 indulge their taste for the artistic, and their popularity led 
 Moronubu to issue many volumes. These, Dr. Anderson 
 tells us, "include copies of famous pictures, drawings of 
 landscapes and street scenes, illustrated stories, incidents of 
 history, poetry, and in fact almost everything with which 
 we are familiar in the works of later and better known 
 men."* To add to the effect these black and white repro- 
 ductions of sketches were sometimes "spotted" with color 
 by hand. 
 
 Moronobu 's success soon called forth imitators, and one 
 of these, Okumura Masanobu, did not confine himself to 
 the production of books, but issued independent pictures 
 that could be hung on the wall like hakemonos or pasted on 
 screens. These too were often hand- colored, but about 
 1743 there appeared prints from three blocks, one for the 
 black outline, one for a pale rose tint, and one for a light 
 green. Just who deserves the credit for this innovation is 
 not certainly known — Mr. FenoUosa is inclined to credit it 
 to Nishimura Shigenagat — and is unimportant, for it was at 
 once adopted by all the leading designers of the time. It 
 seems strange to us that the possibilities of this new method 
 were not at once grasped, but apparently fully fifteen years 
 passed before a third color was added, and nearly twenty- 
 
 * Japanese Wood Engravings, p. 16. 
 
 tFenollosa, Ernest F.: The Masters of Ukioye. New York, 1896, p. 23. 
 
five before Suzuki Harunobu by the use of seven or eight 
 blocks produced prints that were not merely "mosaics 
 spotted on a white ground," but were pictures with atmos- 
 phere, background, and a more or less — generally less — 
 correct perspective. It is for this reason that the Japanese 
 usually term Harunobu the inventor of the nishiki-ye, 
 though, as we have seen, he was merely the culmination of 
 a century-long development. 
 
 Before a brief account of the principal schools, or "fami- 
 lies," of the Ukioye is given, it may be well to explain a 
 peculiarity in regard to the names by which the artists are 
 known to us. These are never their family, but are merely 
 their brush-names. Usually a painter's name indicates his 
 relation to some preceding artist whose pupil he has been 
 or whose work he strives to imitate. Often the first name 
 indicates the school to which an artist belongs, while the 
 second, by which he is generally known, is formed by a 
 prefix or suffix to a part of the name of his special teacher. 
 Thus a boy named Kumakichi was sent by his father to 
 learn the art of color-printing from Utagawa Toyoharu and 
 adopted the professional name of Utagawa Toy okuni. He 
 in turn had as a pupil Kunisada, who was the teacher of 
 Sadahide. Sometimes a master gave to a favorite pupil a 
 name that he had himself abandoned, as Hokusai, about 
 1800, bestowed the name Shinsai on his pupil Hanji.* 
 Sometimes after the death of a famous artist a successful 
 pupil adopted his name, as in 1844, Toyokuni having been 
 dead nineteen years, Kunisada issued a surimono announcing 
 to his friends that thereafter he was to be known as Toyo- 
 kuni. Toyokuni' s son Naogiro also abandoned the name 
 of Toyoshige that he had taken on becoming a student with 
 his father, and adopted that of Toyokuni. As a more 
 modern artist also complimented the great master of the 
 Utagawa school in a similar manner, this brush-name 
 appears on an immense number of prints that vary quite 
 decidedly in artistic worth and commercial value. 
 
 *De Goncourt, Edmond: Hokousai. Paris, 1896, p 339. 
 
Another element of perplexity to the collector comes 
 from the fact, already indicated, that the painters some- 
 times changed their brush-names. The artist usually 
 known as Hokusai, a name that does not indicate his rela- 
 tion to any preceding painter, but that means simply "the 
 northern studio," is the most striking example of this: 
 during his long life as an artist he used many different 
 names, among them Katsugawa Shunro, Mugura Shunro, 
 Taito, Tokitaro, Kako, Tamekazu, Manji, Shinsai, and 
 Man Rojin. Naturally when one name is used by so many 
 painters and so many names by one painter there are a 
 number of problems connected with the history of the art 
 about which the best critics are decidedly at variance, and 
 one cannot be known as a collector of prints without being 
 frequently called on to answer the question, "Do you think 
 there was one Hiroshige, two Hiroshiges, or three Hiro- 
 shiges?" To which the only answer that avoids an argument 
 is, "I do." 
 
