HE Torii School was pre-eminently the exponent of the 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. The actor 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 the other vagrant population.

The No Kagura and lyric drama,—suggesting the mediæval and passion plays of Europe,—prefigured the modern drama in Japan, but the immediate precursor of the present theatre was the Puppet Show, a Japanese apotheosis of our Marionette performances. It is interesting to note that Toyokuni, who M. Louis Gonse declared has carried further than any one the power of mimetic art, and with whose theatrical scenes we are most familiar, began his career as a maker of dolls, and these puppets were eagerly sought for 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 stage passion, which overshadows the love of any other amusement. Taking the phrase literally, it was to the persons of the actors, and the printers who spread their pictures broadcast, that the people owed the æsthetic wonders of their costume. The designers were also artists, as instanced by Hishigawa Moronobu, the Kyoto designer and Yedo embroiderer, the printer and painter, illustrator of books and originator of Ukiyo-ye.

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

The combined genius of the artists, engravers and printers of Ukiyo-ye evolved and perfected the use of the multiple colour-block. Toward the middle of the century, under the waning powers of Torii Kiyomitsu, successor to Kiyonobu, the school seemed 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 Shunsho, 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-ye, printing and painting, stepped into each other’s places and bridged the chasm, which threatened the unity of the Popular School.

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

About the year 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-ye. 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-ye 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.”

To the connoisseur, one of the most important considerations, scarcely secondary to that of colouring, in the selection of Ukiyo-ye gems, is this vibratory quality, depending equally upon the texture of the paper and the magnetic pressure of the master printer’s fingers. This characteristic seems to have vanished from the modern print, and cannot be imitated, though the enthusiasm for fine specimens has flooded the market with spurious antiques, deceptive to the uninitiated. In the exquisite reproductions of the early Ukiyo-ye prints and paintings now being issued,—though a joy to the student unable to acquaint himself with the originals,—this ineffable effect of vibration is lost, probably owing to the substitution of a less sympathetic medium than the luminous vehicle of the early impressions.

The actual 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 art in this essential particular.

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

Shunsho is considered one of the greatest artists of Japan, both as an inventor and powerful colourist. M. Louis Gonse says: “All the collections of coloured prints which are today the delight of the tea-houses; 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 Shunsho, who had for a time the monopoly of them.” While the Torii artists were beguiling the Yedo populace with theatrical portraiture, and aiding the growing tendency toward cosmopolitanism by issuing printed albums, books of travel and encyclopedias, art was also expanding at the ancient capital, Kyoto. Sukenobu, the prolific artist, was bringing out beautifully illustrated books, and Okio, 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 from the street in which was the studio of the master.

The Popular School, aided by Okio, effected a revolution in the laws of painting at Kyoto, for the Torii artists forsook their academic methods, painting birds, flowers, grass, quadrupeds, insects and fishes from nature. Okio’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, says: “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 Tanyu, the great Kano artist, and the crabs at Enryaku 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 only spoken the truth.

And so with Okio. He breathed into his pictures the breath of life. 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 Okio aright, we should see him at home in his own environment, not in Europe, where so many copies of his masterpieces abound. John La Farge gives us a glimpse of an Okio, 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 center, 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 Okio. 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 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, Koriusai, Shigemasa, founder of Kitao, and Toyoharu of Utagawa, and the masters of Ukiyo-ye, 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 realized 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 Yedo, 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 motive. 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.”

It is the flower of religion, of beauty, and of love. From the ocean the Hindu Aphrodite, Lachsmi, ascended. Isis in Egypt reigned, crowned by the lotus, and there the tender, flowing lines became sublime, monumental, fitted to symbolize death and eternal repose. In Japan its joyous curves represent life, immortality, and, delicately sensuous, they conjure up visions of ideal beauty. The lotus, sweetly blooming before the artist’s eye, expanded into a vision of fair women, whose lissom forms he clothed with swirls of drapery. And the women of Japan, enamoured of these enchanting poses, endeavoured to assume the curves of Kiyonaga, sheathing their delicate limbs in silken draperies, and simulating in their enchanting slenderness the stems of flowers—or, to borrow a beautiful simile from Lafcadio Hearn, “looking like a beautiful silver moth robed in the folding of its own wings.”

It is said that every Japanese actor-print was a potential poster, and, alas! the fashion-plate is endeavouring to mold itself upon the most exaggerated type of the degenerate offspring of the genius of the Torii School.

The Japanese woman, with her untrammelled form arrayed in draperies designed by consummate artists, may dare to follow classic Kiyonaga—youth and grace may acquire oriental plasticity. But let fashion rest there. Pitiful and ludicrously futile is the effort of embonpoint to attain sinuosity. Lines of beauty cannot be manufactured; as well imagine the slender stem of the lotus encircled in steel, its curves determined by a multiplicity of wires and tapes.

Although the leaders of Ukiyo-ye followed so closely in the footsteps of Kiyonaga that his type of face stamps the years from 1780 to 1790, yet his style was too classic, too noble to suit the taste of the Yedo populace, which, in its thirst for realism, had become depraved. Rather than lower his standard he chose to resign, leaving the field to his followers, Yeishi, Utamaro and Toyokuni. These masters, at first as dignified in their method as Kiyonaga, now yielded to the public craze for the exaggerated, the abnormal and grotesque. It was an apotheosis of ugliness and vulgarity, a “Zolaism in prints.”

Coarse pictures of actors, masquerading in female dress, replaced the charming little domestic women of Harunobu and Koriusai,—the ladies of Japan, as we see them in reality,—and the noble figures of Kiyonaga. Gigantic courtesans, bizarre and fantastic, with delirious headgear, took the place of Shunsho’s fair children of the “Underworld,” who, in the modesty of their mien, seemed to belie the calling they so often deplored, as the songs of the Yoshiwara testify, plaintively sung to the syncopated rhythm of the samisen, tinkling through the summer nights.

The school of Ukiyo-ye was sinking into obscurity, when Hiroshige and Hokusai appeared, two children of light, dispersing the gloom: Hiroshige, the versatile painter, lover of landscape and ethereal artist of snow and mist; Hokusai, the prophet, and regenerator of Ukiyo-ye. He was the artisan-artist, in the land which recognizes no inferior arts, and the Mang-wa, consisting of studies as spontaneously thrown off as those in the sketch-book Giorgione carried in his girdle, was published for the use of workmen. Living in simplicity and poverty he gave his life to the people, and the impression of his genius is stamped upon their work. A true handicraftsman was Hokusai,—the Mang-wa a dictionary of the arts and crafts, as well as the inspired vehicle of art. In it “balance, rhythm and harmony, the modes in which Beauty is revealed, both in nature and art,” were manifested,—for he was a vital artist, laying bare the enigma of evolution, and the mystery of creation.