Page Twenty-eight WIGS TEVATUNIE OD

Japanese ‘Prints

66 DON’T like Japanese Prints, they are so queer,” is heard again and again
when Japanese Prints are discussed. And they are queer from a Western
point of view, though it was by Westerners that their artistic value was first

recognized, a value which is enhanced by a closer acquaintance with them and a
more thorough knowledge of their history and development. Ukiyo-ye, the “Float-
ing World,” is the popular school of Japanese art, and it is the work of the artisan
artist who depicted the scenes from the daily life of the common people, rather than
incidents in the lives of the noble, saints, philosophers and legendary heroes, which
had been the subjects of Japanese artists up to that time. The originator of this
school was Iwasa Matahei, who was born in 1578, and who set the example of
abandoning the classical schemes in favor of the representation of the life and
customs of the time, but it was only through the engraver that it could be adequately
brought before the masses. “Color printing was only its objective symbol, and it
is not a history of the technical art of printing, but an aesthetic history of a peculiar
kind of design.”

The art of woodblock printing, until the beginning of the 17th century, was
confined to the reproduction of images and texts. But Moronobu (1646) used the
book illustration then coming into vogue to depict the life of the common people.
He began sheet printing, and his first blocks were in black and white, later adding
dashes of orange and green by hand, and it was not till 1710 that Kiyonobu used
more than one block and printed in black, green and rose pink. Later in the
century color printing, by use of blocks for flat colors, was evolved. The prevailing
mania for the stage induced Kiyonobu to make theatrical posters, and he founded
the Torii school, which is pre-eminently the exponent of the drama, and this school
led in actor prints. The plebian stage was the greatest amusement of the traders
and artisans, and it proved a tempting subject.

Harunobu, who lived from 1747 to 1818, rejected stage subjects and painted
the beauty and refinement of women. He introduced the landscape backgrounds
and discovered new colors by the overplacing and mixing of pigments, and dis-
played a genius for composition and juxtaposition of colors. At this time Kiyo-
naga (1742-1814) arose as a successor to the Torii school, though he discarded its
theatrical tradition and painted ideally beautiful women. He showed great simpli-
city, and his figures have a dignity that is almost classic, the drapery falls grace-
fully, and he determines the figure in the fewest possible folds. In place of back-
grounds, he used a definitely indicated interior or landscape, and this pictorial
representation led to a new manner of composition, whose aim was to fill the
whole area in a pleasing way. Toward the end of his career he resumed the tradi-
tion of his school by returning to the representation of actors.

No artist is more popular than Utamaro (1754-1806), who is essentially a
painter of beautiful women, and was the first to deviate from the traditional manner
of treating the face. The academic style demanded that the nose be one aqueline
stroke, the eyes mere slits and the mouth curved like the petal of a flower. His
women were exceptionally beautiful, and he glorified the Japanese woman with an
unexcelled enthusiasm. At first he painted them in their normal proportions, but
as time went on he elongated them more and more, but this great length was the
product of a fevered imagination, and his depravity hastened the decadence of the
Popular School. Landscape was first fully organized by him and became a signifi-
cant part of the design as a whole.