that the suggestion at least may have been derived from Europe. The fact that no traces of it have been discovered in Japan would be easily accounted for, when it is remembered that the examples taken home would almost certainly have been religious pictures, would have been preserved in well-known and accessible places, and would thus have been entirely destroyed in the terrible and minute extermination of Christianity by Hideyoshi at the beginning of the 17th century. Japanese tradition ascribes the invention of colour-printing to Idzumiya Gonshirō, who, about the end of the 17th century, first made use of a second block to apply a tint of red (beni) to his prints. Sir Ernest Satow states more definitely that "Sakakibara attributes its origin to the year 1695, when portraits of the actor Ichikawa Danjiuro, coloured by this process, were sold in the streets of Yedo for five cash apiece." The credit of the invention is also given to Torii Kiyonobu, who worked at about this time, and, indeed, is said to have made the prints above mentioned. But authentic examples of his work now remaining, printed in three colours, seem to show a technique too complete for an origin quite so recent. However, he is the first artist of importance to have produced the broadsheets—for many years chiefly portraits of notable actors, historical characters and famous courtesans—which are the leading and characteristic use to which the art was applied. Pupils, the chief of whom were Kiyomasa, Kiyotsume, Kiyomitsu, Kiyonaga and Kiyomine, carried on his tradition until the end of the 18th century, the three earlier using but few colours, while the works of the two last named show a technical mastery of all the capabilities of the process.
The next artist of importance is Suzuki Harunobu (worked c. 1760–1780), to whom the Japanese sometimes ascribe the invention of the process, probably on the grounds of an improvement in his technique, and the fact that he seems to have been one of the first of the colour-print makers to attain great popularity. Katsukawa Shunshō (d. 1792) must next be mentioned, not only for the beauty of his own work, but because he was the first master of Hokusai; then Yeishi (worked c. 1781–1800), the founder of the Hosoda school; Utamaro (1754–1806), whose prints of beautiful women were collected by Dutchmen while he was still alive, and have had in our own day a vogue greater, perhaps, than those of any other of his fellows; and Toyokuni I. (1768–1825), who especially devoted himself to broadsheet portraits of actors and dramatic scenes. The greatest of all the artists of the popular school was, however, Hokusai (1760–1849). His most famous series of broadsheets is the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1823–1829), which, in spite of the conventional title, includes at least forty-six. His work is catalogued in detail by E. de Goncourt. At the beginning of the 19th century the process was technically at its greatest height, and in the hands of the great landscape artist, Hiroshige I., as well as the pupils of Toyokuni I.—Kunisada and Kuniyoshi—and those of Hokusai, it at first kept up an excellent level. But an undue increase in the number of blocks used, combined with the inferiority of the imported colours and carelessness or loss of skill in printing, brought about a rapid decline soon after 1840. This continued until the old traditions were well-nigh exhausted, but since 1880 there has been a distinct revival. The prints of the present day are cut with great skill, and the designs are excellent, though both these branches seem to lack the vigour of conception and breadth of execution of the older masters. The colours now used are almost invariably of cheap German origin, and though they have a certain prettiness—ephemeral, it is to be feared—they again can not compare with the old native productions. Among workers in this style, Yoshitoshi (d. c. 1898) was perhaps the best. Living artists in 1908 included Toshihide, Miyagawa Shuntei, Yoshiu Chikanobu—one of the elder generation—Tomisuka Yeishu, Toshikata and Gekko. Formerly the colour-print artist was of mean extraction and low social position, but he now has some recognition at the hands of the professors of more esteemed branches of art. This change is doubtless due in part to Occidental appreciation of the products of his art, which were formerly held in little honour by his own countrymen, the place assigned to them being scarcely higher than that accorded to magazine illustrations in Europe and America. But it is also largely due to his displays of unsurpassed skill in preparing xylographs for the beautiful art publications issued by the Shimbi Shōin and the Kokka company. These xylographs prove that the Japanese art-artisan of the present day was not surpassed by the greatest of his predecessors in this line. (E. F. S.; F. By.)
The history of the illustrated book in Japan may be said to begin with the Ise monogatari, a romance first published in the 10th century, of which an edition adorned with woodcuts appeared in 1608. In the course of the 17th century many other works of the same nature were issued, including some in which Book Illustration.the cuts were roughly coloured by hand; but the execution of these is not as good as contemporary European work. The date of the first use of colour-printing in Japanese book illustration is uncertain. In 1667 a collection of designs for kimono (garments) appeared, in which inks of several colours were made use of; but these were only employed in turn for single printings, and in no case were two of them used on the same print. It is certain, however, that the mere use of coloured inks must soon have suggested the combination of two or more of them, and it is probable that examples of this will be discovered much earlier in date than those known at present.