 The first school of importance in the history of the 
 Ukioye is the Torii. It was founded by Torii Kiyonobu, 
 who flourished from 1710 to 1730, and included in a direct 
 line Kiyomasu, Kij^oharu, Kiyomitsu, Kiyotsune, Kiyomine, 
 and Kiyonaga. Strongly influenced by it were the great 
 artists Shigenaga, Harunobu, Shigemasa, Yeishi, and 
 Utamaro.* The greatest of the Torii, and many think of 
 the whole Ukioye school, was Kiyonaga, whom Mr. Fenol- 
 losa terms "the central and culminating figure, with ripest 
 mastery over all the technical points of the art of color- 
 designing for prints. "t According to Mr. Strange,! he was 
 the first of the Torii to illustrate subjects from domestic 
 life, his predecessors having devoted themselves exclusively 
 to theatrical scenes and portraits of actors ; but the accuracy 
 of this statement may fairly be questioned. In beauty of 
 line and color, grace, delicacy, and tender feeling, he is at 
 
 *Cf. De Goncourt, Edmond: Outamaro. Paris, 1891. 
 tThe Masters of Ukioye, p. 115. 
 t Japanese Illustration, p. 26. 
 
least the equal of Yeishi and Utamaro, who are sometimes 
 ranked above him, while his pictures are free from, the 
 mannerisms and exaggerations that too often lower the 
 artistic value of their works. 
 
 The next school to rise into prominence was the Katsu- 
 gawa. This was founded by Shunsui, who died in 1750, 
 and includes among others Shunsho, some of whose illus- 
 trated volumes are considered by Gonse* the most beautiful 
 that Japan has produced, Shunko, Shunman, Shuncho, 
 Shunzan, and Shunki, But the most famous of the school 
 is Shunro, or Hokusai; who, however, long before his death 
 departed from the style and traditions of the Katsugawa 
 and founded a school of his own.t 
 
 The last, and by far the most prolific of the three prin- 
 cipal schools, is the Utagawa. This was founded by 
 Utagawa Toyoharu late in the eighteenth century, and 
 includes Toyokuni, Toyohiro, Kunisada, Kuniyoshi, Kuni- 
 masu, Kunimaru, and a dozen of others of the tribe of 
 Kuni-, Hiroshige, Yoshitoshi, Yoshitora, Sadahide, Sada- 
 masa, and scores of less important men. Founded after 
 deterioration had set in, the Utagawa school contains no 
 artist that Mr. Fenollosa considers of second rank even, 
 and but three — Toyoharu, Toyokuni, and Hiroshige — that 
 he includes among those of third rank.t Naturally, as it 
 was the latest and most prolific school, prints by the 
 Utagawa are very plentiful. 
 
 Two of the artists that have been named deserve, even 
 in a summary account of the Ukioye, a few words of special 
 consideration. They are Hokusai and Hiroshige. 
 
 To one unfamiliar with his work the expressions used 
 by European critics in writing of Hokusai seem extrava- 
 gant, if not ridiculous. But the more one knows of him 
 the more one is inclined to agree with the enthusiasts who 
 rank him among the world's greatest artists. Strikingly 
 
 *Gonse, Louis: Japanese Art. Translated by M. P. Nickerson. Chicago, 
 n. d. [1891], p. 68. 
 
 t C/. Holmes, C. J. : Hokusai. London, 1899. 
 t The Masters of Ukioye, p. 115. 
 
