Читать книгу Impressions of Ukiyo-E - Dora Amsden - Страница 5

The Torii School was pre-eminently the exponent of drama. It was bound up with stage development and ministered to the emotional temperament of the nation; leading in what may be considered a national obsession, a mania for actors and actor-prints.

A fascinating subject is this century of dramatic evolution fostered by the printers’ branch of the Popular School. Actors had been consigned, in dark feudal days, to the lowest rung in the ladder of caste, ranking next to the outcast (Eta), as in early English days the strolling player was associated with tinkers and other vagrant populations.

The No Kagura and lyric drama – suggesting the mediaeval- and passion-plays of Europe – prefigured modern drama in Japan, but the immediate precursor of the present theatre was the Puppet Show, a Japanese apotheosis of European marionette performances. It is interesting to note that Toyokuni carried further than any one the power of mimetic art, and with whose theatrical scenes we are most familiar. He began his career as a maker of dolls, and these puppets were eagerly sought after as works of art.

If the aphorism “not to go to the theatre is like making one’s toilet without a mirror,” be true, then the Japanese are justified in their national passion for the stage, which overshadows the love of any other amusement. Taking the phrase literally, it was to the actors, and the printers who broadcast their pictures, that the people owed the aesthetic wonders of their costume. The designers were also artists, as instanced by Hishikawa Moronobu, the Kyoto designer and Edo embroiderer, the printer and painter, illustrator of books and originator of Ukiyo-e.

Enthusiasm for the portraits of actors, fostered by the Torii printers from the foundation of the school by Kiyonobu, in about 1710, hastened no doubt the development of colour-printing. As early as Genroku, the portrait of Danjūrō the second of the great dynasty of actors, who by their genius helped to brighten the fortunes of the playhouse, was sold for five Yen cash, in the streets of the capital.

The combined genius of the artists, engravers and printers of Ukiyo-e evolved and perfected the use of the multiple colour-blocks. Toward the middle of the century, under the waning powers of Torii Kiyomitsu, successor to Kiyonobu, the school seemed to be sinking into oblivion, for Harunobu, its rightful exponent, filled with visions of ethereal refinement, scorned the theatrical arena. When most needed, however, a prophet arose in the person of Shunshō, the painter, the pupil of Shunsui and master of Hokusai, thus completing the transformation begun by Harunobu. The great scions of the rival branches of Ukiyo-e, printing and painting, stepped into each other’s places and bridged the chasm, which threatened the unity of the Popular School.

Katsushika Hokusai, Farmers Crossing a Suspension Bridge, on the Border of Hida and Etchu Provinces, from the series Famous Bridges of Various Provinces, 1834.

Colour woodblock print, 26 × 38.3 cm.

Pulverer Collection, Cologne.

Katsushika Hokusai, Suspension Bridge on the Mount Gyōtō, next to Ashikaga, from the series Famous Bridges of Various Provinces, c. 1834.

Colour woodblock print, 25.7 × 38.4 cm.

Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo.

Both branches were united, however, in the use of multiple colour-blocks, although Shunshō followed Harunobu’s experiments in colouring, varying his actor designs with domestic scenes and book illustrations, whilst Harunobu resolutely refused to portray the life of the stage, and in this determination he was followed by his pupil and successor, Koriusai.

About 1765, the art of printing colours by the use of individual blocks, technically called chromo-xylography, was perfected. It is an interesting reflection, from the standpoint of Buddhism – which teaches that in the fullness of time, the great masters in religion, art and learning become reincarnated upon earth for the benefit of humanity, that at this period Hokusai was born, the crowning glory and master of Ukiyo-e. Had he appeared earlier in the century, his genius might have been diverted to the technical development of printing, and the world thus been the loser of his creative flights.