About the year 1680 Hishigawa Moronobu achieved a great popularity for woodcut illustration, and laid the foundations of the splendid school which followed. The names of the engravers who cut his designs are not known, and in fact the reputation of these craftsmen is curiously subordinated to that of the designers in all Japanese work of the kind. With Moronobu must be associated Okumura Masanobu, a little later perhaps in date, whose work is also of considerable value. During the ensuing thirty years numerous illustrated books appeared, including the earliest yet known which are illustrated by colour-printing. Nishikawa Sukenobu (1671–1751) illustrated a very large number of books, many of which were not published until after his death. With him may be associated Ichiō Shumboku (d. c. 1773) and Tsukioka Tange (1717–1786), the latter of whom made the drawings for many of the meishō or guide-books which form so interesting and distinctive a branch of Japanese illustration. The work of Tachibana Morikuni (1670–1748) is also of great importance. The books illustrated by the men of this school were mainly collections of useful information, guide-books, romances and historical and religious compilations; but much of the best of their work is to be found in the collections of pictorial designs, very often taken from Chinese sources, which were produced for the use of workers in lacquer, pottery and similar crafts. These, both for design and for skill of cutting, hold their own with the best work of European wood-cutting of any period. The development of the art of Japanese colour-printing naturally had its effect on book-illustration, and the later years of the 18th and the earlier of the 19th century saw a vast increase of books illustrated by this process. The subjects also now include a new series of landscapes and views drawn as seen by the designers, and not reproductions of the work of other men; and also sketches of scenes and characters of everyday life and of the folk-lore in which Japan is so rich. Among the artists of this period, as of all others in Japan, Hokusai (1760–1849) is absolutely pre-eminent. His greatest production in book-illustration was the Mangwa, a collection of sketches which cover the whole ground of Japanese life and legend, art and handicraft. It consists of fifteen volumes, which appeared at intervals from 1812 to 1875, twelve being published during his life and the others from material left by him. Among his many other works may be mentioned the Azuma Asobi (Walks round Yedo, 1799). Of his pupils, Hokkei (1780–1856) and Kyōsai were the greatest. Most of the artists, whose main work was the designing of broadsheets, produced elaborately illustrated books; and this series includes specimens of printing in colours from wood-blocks, which for technique have never been excelled. Among them should be mentioned Shunshō (Seirō bijin awase kagami, 1776); Utamaro (Seirō nenjyū gyoji, 1804); Toyokuni I. (Yakusha kono teikishiwa, 1801); as well as Harunobu Yeishi (Onna sanjyu rokkasen, 1798), Kitao Masanobu and Tachibana Minko, each of whom produced beautiful work of the same nature. In the period next following, the chief artists were Keisai Yeisen (Keisai so-gwa, 1832) and Kikuchi Yōsai (Zenken kojitsu), the latter of whom ranks perhaps as highly as any of the artists who confined their work to black and white. The books produced in the period 1880–1908 in Japan are still of high technical excellence. The colours are, unfortunately, of cheap European manufacture; and the design, although quite characteristic and often beautiful, is as a rule merely pretty. The engraving is as good as ever. Among the book-illustrators of our own generation must be again mentioned Kyōsai; Kōno Bairei (d. 1895), whose books of birds—the Bairei hyakucho gwafu (1881 and 1884) and Yūaka-no-tsuki (1889)—are unequalled of their kind; Imao Keinen, who also issued a beautiful set of illustrations of birds and flowers (Keinen kwachō gwafu), engraved by Tanaka Jirokichi and printed by Miki Nisaburō (1891–1892); and Watanabe Seitei, whose studies of similar subjects have appeared in Seitei kwachō gwafu (1890–1891) and the Bijutsu sekai (1894), engraved by Gotō Tokujirō. Mention should also be made of several charming series of fairy tales, of which that published in English by the Kobunsha in Tōkyō in 1885 is perhaps the best. In their adaptation of modern processes of illustration the Japanese are entirely abreast of Western nations, the chromo-lithographs and other reproductions in the Kokka, a periodical record of Japanese works of art (begun in 1889), in the superb albums of the Shimbi Shōin, and in the publications of Ogawa being of quite a high order of merit. (E. F. S.; F. By.)
Sculpture and Carving.—Sculpture in wood and metal is of