original, wonderfully versatile, and amazingly productive, 
 he influenced his country^ s art as no European artist has 
 ever influenced his. In addition to producing a large num- 
 ber of kakemonos, surimonos, and broadsheets of great 
 excellence, he illustrated over five hundred volumes — 
 romances (some of them written by himself), poems, 
 humorous works, books of travel, sketch-books, books of 
 views, educational works, etc. Gonse estimates that the 
 number of motives and compositions cut from his designs 
 exceeds thirty thousand, and writes "There does not exist 
 in the history of art another example of such versatility 
 and industry."* He "was in the habit," Sir Rutherford 
 Alcock tells us, "of going about the streets sketch-book in 
 hand, and at all hours, transferring to its pages the figures, 
 effects, and incidents passing before his eyes."t His work 
 thus became "a complete picture of Japan, a veritable 
 cyclopedia expressive and picturesque."* Mr. James J. 
 Jarves speaks thus of his art: "It is supreme in its own 
 ways and wholly free from inane types, wearisome con- 
 ventionalities, and pettiness or shams of any sort; it goes 
 directly to its point, scorning all subterfuge; sturdy, 
 versatile, never repeating itself, every stroke or thought a 
 distinct note in art, realistic or idealistic, as the motive 
 demands, exhaustive of common and aristocratic life, 
 spicing everything it touches with racy individuality, few, 
 if any, artists of any country surpass Hoffskai in the 
 faculty of making common things and little things tell 
 more pleasurably to the fancy as artistic surprises and 
 fresh interpretations of the ordinary phenomena of nature 
 and society. "t 
 
 ♦Japanese Art, p. 267. 
 
 t Alcock, Sir Rutherford: Art and Art Industries in Japan. London, 
 1878, p. 135. 
 
 t Jarves, James Jackson: A Glimpse of the Art of Japan. With Illus- 
 trations from Japanese Designs. New York, 1875. (The designs are 
 reproductions of sketches by Hokusai. The book antedates by three years 
 the account of the artist in the brief outline History of the Pictorial Art of 
 Japan, contributed by Dr. Anderson to the Transactions of the Asiatic Society 
 of Japan, for 1878, which in his Japanese Wood Engravings he terms **the 
 first European account of Hokusai.") 
 
Throughout his long life he was ever a student, never 
 content with his achievements. This "noble discontent" 
 is apparent in the prefaces of several of his volumes of 
 sketches. The Hundred Views of Fuji was introduced with 
 the words: "Since my sixth year I have felt the impulse to 
 represent the form of things ; by the age of fifty I had pub- 
 lished numberless drawings ; but I am displeased with all I 
 have produced before the age of seventy. It is at seventy- 
 three that I have begun to understand the form and the 
 true nature of birds, of fishes, of plants, and so forth, con- 
 sequently by the time I get to eighty, I shall have made 
 much progress; at ninety, I shall get to the essence of 
 things ; at a hundred, I shall have most certainly come to a 
 superior, undefinable position; and at the age of one hun- 
 dred and ten, every point, every line, shall be alive. And 
 I leave it to those who shall live as long as I have myself, 
 to see if I have not kept my word. Written, at the age of 
 seventy-five, by me, formerly known as Hokusai, but now 
 known as Gakyo Rojin (The Old Man gone Mad for 
 Painting.)"* 
 
 In the preface to his Saishiki-Tsu (Complete Account of 
 Coloring) , published when he was eighty-eight, he indicated 
 the tentative nature of his instructions by stating "when I 
 am ninety, I shall change the style of the art, and when I 
 am a hundred, I shall work a revolution in all branches of 
 the arts."t 
 
 His humor and his passion for his art appear in the 
 cover-design that he made for an elementary book on 
 coloring that he wrote for children; it represents him 
 painting with a brush in his mouth, a brush in each hand, 
 and a brush between the toes of each foot! 
 
