Chats on Japanese Prints

by Arthur Davison Ficke

Shunsho.

Portrait of an Actor in Tragic Rôle.

His soul is a sword;
His sword with the spirit's breath
Is bathed of its terrible lord,
In whose eyes is death.

And the massive control,
And the lighted implacable eye
Leash a fierce and exalted soul
Of dark destiny.

. . . . . .

With the strength of the hills—
Kiso's iron mountains of snow—
He waits: time brings and fulfills
The hour for the blow.

He waits; and the white
Full robes round his shoulders sway,
With woof of pale orange alight,
Pale green, pale grey.

Like a falcon, flown
To bleak mid-regions of sky,
He poises. One image alone
Holds his sinister eye—

A vision, a prey
Towards which he shall soon be hurled—
And his fury shall darken the day,
And his joy, the world.

. . . . . .

A music enfolds him
Like the thunders that are poured
Across heaven; it holds him
With the song of the sword.

It enthrals, it inspires,
And its zenith shall be
Lightning of unleashed desires
Crashing along the sea.

SHUNSHO: AN ACTOR OF THE ISHIKAWA SCHOOL IN TRAGIC RÔLE.
Size 12 × 6. Signed Shunsho ga.

Plate 19.

Those actor-types which Harunobu and his school so scornfully cast aside became the chosen speciality of the greatest of his rivals and contemporaries, Katsukawa Shunsho. As one examines sheet after sheet of Shunsho's theatrical prints, Harunobu's contemptuous words concerning "this vulgar herd," the actors, lose their significance; for here pass in gorgeous procession a series of lofty, intense, and unforgettable figures charged with the quintessence of heroic force.

KATSUKAWA SHUNSHO.

The designer of these prints was born in 1726 and died about 1792—some authorities say 1790. His period of greatest activity covered the years 1765 to 1780, thus including the working periods of both Harunobu and Koriusai, and ending as Koriusai's did when in the eighties Kiyonaga's star rose blindingly. He lived for a while at the house of his publisher, Hayashi; sometimes in his early work he used in place of a signature a seal shaped like a small covered jar with handles, on which Hayashi's name is inscribed. The legend is that he was too poor to own a seal in the early days of his struggle and so borrowed that of his landlord!

Shunsho had no antecedent teachers among the print-designers. He sprang instead from a school of painters who did not design for prints. These, headed by Choshun and his son Katsukawa Shunsui, had since 1700 been producing rich paintings of women in elaborate drapery. The Buckingham Collection contains one print by Shunsui, but it is an almost unique rarity. Shunsho, by a curious shift in the stream of art history, not only took up prints, but even took up the department of prints least in line with the tendencies of his own school, the department of actor-representation, which was the speciality of Kiyomitsu and the old Torii School, and which Harunobu's popular innovations had almost driven out of fashion. To this work Shunsho brought the new technique of Harunobu and great native individuality; and with the fresh armament of full colour he defended magnificently the threatened stronghold of actor-prints. His popularity became enormous. He grew quickly to the stature of one of the great and far-reaching powers in Ukioye history. Side by side with Harunobu, he in his separate field executed year by year actor-portraits which by their vigour of line and brilliancy of colour-combination take a place as high as that held by the works of his rival.

No contrast could be more striking than that between them. The one is all grace, the other all force; the one loves to linger in quiet gardens, the other drags us up to the icy heights of tragic crisis. Shunsho's sense of dramatic composition was keen; and, as we see in [Plate 19], his ferocious actor-faces peer out with a vivid menace, his tense actor-limbs shake with a concentrated and imprisoned fury not the less impressive because of its intentional exaggeration. They have not Harunobu's unreality of perfect grace, but the utterly different super-reality of magnified passion. In repose they are like statues; in action they have the vigour of those natural forces—waves, river currents, storms of thunder—which, as in the Shunsho print reproduced on the cover of this volume,[Transcriber's Note: The edition used to produce this etext did not include this print on the cover.] so often form their backgrounds.

SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA MATSUYE AS A WOMAN IN WHITE.
Size 11 × 5½. Unsigned.

Plate 20.

Shunsho's figures of women—or rather his figures of men acting the parts of women, according to the invariable custom of the Japanese stage at this time—are less violent, but often as tense. Two of these appear in Plates [20] and [21]. In long sweeping robes of brilliant dye they move with the step of a Clytemnestra, or poise in strange attitudes of arrested motion not unworthy of an Antigone. All his figures are dynamic—the storehouses of volcanic forces whose existence he suggests by restless line-conflicts.

Shunsho's predecessors in actor representation had never equalled the intensity of these figures and faces. Shunsho tears the heart out of a rôle and holds it up for us to see. He gives the passion of the actor such expression as would have been impossible to Kiyonobu, twisting the face into a distorted and grandiose mask beside which the faces of the Primitives seem wooden and meaningless.

The spectator whose æsthetic sense embraces only a love of tranquillity will find no beauty in these disturbing faces and forms—unless perhaps the beauty of pure colour is enough to beguile him. It may well do this; few things have power to bring a richer sense of æsthetic satisfaction than a succession of fine Shunshos, in each one of which a new colour-arrangement unfolds new harmonies.

Shunsho's work includes a very great number of actor-prints in the narrow upright hoso-ye form and a few large square prints. He also issued a series of small illustrations for the "Ise Monogatari," an old romantic chronicle which furnished many favourite subjects to the artists. These are quiet in design and soft in colour; to them the eye may turn for rest if wearied by the straining actors. In collaboration with Shigemasa he produced a set of ten small prints representing sericulture, which have considerable charm. In 1776 the same pair of artists brought out a series of book-illustrations called "Mirror of the Beauties of the Green Houses," representing groups of courtesans occupied with the various activities of daily life—in the street, the house, the garden, and the temple. This book has been called the most beautiful ever produced in Japan; when one examines its chief rival, "The Mirror of the Beautiful Women of the Yoshiwara," by Kitao Masanobu, one need have no hesitancy in giving Shunsho's and Shigemasa's the first place. This means, very probably, the first place among the illustrated books of the world. Its pages, printed in rose, purple, brown, yellow, and grey, are rich and delicate. Sheets from all these books are often found mounted as separate prints. Shunsho's few known pillar-prints are generally magnificent.

SHUNSHO: THE ACTOR NAKAMURA NOSHIO IN FEMALE RÔLE.
Size 12½ × 6. Signed Shunsho ga. Gookin Collection.

Plate 21.

Because of his enormous productiveness, Shunsho's work in hoso-ye form is common, frequently in fine condition. Most of the hoso-ye prints were originally issued in joined groups of three; the groups are seldom found intact now. The grace of his women has made them more generally popular than his impressive men, and they are consequently harder to obtain. It must be noted that Shunsho's work is uneven, and that the majority of the pieces offered are either tame and uninteresting examples of pot-boiling or caricatures that lack the intensity which lifts certain of the artist's most grotesque figures to tragic heights. The matchless Shunsho collection of Mr. Frederick W. Gookin is full of such prints as rarely come into the market to-day. Occasionally the more distinguished ones are met with; and they are treasures which the practised collector eagerly seizes. Fortunately print dealers are not, as a rule, conscious of the greatness of the difference, and they will frequently offer side by side a print that is merely one of Shunsho's commonest pieces of hack-work and a print that is one of the glories of the Ukioye School. On such occasions the collector has the pleasure of profiting by his own discrimination.

Shunsho's large square prints and pillar-prints are of extreme rarity.