Impressions of Ukiyo-E. Dora Amsden

Impressions of Ukiyo-E

and of this the school of Tosa was a noted example, as it received its tide 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 Emperor and his nobles, as later Kanō became the official school of the usurping Shoguns. Thus the religious, political and artistic histories 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 Kanō.

The school of Kanō owed its origin to China. At the close of the fourteenth century 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 Kanō 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 Kanō, 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.

The early artists of Kanō reduced painting to an academic art, and destroyed naturalism, until the genius of Okumura Masanobu, who gave his name to the school, and still more, that of his son, Kanō Motonobu, the real “Kanō,” grafted on to Chinese models, and monotony of monochrome, a warmth of colour and harmony of design which regenerated and revivified the whole system. Kanō yielded to Chinese influence, Tosa combated it, and strove for a purely national art, Ukiyo-e bridged the chasm, and became the exponent of both schools, bringing about an expansion in art which could never have been realised by these aristocratic rivals. The vigour and force of the conquering Shoguns led Kanō, while the lustre of Tosa was an emanation from the sanctified and veiled Emperor.

Okumura Masanobu, Dragon Palace under the Sea, Edo period, 1740s.

Woodblock print (urushi-e); ink on paper with hand-applied colour and nikawa, 29.4 × 43.7 cm.

Museum of Fine Arts, gift of William Sturgis Bilegow, Boston.

Okumura Masanobu, Perspective Image of a Theatre Stage, 1743.

Woodblock print (beni-e), ink on paper, with hand-applied colour, 32.5 × 46.1 cm.

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.

Katsukawa Shunshō, The Actor Ichikawa Danjūrō V as Sakata Hyōgonosuke Kintoki, in the Play Raikō’s Four Intrepid Retainers in the Costume of the Night Watch (Shitennō Tonoi no Kisewata), 1781.

Colour woodblock print, hosoban, 32 × 14.9 cm.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.

Torii Kiyohiro, Nakamura Tomijūrō in the Role of Musume Yokobue, 1753.

Limited colour woodblock print, 43.5 × 29.3 cm.

Chiba Art Museum, Chiba.

Tōshūsai Sharaku, Ichikawa Omezō in the Role of Tomita Heitarō and Ōtani Oniji III in the Role of Kawashima Jubugorō, 1794.

Colour woodblock print, 38.8 × 25.8 cm.

Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu.

Tōshūsai Sharaku, Matsumoto Kōshirō IV and Nakayama Tomisaburō, 1794.

Colour woodblock print, 36.2 × 24.7 cm.

Baur Collection, Geneva.

The favourite subjects of the Kanō painters were chiefly Chinese saints and philosophers, mythological and legendary heroes, represented in various attitudes with backgrounds of conventional clouds and mists, interspersed with symbolic emblems. Many of the Kanō 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 Kanō 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 to enumerate the masters who inaugurated schools, for if an artist developed exceptional talent in Japan, he 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 the European Renaissance, followed. The fifteenth century in Japan, as in Europe, was essentially the age of revival. Anderson epitomises 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 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 Kanō. Kanō again was modified by the glowing colouring introduced by Kanō Masanobu and Kanō Motonobu. Later we see the varied palette of Miyagawa Chōshun efface the monochromic simplicity of Moronobu, the ringleader of the printers of Ukiyo-e.

The leading light in art in the beginning of the fifteenth century was Cho Densu (also called Minchō, 1352–1431), the Fra Angelico of Japan, who, as 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. The splendour of this beatific vision has never faded, for the masters who followed in the footsteps of the inspired monk reverently preserved the secret of these precious shades until at last, in the form of the Ukiyo-e print, they were broadcast and revolutionised the colour sense of the art world.

Furuyama Moromasa, Portrait of Ichikawa Danjūrō II as Kamakura no Gongorō, 1736.

Ink and colours on silk, 61 × 29 cm.

The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago.

Katsushika Hokusai, Shirabyōshi, Heian Court Performer, c. 1820.

Colours on silk, 98 × 41.9 cm.

The Hokusai Museum, Obuse.

Tōshūsai Sharaku, Nakamura Nakazo II as Prince Koretaka Disguised as the Farmer Tsuchizo in the Play Intercalary Year Praise of a Famous Poem, c. 1795.