Professor Fenollosa beautifully defines the inception of the Ukiyo-e print as “the meeting of two wonderfully sympathetic surfaces – the un-sandpapered grain of the cherry-wood block, and a mesh in the paper, of little pulsating vegetable tentacles. Upon the one, colour can be laid almost dry, and to the other it may be transferred by a delicacy of personal touch that leaves only a trace of tint balancing lightly upon the tips of the fibres. And from the interstices of these printed tips, the whole luminous heart of the paper wells up from within, diluting the pigment with a soft golden sunshine. In the Japanese print we have flatness combined with vibration.”

The process of wood-cutting seems a simple art, but a close study of the making of prints will show the consummate skill required to produce them. The artist’s design was transferred by tracing paper, then pasted on to the face of the wood block, and the white space hollowed out with a knife and small gouges. After the block had been inked, a sheet of damp paper was laid upon it, and the back of the paper was then rubbed with a flat rubber till the impression was uniformly transferred. Where more than one block was employed, as in colour-printing, the subsequent impressions were registered by marks made at the corners of the paper. The colouring matter laid upon these early blocks was extracted by mysterious processes from sources unknown to the Western world, which, alas by supplying the Eastern market with cheap pigments, led to the deterioration of this essential skill.

From 1765 to 1780 the school of Ukiyo-e was dominated by four great artists and creators of separate styles: Suzuki Harunobu, succeeded by Isoda Koryūsai, taking for motive the subjects of Shunsui; Katsukawa Shunshō (changed by Shunsui from its former title of Miyagawa), upon whose shoulders had fallen the mantle of the Torii; Kitao Shigemasa, working upon Shunshō’s lines, but breaking into a rival academy, the Kitao; Utagawa Toyoharu, pupil of old Torii Toyonobu, founder of the school of Utagawa, whose most illustrious pupil was Utagawa Toyokuni, the doll-maker, and brother of Utagawa Toyohiro, Hiroshige’s master. (Utagawa Kunisada, noted for his backgrounds, succeeded Toyokuni, and after the death of his master signed himself Toyokuni the Second.)

Keisai Eisen, Landscape under the Moon, c. 1835.

Colour woodblock print, 71.9 × 24.9 cm.

Baur Collection, Geneva.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Kasumigaseki, from the series Famous Places of the Oriental Capital [Edo], c. 1830–1844.

Colour woodblock print, 25.6 × 37.7 cm.

Chiba Art Museum, Chiba.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Distant View of Mount Fuji from Shōhei Hill, from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji from Edo, c. 1843.

Colour print from woodblocks, 38 × 25.5 cm.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Utagawa Toyoharu, Fireworks at Ryōgoku Bridge, 1820–1825.

Woodblock print on paper, 38 × 25.5 cm.

Utagawa Toyokuni, Fireworks on Ryōgoku, 1830–1844.

Colour woodblock print, 72.7 × 74 cm.

Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Shunshō is considered one of the greatest artists of Japan, both as an inventor and powerful colourist. Louis Gonse used to say: “All the collections of coloured prints which are today the delight of the teahouses; all the fine compositions showing magnificent landscapes and sumptuous interiors; all those figures of actors with heroic gestures and impassive faces behind the grinning masks, and with costumes striking and superb, came originally from the atelier of Katsukawa Shunshō, who had for a time the monopoly of them.” While the Torii artists were beguiling the Edo populace with theatrical portraiture, and aiding the growing tendency toward cosmopolitanism by issuing printed albums, books of travel, and encyclopaedias, art was also expanding at the ancient capital, Kyoto. Nishikawa Sukenobu, the prolific artist, was bringing out beautifully illustrated books, and Okyo Maruyama, from sketching on the earth with bamboo sticks, while following his father and mother to their work in the fields, had risen to be the great founder of the Maruyama school of painting, and the Shijo or naturalistic school was named after the street of the master’s studio.

The Popular School, aided by Okyo, effected a revolution in the laws of painting at Kyoto, for the artists forsook their academic methods, painting birds, flowers, grass, quadrupeds, insects and fishes from nature. Okyo’s name ranks high among the great masters of Japanese art, of whom so many fanciful legends are told. The charming artist with brush and pen, John La Farge, said: “As the fruit painted by the Greek deceived the birds, and the curtain painted by the Greek painter deceived his fellow-artist, so the horses of Kanaoka have escaped from their kakemonos, and the tigers sculptured in the lattices of temples have been known to descend at night and rend one another in the courtyards.”

