UNESCO travelling exhibition: Japanese woodcuts

But colour printing was not employed until the next century a n d was no t b u t the actors i n their formal style o f make-up a n d their expressive playing fully developed until abou t 1764. By t h a t time a body o f woodcutters i n o f melodrama provided perfect themes for this expressive a r t o f the knife. To Yedo, the new seat o f government, h a d found enough support to finance understand the position o f the Yoshiwara some knowledge o f the social system a specialized a n d highly skilled craft. Gr e a t attention h a d been pa i d to the o f Yedo is needed. All respectable wives were strictly secluded a n d only left paper, which required to b e strong, smooth a n d sufficiently absorbent for their homes for r a r e sorties i n closed palanquins to a local shrine o r to visit a printing. T h e cutter h a d perfected a system o f rendering the brush strokes n e a r relation. Th e y h a d otherwise no social life outside their family and o f the Eastern painting in wood; cutting differently the inner a n d the outer household. A t the same time, the town was full o f Samurai who, being with- edge o f the ink line. Wi t h his help the printer h a d devised a marking system ou t employment i n a time o f rising prices, found their position almost insup- to ensure perfection o f the register so t h a t five printings, a n d later eight, portable. Th e y a n d t he rich merchants could enjoy the society o f accom could be superimposed in the production o f a print. H e h a d produced a plished a n d gracious women only in the Yoshiwara, whose inmates were palette o f seven pu r e pigments three earth reds, two vegetable blues, a n d carefully trained from childhood i n polite attainments—music, conversation, two yellows, which i n combination b y overprinting gave a fine range o f flat calligraphy a n d parlour games. Th e y were, too, magnificently a n d taste- colours. H e h a d also learned to emboss the pa pe r with a blind design from fully dressed. He r e me n sought relaxation, a n d here artists found the finest a n un-inked block, with beautiful effect in the rendering o f white dress patterns, models for their print designs. T h e costumes o f t he rujo, o r courtesans of o f snow o r o f water. H e h a d also a t his c omma nd more t h a n one shade o f gold t h e Yoshiwara, were p a i d for b y t he rich merchants, a n d they vied with one a n d a special lacquer black which was applied directly. Such technical another especially i n t he processions held a t t he seasonal festivals. developments could only have been built o n the basis o f the traditional Such were the themes o f the Ukiyo-e print designers until the end o f the craftsmanship o f the Japanese, transmitted b y apprenticeship, a n d b y the eighteenth century, their prints recorded the fame o f the hour, the popular national gift for design a n d feeling for quality in workmanship. I n the last favourite on the stage, i n the Yoshiwara o r among the tea-house waitresses. quarter o f the eighteenth century technical development a n d craftsmanship Th e y h a d quickly to b e p u t o n sale to find a ready market among their reached their highest point, when, it is said, as ma n y as 18 printings might admirers o f the city o r visitors from the country. But t he whole tradition of be used in the production o f a colour print, a n d when the use o f minerals, t he East was against realistic portraiture, a n d wh a t we see i n the prints is the gold, silver a n d mica was added to the scope o f the printer's art. seizure o f a characteristic gesture, the portrayal o f a special feature o f face or Little need b e said here abou t the subject-matter o f the Japanese woodcut; carriage. T h e conventions o f the time ma d e it natural to provide a setting in it c an b e seen i n its variety in the series exhibited. But it should b e explained a famous episode o f d r ama , a familiar theme o f mythology o r classic literature, t ha t they are all the work o f a school o f painting which arose in the seventeenth which could b e illustrated i n up-to-date analogy b y a young girl o r a popular century, known as the Ukiyo-e school. T h e word means the Passing World, actor. T h e prints are thus packed with allusions a n d echoes, witty, contem with all the connotations o f t h a t term—terrestrial, fleeting, contemporary, porary, b u t these features a r e only adornments to t he expression o f the more fashionable, every-day, popular. As such, it was in revolt against the limi- permanent subject—jealousy, yearning, filial piety, heroism, romantic love. tations o f the traditional schools o f painting i n J a p a n , which h a d served the Although the deep love in J a p a n for the natural world, especially in such Buddhist monasteries, the great lords, a n d now the new military dictators forms as cherry-blossom, a moonlit landscape o r t h e purity o f snow (a tra who h a d achieved power late in the sixteenth century. T h e native school ditional trilogy), is appa r en t from the beginning o f t he school, a n d informs o f narrative painting practised by t he Tosa school h a d long been in decline, innumerable prints o f all periods, it is no t until the last quarter o f its history while the idealistic landscapes inspired by the a r t o f China h a d lost the strength t h a t it finds expression in pu r e landscape. T h e two leading masters, Hokusai o f brush-work a n d their immediacy o f conception a n d h a d sunk into academic a n d Hiroshige, have never been esteemed i n J a p a n as t he equals o f the formalism. On l y t he great decorative schools still flourished i n the early eighteenth-century masters Harunobu, Kiyonaga o r Utamaro. Th e y chose Tokugawa period. This was a n a r t o f t he castle rather t h a n o f the town, a field in which they h a d t o compete directly with the greatest masters of a n d although it sometimes treated popular festivals a n d dances, these themes t he older schools, a n d their designs, however striking a n d daring, are trivial were handled i n a n aristocratic spirit as spectacles, a n d without touching the a n d superficial beside t he inkwash kakemono o r the orchestrated makimono new interests o f the townsmen. I n origin the new school thus me a n t a dif- scroll. Yet both artists profited from the great tradition o f landscape painting ference o f theme r a t he r t h a n a revolution i n style. Moronobu called himself in J a p a n , Hokusai from t he Chinese school; Hiroshige from the more natu- a Yamato, o r national painter. Ukiyo-e-shi was only a nickname. Indeed, ralistic Shijo school. h e owed a good deal stylistically to the two classic schools o f Tosa a n d Kano, I t was these landscapes which first brought to t h e West some knowledge i n his landscapes as well as in the inise-en-page. o f F a r Eastern pictorial design. I n the Paris o f t he 186o's painters were F r om the first, t he life o f Yedo a n d its surroundings provided sufficient fascinated by the quality o f design, the flat unshaded colour a n d the economy subjects for the Ukiyo-e school. I t came into being to meet the d ema n d o f means. As the work o f the Japanese woodcut school became better known o f the new bourgeoisie, a n d it closely reflected their cultural interests, which there was increasing delight i n the felicities o f their invention in composing centred r ound two institutions, the theatre a n d the Yoshiwara. I n the late endlessly new designs. But wh a t fundamentally interested the Impressionist seventeenth century two forms o f d r ama were finding their full development, painters was the use ma d e o f pictorial space. T h e use o f the whole o f it and the puppe t stage, for which Chikamatsu was writing his masterpieces, a n d t he positive p a r t played b y the design o f t he space left empty were o f special t he Kabuk i stage, o n which a long succession o f fine actors was just beginning. interest to artists seeking a n ew vision. But these characteristics the Ukiyo-e T h e puppets do no t lend themselves to interesting pictorial representation, print designers held i n common with all Eastern painters. Their gay a n d clear 9