Shigemasa.
KITAO SHIGEMASA.
Kitao Shigemasa may be called the great chameleon of the Ukioye School: a discriminating chameleon, who chose only the greatest artists of each decade from whom to take his changing hue. As M. Raymond Koechlin expresses it, "it was his destiny to reflect in his art the art of the most original of his contemporaries." Born about 1740, he lived until 1819. His teacher was Shigenaga; this master died not long after Shigemasa commenced work with him. Thus Shigemasa began painting early enough to be influenced by the last of the Primitives; and his first prints, dating from about 1764, are graceful three-colour renderings of actor-themes in the manner of Kiyomitsu, and more brutal ones in the manner of Kiyomasu. With the rise of Harunobu and the perfection of polychrome printing, Shigemasa turned to that style; later he followed Koriusai, in whose manner he produced some wonderfully beautiful large sheets of women and some fine pillar-prints. Still later he followed the style of Shunsho. Together with this artist he produced in 1786 a set of ten small sheets representing the various stages of sericulture, in which he surpasses his collaborator. The same two artists had earlier collaborated, in 1776, to produce the famous illustrated book "Mirror of the Beauties of the Green Houses." These illustrations are not signed; but comparing them with Shigemasa's portion of the sericulture series, which are signed separately by the two artists, we may well believe that a large part of the peculiar grace of the "Green Houses" is Shigemasa's and not Shunsho's contribution. With Shunsho and Toyoharu, he collaborated in a series of designs for the twelve months, of which I have already spoken under Toyoharu. Like so many other artists of this period, Shigemasa gradually withdrew from work in the eighties before the blaze of Kiyonaga's glory. Kiyonaga himself was perhaps influenced by the older artist.
Shigemasa's draughtsmanship is the one quality that marks him through all his changes; from first to last, it is superb. With a fine firmness and ease he produces, as in [Plate 18], designs in which restraint combines with great expressiveness. His faces have repose and distinction; his draperies are drawn with notable simplicity and dignity; his cool and quiet colour is admirable. Through all his styles runs a fastidious delicacy of feeling, and what Fenollosa terms "an even mastery." He never attempted the impossible or strained towards the unattainable; all his work has the stamp of a calmly working, reserved, confident artist. The deliberate, flawless craftsmanship of his works places him beside the greatest.
Considering the length of his career, he produced surprisingly little work; important prints by him are now rarer than those of any other artist of this period. His pillar-prints, which are particularly fine, have been for many years proverbially few. As a rule only his earlier prints are signed. His surimono are, however, generally signed with the brush-name Kosuisai. Sheets from his numerous books are often mounted as separate prints. Collectors differ in their opinions as to whether it is advisable thus to take to pieces the sheets of a bound volume, such as the "Green Houses." Any such act, in dealing with art treasures, should be approached only after careful consideration; but it seems in this case a desirable method of preserving and exhibiting what are, after all, wholly separate pictures.
V
THE THIRD
PERIOD:
KIYONAGA
AND HIS
FOLLOWERS
FROM THE
MATURITY OF KIYONAGA
TO HIS RETIREMENT
(1780-1790)
CHAPTER V
THE THIRD PERIOD: KIYONAGA AND HIS FOLLOWERS
From the Maturity of Kiyonaga to his Retirement (1780-1790).
With the fully developed and complex technique which had been brought to perfection by the time of Harunobu's death, the colour-print took on a new richness of expression and reached its culmination in the Third Period.
Generalizations attempting to define the difference between the work of this and the preceding periods are perilous; but we shall perhaps not be venturing too dangerously if we summarize the change of attitude as a step toward naturalism combined with a deepening of ideal significance.
In the period of the Primitives the artistic impulse was almost wholly one of decoration—an attempt to express in line and colour the great themes of design that stirred within the brain of the artist. The Primitives were inspired by what Von Seidlitz calls the desire of "presenting single characteristic motives of movement." Their creations had no relation to observed fact or to an exact rendering of Nature; they were the shadows of lofty dreams of form projected by the luminous spirit of the artist against the wall of space.
The designs of the Second Period, though hardly more realistic than those of the First, were nevertheless nearer life. The delights and passions of real men, even though fancifully regarded, coloured the conception of the artist as he approached his work; so that we find in Harunobu the exquisite joys, in Shunsho the terrific revolts, and in Buncho the super-sensible longings of the heart. Yet it is all symbolistic, all fictional, and nothing real is portrayed; the sharply limited world of these prints is a world of imagination from which no paths of communication open to regions of everyday. The perception of these artists did not enter into and interpret the seen earth; absorbed in the creation of a personal dream, it imposed its arbitrary categories upon objects from without, and had little respect for their intrinsic beauty. With magic incantations, the designer shattered the forms of the real world to bits and whimsically remoulded them nearer to the heart's desire. This attitude—a mixture of adolescence, playfulness, and vision—may be described by the phrase "naïvely imaginative."
The decorative impulse of the Primitives and the naïvely imaginative impulse of the Early Polychrome masters changed in the Third Period to a different variety of inspiration—the naturalistic and interpretive. By naturalistic and interpretive, I mean the attempt to seize a number of detached elements of observed life and weave them into a design that reports not only the idiosyncrasies of the artist, but also some sense of the deep nature of the elements themselves. The artists of this period, while mastering the decorative impulse of the Primitives and the imaginative freedom of the Early Polychrome masters, found reality more interesting and more worthy of faithful attention than did their predecessors. Buncho flew off at a tangent to life on the wings of geometrical design, but Shuncho lingers observant among beautiful women in quiet gardens: Harunobu abandoned the real world for his harmonious dreams of colour, but Kiyonaga weaves into harmonies the perfect forms which his creative imagination evokes from the imperfect forms of actual men.