 Hokusai did not attain the great age that he desired, but 
 died at ninety in 1849. His last letter, written to an old 
 
 * Quoted by John La Farge. Century Mag., 24:427. 
 
 t Translated for me from the Ukioye Hennenshi ( Chronological Account 
 of the Ukioye School) of Tadatake Sekibar, by Mr. Yoshisaburo Kuno, 
 Japanese Assistant in the University of California. 
 
friend is "so gay and so sad, so triumphant over circum- 
 stances, so expressive of the view of the world which 
 explains his wood-cuts" * that it should be known to every 
 admirer of his art. It is thus given by Prof. Edward R. 
 Morse, who received it direct from a pupil of Hokusai 
 whose father was a friend of the recipient of the letter: 
 
 "King Ema [a sort of Japanese Pluto] has grown very 
 old, and is about to retire from office. He has accordingly 
 had built for him a nice little house in the country, and 
 wants me to paint a kakamono. I must start within a few 
 days, and when I go I shall take my drawings with me, and 
 take lodgings at the corner of Jigoku dori Niehome [Hell 
 Street] and shall be very glad to have you visit me when 
 you have occasion to go there. Hokusai. "t 
 
 On his death-bed he is said to have exclaimed, "If 
 heaven would give me but another five years ... I might 
 yet become a great painter." He was buried in the garden 
 of the Seikioji temple at Asakusa, and on his tombstone 
 was cut the epithet he so frequently put on his designs, 
 "the old man mad about painting."! 
 
 He came too late in the history of color-printing to 
 contribute much to its development, but as an artist he 
 influenced to a greater or less extent all who came after him . 
 Of his immediate pupils the most successful was Kiosai, 
 sometimes from his faithfulness to his master's style and 
 method termed Hokusai the Second. Though Dr. Anderson 
 terms him "as poor, as eccentric, and almost as gifted as 
 Hokusai himself, "§ Kiosai's range was comparatively 
 narrow; he lacks Hokusai' s amazing versatility, and only 
 in his comic work challenges comparison with his master. 
 
 While M. Geffroy's statement, "All Japanese artists 
 
 *La Farge, Century Mag., 24:427. 
 
 t Morse, Edw. R. : Notes on Hokusai. American Art Review, 1:147. 
 J De Goncourt, Hokousai, p. 264. 
 
 § Anderson, Wra. : A Japanese Artist, Kawanabe Kiosai. International 
 Studio, 6:29. 
 
have been landscape painters,"* may be true, it is also true 
 that in the Ukioye school, as in European art, the inde- 
 pendent treatment of landscape came rather late in the 
 development. Again as in European art, landscape first 
 made its appearance as a background for figure-pieces. 
 The first to treat it for its own sake was Toyoharu, who is 
 said to have derived the idea from some European wood- 
 cuts introduced through the Dutch Colony at Nagasaki.! 
 His crude endeavors were continued by his pupil Toyohiro 
 but not until Toyohiro 's pupil Hiroshige began his work in 
 the third decade of the last century were landscape-prints 
 produced worthy of comparison with the best figure-pieces 
 of the eighteenth century. "In Hiroshige' s new method 
 the Japanese beheld for the first time landscape art as a 
 mosaic of characteristic local colors. His skies were solid 
 blue, pink, purple, or lead-color, with clouds or sunsets in 
 realistic hues; his foliage solid greens of opposing values. 
 The reds of temples, the browns and grays and azures of 
 wooden bridges and buildings, even the colors of peasants' 
 clothing, enter the same scale with colors of sky and earth, 
 diversifying rather than dominating them."t 
 
 He moreover adopted, though with imperfect knowledge, 
 European perspective, so that his landscapes please many 
 to whom Japanese prints in general are caviare. Though 
 he illustrated many other localities, his favorite subjects 
 were Yeddo and its environs; the Tokaido, the sea-coast road 
 connecting Yeddo and Kioto; and the Kisokaido, the inland 
 road between the same cities. He excels in representations 
 of moonlight, snow, mist, and storms. He did not confine 
 himself to landscapes, but drew birds, flowers, and fish 
 with marvelous fidelity ; illustrated history and legend ; and 
 published figure-pieces similar to those of Kunisada and 
 caricature broadsides after the style of Hokusai. "Outside 
 
