CHAPTER III
COLOUR PRINTING
The art of colour printing, which, as pointed out in the previous chapter, was an offshoot of the Ukioyé school of painting, is one of the most interesting of the minor arts of Japan. It was the colour prints that first aroused the interest of the European in Japanese art, and it is from them that in most cases he still receives his first impressions. And though, indeed, these impressions require largely to be corrected in the light of further knowledge, yet on the whole this is the most natural introduction; for, fantastic though these prints may at first appear to the unaccustomed eye, yet in their frankly decorative feeling they approach more nearly the Western standpoint than the earlier and more ideal schools of Japanese art. In the colour prints, which we may buy for a few shillings, there are obvious beauties of line, of composition, and of colour which cannot fail to appeal to us; however strange or bizarre they may otherwise appear we at once recognise them as charming pieces of decoration.
And though on further acquaintance with the subject of Japanese art we find that those who produced this beautiful work were but the journalists of art, and that the real classics stand on another and higher plane, yet on their own merits we cannot grudge them unstinted praise. They have not the noble elevation of the old schools, they do not climb the misty heights of the ideal, but they realise with exquisite feeling and refinement the beauty of the passing world that lies around them.
And while Japanese paintings, especially of the older schools, are almost unknown except to the connoisseur, and are only to be seen in a few isolated collections, the colour print is more or less familiar to all who take an interest in matters artistic. Hardly a studio but possesses a print or two, and it would be difficult to over-estimate their influence on the work which goes on around them.
But the art of the colour printer has this additional interest for us: it was a truly democratic art, its followers men of the artisan class, its customers the common people. And at a time when the upper classes of society were suffering from a gradual degeneration, when the arts became less and less alive and more and more a repetition of outworn conventions, this growth from below of a school of living art shows that the popular masses were beginning to stir, and that even two hundred years ago the bonds of feudalism were getting weaker, and the growth of a popular art was only one manifestation of the tendencies which finally overthrew the old system and substituted for it a democratic government.
The colour print artists were, for the most part, ignored by the cultured upper classes. They were men of little or no education. Toyokuni I. was the son of a maker of puppets; Kunisada was at one time the keeper of a ferry-boat; and Hokkei was a fish-hawker before he found his vocation. Then there was another reason for this social boycotting—the subjects of which they treated in their pictures. A large proportion of these were representations of actors in character. Now, in Japan the fondness for the theatre was an overwhelming passion with the common people, but by the nobility and aristocracy the stage was utterly tabooed. No person of good family dared openly to attend a theatrical performance. Actors, therefore, were ranked in the social scale as the lowest of the low—beneath even the humblest artisans. Even the colour print artists, who earned their living by depicting them, would never dream of associating with them on terms of equality.
Then another favourite subject was the delineation of the famous beauties of the Yoshiwara and the tea-houses. It is evident that the nature of the subject in this case also would be sufficient to damn the prints in the eyes of the better classes.
But, with the alien, “where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise”; and where the educated Japanese would see vulgarity and coarseness—where, perhaps, such was even intended—we, happily, see only a beautiful decorative effect.
So in Japan the colour print was the picture of the poorer classes. Costing a mere trifle, it occupied in their humble homes the place of the more expensive kakemono.
It is a matter of surprise to the cultured Japanese to find how these despised objects are prized by European collectors; and, valuing them little themselves, they have exported them wholesale, till comparatively few remain in Japan, the bulk of fine prints being now in Europe or America.
Though far surpassing in delicacy and beauty the colour prints of Europe and elsewhere, the Japanese prints are produced by means wonderfully simple, and depend for their fine qualities entirely on the wonderful skill of the craftsman.
The process is as follows:—The drawing is first made by the artist, with brush and Indian ink, on a sheet of thin paper. After being oiled to make it transparent this paper is pasted, face downwards to ensure the necessary reversal, on a block of soft cherry-wood. The engraver now proceeds to outline the picture with a knife. Then with gauge and chisel the superfluous wood is boldly cut away, and the result is a key block in line. From proofs coloured by the artist a further series of blocks are cut, one for each colour used. It may be mentioned here that the cherry-wood blocks are not cut across the grain, as in the case of the boxwood blocks we use for wood engraving, but in a line with the grain.
Then comes the work of a third craftsman, the printer. He mixes his colours for each printing, and applies them carefully to the block with a brush. Then the paper is damped and laid on the block. No press is used, but with a rubber or baren, made of a bunch of twisted fibre in a sheaf of bamboo leaf, the impression is carefully rubbed off. And so each block is used in succession until the picture is complete, accuracy of register being obtained in the most wonderful manner by rough guiding marks cut on the blocks. Sometimes metallic dusts are used in printing, and again a kind of embossing or high relief is obtained by pressure on an uninked block. It is said that this pressure is often applied by using the point of the elbow as a rubber.
The prints were issued by publishers chiefly in Yedo, the engraver and printer being simply workmen in the publisher’s employment. Sometimes the artist, too, was employed entirely by him, living in his house, and occupying a position somewhat equivalent to that of a designer for a commercial firm.
The first Japanese artist to make drawings for the wood engraver was Hishigawa Moronobu (1637-1714). These, however, were not colour prints but merely woodcuts in black and white. He illustrated quite a number of books during the latter half of the seventeenth century.
A further development was the colouring of the prints by hand, which was introduced largely by Torii Kiyonobu (1664-1729), the founder of the long line of Torii artists who devoted themselves almost entirely to theatrical subjects. It is among the immediate successors of Torii Kiyonobu that the art of printing in colours direct from the blocks appears to have arisen—at first only one or two tints being used.
The perfecting of the process is due to Suzuki Harunobu, who, going beyond a few tints on the main objects, filled in the whole picture with colour. And, though the first of the great colour print artists, in many respects his work has never been surpassed. Most of his prints are small in size, containing only a single figure, exquisitely poised, and characterised by extreme elegance and grace of line. His colour schemes were quiet and refined—grey, a pale red, one or two tints of olive green, being the components of some of his most delicate harmonies. His prints are rare, and his signature has been paid the doubtful compliment of being more extensively forged than that of any of his fellow-artists. His style, however, was more difficult to reproduce. Many of his successors fell under his influence, but even in their most successful efforts they never quite caught his peculiar elegance and charm.