Japanese Colour-Prints and Their Designers

HARUNOBU. Lovers walking in Snow.
Japanese Colour-Prints and Their Designers A Lecture Delivered Before the Japan Society of New York on April 19, 1911
By Frederick William Gookin


In the annals of art production the colour-prints designed by the master artists of the Ukiyoé school occupy a unique place. They represent a plebeian art which was not a spontaneous upgrowth from the soil, but, so to speak, a down-growth or offshoot from an old and highly developed art of aristocratic lineage.
This elder art had its fountain-head in ancient China. That country, during the Tang and the Sung dynasties (618-905, 960-1280), was the seat of an aesthetic movement during which painting and other arts reached an extraordinarily high development. To the works produced during this great flowering-time of art the Japanese painters of the classical schools turned for inspiration and enlightenment. These works were distinguished by singleness of purpose, rhythmic vitality, and synthetic coherence, and by a clear conception of the essential that goes far beyond anything elsewhere attained, and which, when fully apprehended, must inevitably force a revision of Western ideas and criteria.
The art of ancient China and of the earlier Japanese schools is an art refined, poetic, and intensive to the last degree. It is based upon profound understanding of aesthetic laws. The artists were carefully grounded in the fundamental principles that govern all art, whether Oriental or Occidental. The result of this training is apparent in the homogeneity of their works. In Europe very confused notions have prevailed as to what should be done and what is permissible in art. Not even the great artists have always seen clearly; had they done so, it cannot be doubted that Western achievement would have attained a much higher level than it has ever reached.
MORONOBU. Nobleman and two Ladies at Seashore.
The social fabric in old Japan was one of sharp distinctions. At the upper end of the scale were the Emperor; the kuge, or court nobles; the daimyo, or lords of the two hundred and fifty-one provinces; and the samurai, or hereditary military men, from whom were recruited the officials, priests, and scholars. Between these and the lower classes was an almost immeasurable gulf. Highest among the heimen, or commoners, were the farmers. Below them were the artisans, and still lower were the merchants, innkeepers, servants, and the like; while lowest of all were the eta, or outcasts, a class comprising scavengers, butchers, leather-workers, and others engaged in what were considered degrading occupations.