 *Geffroy, Gustave: Japanese Landscape Painters. Artistic Japan, No. 
 32, p. 409. 
 
 fFenollosa, Mary McNeil: Hiroshige, the Artist of Mist, Snow, and 
 Rain. San Francisco, 1901, p. 8. 
 
his landscapes," however, "there was little in his work that 
 would earn him distinction in his school, but in his specialty 
 he stands far above his fellows."* Von Seidlitz calls him 
 "the last great master of Japan. "t 
 
 Thoroughly to enjoy Japanese prints one must so far as 
 possible divest himself of many of the tastes and ideals 
 formed by a study of our own art. De Quincey^s dictum 
 in regard to a certain class of literary works, "Not to 
 sj^mpathize is not to understand" must, if this exotic art is 
 to be appreciated, be supplemented by its converse. Not 
 to understand is not to sympathize. The connoisseur may 
 readily grant that in a print the perspective is false, the 
 proportions of the figure incorrect, and the drawing, 
 especially of the hands and feet, ridiculous; and yet he may 
 find the picture full of charm. It must be kept in mind 
 that during the best period of Japanese color-printing a 
 picture never lost its decorative and calligraphic character. 
 Realism was no i)art of the artist's aim; the curtain so 
 painted as to deceive the beholder into an attempt to put it 
 aside would have awakened only his scorn. Mr. Theodore 
 Wores tells us that a native painter in Japan thus criticised 
 European art: "It seems to me that your chief aim is to 
 produce a real effect; in fact you strive to make your 
 picture look so real as to deceive one into a belief that he 
 is looking at nature. Now do you think this can be 
 accomplished with paint?" On the other hand, he further 
 tells us, "It is the spirit more than the substance that the 
 Japanese artist strives to reproduce. "+ Nature furnishes 
 him merely an alphabet whose letters he strives so to com- 
 bine as to produce poems, rhythmical creations of harmon- 
 ious beauty. By giving only what is absolutely essential, 
 by the placing of his masses, by gracefully flowing lines, 
 and by a tender harmony of colors, the artist tries, not to 
 
 ♦Anderson, Wm.: Hiroshige. Artistic Japan, No. 16, p. 197. 
 t Seidlitz, W. v. : Geschichte des japanischen Farbenholzschnitts. Dres- 
 den, 1897, p. 198. 
 
 J Century Mag., 16: 683,2. 
 
imitate his subject, but to call up in his beholder feelings 
 and sentiments similar to those aroused in himself by that 
 subject. "To understand his paintings, it is from this 
 standpoint they must be regarded; not as soulless photo- 
 graphs of scenery, but as poetic presentations of the spirit 
 of the scenes."* In a word, long before Manet, Monet, 
 and Degas the Japanese artists were impressionists, and 
 their influence on the latest phases of French art has not as 
 yet been adequately recognized. 
 
 Here there was undoubtedly a relation of cause and 
 effect, but no such relation can be traced between the 
 Japanese artists and the masters of another school with 
 which they have much in common. One who knows and 
 loves early Italian art cannot but be strongly reminded of 
 the frescoes of Cimabue and Giotto and the panel-pictures of 
 Giovanni Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio as he gazes at the 
 best work of the masters of the Ukioye, — Kiyonaga and 
 Yeishi, Harunobu and Utamaro. Here is found in perfec- 
 tion that " sweet unloaded flavoring of personal predilection 
 without the taint of personal self-display" that Sir W. M. 
 Rossetti, in somewhat "precious" diction, tells us the 
 members of the Preraphaelite Brotherhood found so alluring 
 in the work of the painters that they took as their 
 masters. 
 