Then the story is told of a moonlight picture, which, when unrolled, filled a dark room with light. A pretty legend of Kanō Tanyu, the great artist, and the crabs at Enryaku-ji Temple, is given by Adachi Kinnotsuke. Upon one panel of the fusuma, or paper screen, is seen a crab, marvellously realistic, only with claws invisible. On the other panels the artist had painted its companions, and at the bidding of his patron furnished them with claws. “Nevertheless,” the master declared, “I warn you that if I give these crabs claws they will surely crawl out of the picture.” As the visitor glances from the wonderful counterfeit crab to the four empty panels beside it, he knows the old master had spoken the truth.

Utagawa Toyoharu, View of a Harbour on the Sumida River, Catching Fresh Air on the Eitai Bridge, Fukugawa, c. 1770.

Colour woodblock print, 24.1 × 35.5 cm.

Utagawa Toyokuni, Akatsutaya in the Temporary Quarters, 1800.

Brocade triptych, 50 × 20 cm.

Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo.

Miyagawa Chōshun, Genre Scene at Edo (detail), 1716–1736.

Ink and colours on silk, 34.4 × 782.7 cm.

Idemitsu Museum of Art, Tokyo.

So it was also with Okyo. He breathed the breath of life into his pictures. His animals live, and his flights of storks swoop across the great kakemonos, each bird with an individuality of its own, though one of a multitude of flying companions. To view Okyo correctly, we should see him at home in his own environment, not in Europe, where so many copies of his masterpieces abounded. John La Farge gave us a glimpse of an Okyo, fitly set, framed in oriental magnificence, in the Temple of Iyemitsu at Nikko: “All within was quiet, in a golden splendour. Through the small openings of the black and gold gratings a faint light from below left all the golden interior in a summer shade, within which glittered on golden tables the golden utensils of the Buddhist ceremonial. The narrow passage makes the centre, through whose returning walls project, in a curious refinement of invention, the golden eaves of the inner building beyond. Gratings, which were carved, and gilded trellises of exquisite design, gave a cool, uncertain light. An exquisite feeling of gentle solemnity filled the place. In the corridor facing the mountain and the tomb, a picture hangs on the wall. It is by Okyo. Kuwannon, the Compassionate, sits in contemplation beside the descending stream of life.”

About 1775 arose a legitimate successor to the school of Torii in the adopted son of Torii Kiyomitsu, Kiyonaga. He discarded the theatrical tradition of his school, but the boldness of his drawing was foreign to the style of Harunobu. “His brush had a superhuman power and swing.” He rivalled the three great masters, Isoda Koryūsai, Kitao Shigemasa, founder of Kitao, and Utagawa Toyoharu, and the masters of Ukiyo-e, forsaking their individual predilections, flocked to his studio.

The simplicity and dignity of the early Italian masters, sought after and adored by the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, their noble lines and contours, are again realised in the panels of Kiyonaga. Professor Fenollosa said that “classic” is the instinctive term to apply to Kiyonaga, and that his figures at their best may be placed side by side with Greek vase painting. Ideally beautiful is the fall of his drapery, determining the lines of the figure in the fewest possible folds. In indoor scenes he almost rivalled Harunobu, but he loved best to paint in the open air. In imagination we see Kiyonaga, the lover of beauty, gazing at the wealth of lotus blooms which fill the moats of feudal Edo, and in the crucible of his fancy transmuting them into the forms of women. The lotus, of all flowers, has the deepest art significance, and is the oldest motif. The author of Greek Lines, Henry Van Brunt, said: “The lotus perpetually occurs in oriental mythology as the sublime and hallowed symbol of the productive power of nature. The Hindu and the Egyptian instinctively elevated it to the highest and most cherished place in their Pantheons.”