The earlier artists had hinted at landscape backgrounds; this period was the first to go farther and relate the landscape pictorially and spacially to the figures. The world of these designs is no longer the world of a lovely but private dream; we seem to enter a region as wide and free as life itself, inhabited by groups of superb and gracious figures that are as unforgettable as the Greek gods.
This period may be regarded as one of those few moments of equilibrium in the history of art when the spiritual dominance of the artist and the claims of real fact meet in a perfect balance. Toward one extreme lies fancifulness; toward the other extreme, realism; and in the centre, this narrow isle of quiet where the two forces join in harmony. Since man lives neither by bread alone nor by dreams alone, the moments when he reconciles the claims of his visions with the facts he must face are the high peaks in his history. Mind and matter, hope and experience, longing and limitation, for an instant combine in a reconciliation that interprets and ennobles his environment. This is art's maturity, its fine and perfect flower.
All these things are implicit in the prints of Kiyonaga prime. He who can take pleasure in the Hermes of Praxiteles or the Fête Champêtre of Giorgione will not find the meaning of Kiyonaga's noble figures hard to read.
In examining the work of Kiyonaga and his contemporaries, it will be impossible to ignore the fact that during this and the succeeding period the foremost artists found the chief themes for their designs among the Oiran, or courtesans of the Yoshiwara. Nor can we omit some consideration of the curious position of these women. Such an inquiry has not the unpleasant features that a similar inquiry would have were the scene Europe. In the Japan of the late eighteenth century the typical Oiran was no creature of the mire, but a cultivated and splendid figure whose mental charm was as great as her physical attractiveness. The poet and the painter, the student and the young aristocrat, found in her no unworthy companion; and as she strides glowing through the designs of Kiyonaga or Shuncho she seems rather a beloved of the gods than a mistress of men.
KIYONAGA: THE COURTESAN HANA-ŌJI WITH ATTENDANTS.
One of a Series "Designs of Spring Greenery." Size 15 × 10. Signed Kiyonaga ga.
Plate 25.
The Yoshiwara or licensed quarter of Yedo was established in 1614 as part of the general Tokugawa regime of orderliness and control: even by that date the authorities had tired of the cruel and ugly chaos that prevails in these matters to-day in our cities. The name of the quarter was derived from the fact that it was located in the midst of an ancient "yoshiwara" or rush-moor. In 1657, after a fire that demolished all the buildings, the quarter was moved to a site half a mile north of the great Asakusa temple in the north-east outskirts of the city, where it remains to this day. Within this moated and walled enclosure about a quarter of a mile square, to which access was obtained through one great gate, stood orderly rows of large houses crowded close together. The front of each house was latticed; behind the bars appeared the splendidly clad inmates. These were of many grades and ranks; it is, as a rule, the highest class only that are represented in the prints.
The high-class Oiran was a notable personage. Her state was like that of a princess. Attendant upon her were customarily two small girls, called Kamuro, who acted as lady's-maids; and one or two older girls, called Shinzo, whose duties were those of a kind of maid-of-honour. Her attire, of a gorgeousness wholly different from the costume of the ordinary woman, bedecks her in many of the prints with truly royal splendour. Poets sang of her; artists painted her; the common people talked of her with the same frank and admiring interest that our populace bestows upon theatrical favourites. Moralless though her life was, it was not in any external sense degraded; she stood in the position in which have stood all the great courtesans of history.
The names of the more famous among the Oiran have come down to us wrapped in glowing tradition. Hana-ōgi of the House of Ōgi-ya, the most beautiful and deeply loved courtesan of her time, moves immortal through the designs of Kiyonaga, Shuncho, Yeishi, Utamaro, and their contemporaries. She was a pupil of the poet Tōkō Genrin, and ranked as a distinguished artist in both Chinese and Japanese verse. At one time, obeying the dictates of a profound attachment, she dared all perils and fled from the Yoshiwara with her lover. These facts, together with the filial piety for which she was renowned, doubtless augmented her romantic fame. Of her beauty and lordly carriage the prints leave us no doubt. Again and again we find lavished upon her well-beloved figure all the resources of the greatest artists. In [Plate 25] she is the leading figure, with her attendants grouped around her; in [Plate 32] she stands beside a latticed window opening on to the Sumida River, alone and meditative.
It is necessary for any one who would understand the art of the period to put aside preconceived notions and realize that these courtesan-portraits are not representations of low gutter creatures, but that they portray women of the highest degree of intellectual refinement who were in real life much like the cultivated hetairæ of ancient Athens, the companions, friends, and beloveds of Pericles and Plato.
KIYONAGA: LADY WITH TWO ATTENDANTS.
One of a Series "Brocades of the East." Size 15 × 10. Signed Kiyonaga ga. Gookin Collection.
Plate 26.
And as one examines the few records which Japanese writers have given to the Western world, the conviction grows ever stronger that at this time, when the free and romantic love of men and women was a thing alien to the businesslike Japanese marriage system, the one region where love as we understand it might flourish—the one region where might arise those desperate attachments of heart for heart which we regard as heroic—was the isolated enclosure of the Yoshiwara. There no shrewd parents arranged the unwilling, blind match; there the hampered spirits of that day found freedom, however perilous; and there alone men and women, though surrounded by an atmosphere of sordid corruption, faced death as did the Tristram and Iseult of our legends, in the service of a passion more precious than life itself.... For the Oiran could turn lover.