 The decorative nature of Japanese painting makes it 
 much more akin to our mural painting than to our easel 
 pictures. It has the same simplicity and "flatness," but in 
 much greater degree; pictures being considered finished 
 that seem to us merely sketches, and chiaro-oscuro being 
 almost entirely neglected. It has, moreover, certain char- 
 acteristics that are no more true of our mural painting than 
 of our easel pictures: the point of view is almost always 
 high, as in all early ai*t; the perspective, before Dutch 
 influence made itself apparent, is ludicrously false ; conven- 
 tions are freely used; and a color-scheme entirely different 
 
 * Lowell, Percival: The Soul of the Far East; III, Art. Atlantic Mo., 60: 
 
from that of nature is frequently adopted. Some of these 
 peculiarities deserve more particular consideration. 
 
 No attempt was made to give apparent relief to a figure 
 by light and shade, shadows being well-nigh universally 
 omitted. Peter Schlemihl would have found himself quite 
 a la mode in Japanese-print-land! A landscape by Hiro- 
 shige and a picture of a young girl standing in the snow by 
 Yoshitora are noted simply because in them shadows are 
 represented. This absence of shadows, combined with the 
 frequent lack of background and of all support or base, 
 often makes the figures appear as if cut out and pasted on 
 a sheet. This peculiarity does not affect us as strongly as 
 it did the early collectors, for our poster-artists, deriving 
 the idea directly from these prints, have made us familiar 
 with pictures of this sort. 
 
 It follows as a corollary from what has been said that 
 the color represented is usually "local color" — usually 
 because the pictures of rain and mist by Hiroshige certainly 
 do represent atmospheric effect. As has been suggested, 
 the painter was unusually daring in his use of color and 
 was not at all trammeled by the facts of nature; if his 
 color-scheme seemed to demand it, he did not hesitate to 
 make his sky yellow, his trees blue, and his water red. 
 And the fact that our attention is not attracted to the 
 incongruity is a tribute to his knowledge of color-harmony. 
 The impression given is sometimes just what one would 
 receive from the scene, though hardly an object in the 
 picture is represented in its true color. 
 
 The conventions of the painters, it is frequently difficult 
 for us to accept. Nowhere is the idealistic and conven- 
 tional nature of this art more apparent than in the 
 representation of night scenes. Everything is usually seen 
 as distinctly as if in broad daylight, only the introduction 
 of lamps or lanterns, if the scene is an interior, of the moon 
 or a dark gray or deep blue sky, if it is an exterior, de- 
 noting the difference. The famous subject "a black cat 
 in a dark room at midnight" would have presented no 
 
difficulties to the Japanese artist: he would simply have 
 represented the cat standing or lying at the foot of a lamp, 
 and both as distinctly visible as if the time were high noon. 
 Here again Hiroshige breaks away from the usual practice : 
 in a glorious print representing a fete on a river, the houses 
 and trees on the farther shore are dimly seen in darker blue 
 againt a deep blue sky; the middle distance, an island in 
 the river, is in gray with the houses and merry-makers more 
 apparent; but the party in the foreground is represented as 
 if in strong daylight, even the details of the patterns on 
 the kimonos being represented! 
 
 The treatment of the sea is also highly conventional. 
 Seldom is there an attempt to represent "the multitudinous 
 seas" : usually a few lines in the foreground are considered 
 sufficient to suggest "the waves of the numberless waters," 
 while the background of the sea-scape is untouched paper 
 up to the line that represents the horizon. Sometimes a 
 tremendous wave is shown breaking in the foreground, 
 while just beyond it the sea appears to enjoy a halcyon 
 calm. A further peculiarity of the water is that usually it 
 neither reflects nor refracts. In a few prints by late men, 
 Kuniyoshi, for instance, reflections of the moon or of the 
 piers of a bridge are to be seen, but even in these prints 
 other objects are unreflected. No swan on Hiroshige^ s 
 lake "floats double, swan and shadow." 
 
 Clouds also presented great difficulty to the color-print 
 designer until the invention of gradation printing. In the 
 later prints of Hiroshige the lightness and fleeciness of 
 clouds are thus admirably represented, but in his early 
 prints, as in those of Hokusai, there are simply sharp-cut 
 decorative labels of color to indicate clouds. Sometimes 
 these occur in a puzzling manner, and apparently are intro- 
 duced, not to represent clouds or anything else, but simply 
 to help out the color-scheme. 
 
 Finally the figures represented were ideal and conven- 
 tional. Hokusai and Kiosai were much more realistic in 
 this respect than the artists of the eighteenth century, but 
 
they too had their conventions. Of the women of Shunsho, 
 Yeishi, Toyokuni, Utamaro, and Harunobu, Dr. Anderson 
 says : " The gorgeously attired women . . . are pure 
 conventions, that bear scarcely any resemblance to the real 
 Japanese maiden either in features, form, or proportions. 
 . . . They are not the women of Japan or of any other 
 country, but of the artist's imagination."* 
 
 Having once opened their doors to foreigners, the Jap- 
 anese were quick to learn from the Western nations, and 
 events in China during the last few months seem to indicate 
 that they have "bettered the instruction," and are now able 
 to give lessons in organization, discipline, and self-control 
 to the nations of Christendom that have hitherto been their 
 instructors. The progress of the country and the rapid 
 adoption and assimilation of Occidental arts, sciences, and 
 social ideals during the last third of the century just closed 
 has provoked the wonder and admiration of the world. 
 That the old feudal and caste system would be swept away 
 so easily, so quickly, and so completety could not have 
 been anticipated from the history of the centuries during 
 which the country was a hermit nation. The change was 
 necessary if Japan was to preserve its autonomy, and it 
 would be idle to deny the manifold advantages it has 
 brought to the Japanese. But in the exchange of old lamps 
 for new it was almost inevitable that, with a deal of anti- 
 quated rubbish, there should pass out of her possession one 
 of magic- working power. The old art is gone as com- 
 pletely as the age of chivalry. That of to-day is a hybrid. 
 Even in the works of Hokusai and Hiroshige traces of 
 European influence have been noted: contemporaneous 
 Japanese art is saturated with it. Full of superficial 
 prettiness and facile cleverness, it has lost the simplicity, 
 naive charm, and subtle harmony of color and of line of 
 the old Japanese ; and it has not gained the solid excellencies 
 of the European. NisMM-ye are still produced, the 
 popularity of the broadsides representing events in the 
 
 ♦Japanese Wood Engravings, pp. 28, 30. 
 
Japanese-Chinese war having brought about a revival of an 
 industry that was languishing. But from a collector's 
 point of view the prints of Ogata Gekko, and Yoshimune 
 Trai are valueless — save as foils to make apparent the 
 worth and beauty of the color-prints of old Japan. 
 
 Fuit Ilium! And over the entrance to one of the 
 museums in which, after the masterpieces of their art have 
 been scattered to the ends of the earth, the Japanese are 
 tardily endeavoring to collect what still remains in the 
 country, might fitly be inscribed Emerson's words: "For 
 everything you have missed, you have gained something 
 else; and for everything you gain you lose something." 
 Japan now has most of the nuisances, many of the con- 
 veniences, and some of the blessings of our civilization — 
 and Japanese art has paid the price. How heavy that 
 price, the Japanese themselves have begun to realize; as 
 was evidenced by the closing of the Foreign Art School 
 and the opening of the School of Native Art in 1888. 
 Its influence is already apparent,* but a truly national art is 
 impossible at the present stage of Japan's development. 
 That of to-day is not "bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh," 
 as the Ukioye formerly was. 
 
 •Fenollosa, Ernest P.: Art in Contemporary Japan. Century Mag., 24: 
 577. 
 
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