The stream of art history here flowed in two main channels. One was the Katsukawa School, headed by Shunsho, which like the older Torii School devoted itself chiefly to the representation of actors. The other was the school of Harunobu, whose gracious designs of women were the most novel productions of the period. A third school was founded by Toyoharu and a fourth by Shigemasa; but the real importance of these two schools developed only in a later epoch. During this period the great Torii School may be said to have remained dormant; it was to awaken in the Third Period to a new splendour in Kiyonaga.
There is a passage from a contemporary record that throws light on the temper of the people and the artists at this time. I have freely translated it, with the courteous permission of Dr. Julius Kurth (Kurth's "Harunobu," R. Piper & Co., Munich), from his German rendering of a unique manuscript book in his possession, which appears to have been written by the poet Yukura Sanjin, and illustrated by Harunobu in 1769. The book is a whimsical, devil-may-care production of the lightest sort; but from its pages the glitter and surge and laughter of Yedo holiday life rise with a far-away yet curiously distinct echo.
An Extract from "The Story of the Honey-Sweetmeat Vendor, Dohei."
"Dohei hails from Oshu. Upon his head he wears a cap; and his mouth sends up a song when in the Capital of the East he vends his honey-sweetmeats. His cape is of tiger-skin, and bears a suspicious resemblance to the loin-apron of the Devil. His umbrella is of scarlet crêpe, and recalls the plumed spears of the festival-guards. As his coat of arms he chose a Devil's head and a skeleton; upon his outer robe he wrote the sign, 'Dohei, Dohei.' While you buy his honey-sweetmeats, he sings a song of a new style, and ends it with the refrain, 'Dohei, Dohei!' Therefore the name of Dohei has become known everywhere. Even the smallest children all sing this song in chorus over and over a thousand times. If he sells his honey-sweetmeats in the Eastern part of the city, the people in the Western streets are furious; if he sells them in the Southern quarter, the people in the Northern streets are furious. For then they want to know why he came to them so late.
"If on the three hundred and sixty days of the year one goes, day in and day out, through all the eight hundred and eight streets, one finds a tavern at every five paces; and it is as if this city had been changed into a pond of rice-wine. One cannot take ten steps without coming upon a shop in which whole mountains of rice-cakes and other confections are offered. If one hears in the distance an almost heavenly music, it is the song of a lady to the strum of a guitar. If there is a rattling like peals of thunder, it is the ox-carts on the side streets. People with coiffures shaped like the leaf of the ginko-tree roll up their outer robes and jostle shoulder to shoulder. Ladies with girdles of spun gold and long-sleeved girlish dresses sway their hips; and their garments, coloured like the graining of wood, flow as do torrents of Spring. Their hats of green paper resemble a clump of trees in Summer. And as they wander along, the hems of their robes flutter open, and the blood-red silk linings gleam like maple foliage—though it is not yet Autumn! The festive white material of their inner robes shines like snow—though it is not yet Winter! If it were, they would be muffled to their very noses with crêpe veils. They have arranged their hair as if surmounted by a cap, like tiers of little chrysanthemums. At their thighs sparkle tobacco-wallets ornamented with silver and gold.
"The black-and-white prints of earlier days are antiquated now, and the only thing people care for is the newly-devised gorgeousness of the Eastern Brocade Pictures. Musical plays are no longer to be seen; instead, you go to the music-girls and the dancing-girls in the taverns. The young people want lively entertainment, and visit the wine-shops. Out of a vase in which, according to the ancient custom, flowers were formerly placed, lots are now drawn to fix upon the day for a party; while according to the fashionable arrangement of flowers in the hanging jars, the flowers look like arrows from a bow. The vendors of fritters call out, 'Celebrated Pasties! Celebrated Pasties!' and boast upon the brilliant paper signs of the just-opened booths, 'Headquarters! Headquarters!' Handkerchiefs at four coppers apiece hang at the loins of the servants of Samurais. The song of the New Year's dancers rings out among people who hitherto had sung only folk-songs. The caligraphist studies the Nagao style; the poet learns by heart the poems of the Chinese epoch, and the minstrel the style of the Manyo anthology. To obtain new remedies for his stock the doctor draws upon the old school for all kinds of herbs, and cures eyes and noses with them—just as pumpkins are perfected into melons. Often the priest of Buddha wanders, an object of derision, through the streets in the darkness of night in search of a girl. To be sure, he is a very learned man; but what leads more easily to dangerous labyrinths than love?
"The theatres in the Sakai Street give performances continuously. The reconstruction of the Yoshiwara is to be finished in a few days, and people come and go there only to drink and to sing. They draw water from the floods of the Sumida River, but it will not be drained dry! They view again and again the flowers of the Asuka River, but these also are without end! The Shenshuraku Theatre enlivens the public, and upon the Banzairaku stage man's life is idealized. So all are happy—like green firs that become thicker and thicker and put forth new needles."
Into this crowded world of exuberant life came Harunobu and his contemporaries—into this underworld, if you will, but an underworld more beautiful and sun-drenched than any known to our great Western cities. Instead of the bar in the slum they had the tea-house on the river-bank; instead of the prize-fight they had the cherry festival; for them, vice put on robes of a certain stately beauty; their stage was marked by the same ennobling absence of realism that distinguished the stage of the Greeks. The holiday spirit of the hour seems more spontaneous than ours; their hearts seem less troubled by spiritual confusions. And manifestly their underworld knew beauty and brought forth an art that is now a universal human treasure; while our underworld has been, with the rarest of exceptions, wholly sterile.
One of the most important of the underworld institutions which the prints of this period depict is the theatre. Though Harunobu turned aside from it, his great contemporary Shunsho and the whole body of Shunsho's followers found most of their material there.
The popular theatre had sprung into importance in the days of Moronobu. Previous to that time, the classic lyric drama of the aristocracy, called the Nō, had flourished in the secluded palaces of great nobles; but the mob was obliged to divert itself with nothing more interesting than jugglers and street performers. Therefore when the theatre first came into being, in the river-bed of Kyoto, it achieved great popularity; and when later it was transferred to Yedo, it rose during the Genroku Period (1688-1703) to a position of passionate favour. It appears never to have had a very savoury moral odour; and before long it became associated with so much corruptness that it presented a serious problem for the Tokugawa rulers. In 1643, as a corrective measure, they had decreed the exclusion of female actors from the stage. From this time on, only men trod the Japanese boards; the female rôles were taken by male actors whose skill in this impersonation is said to have been extraordinary.
The status of a great actor in the hearts of the people was not very different from that of a successful prize-fighter among us to-day. He was a popular idol; his movements were the subject of the eager curiosity of the gaping multitude; but his social rank was of the lowest. The prints of a later date show us pictures of actors with their gay companions on boating-parties or tea-house picnics, surrounded by inquisitive throngs of spectators. Famous and greatly sought after as these actors were, they occupied positions of even less esteem than the English players in the days of Queen Elizabeth. Nothing so well illustrates their ostracism from any kind of society as the words used by one of the greatest of actor-painters, Shunsho, in the preface to a book of drawings representing actors: "To be sure, I love the theatre, and greatly enjoy being a spectator, but I have no connection with the actors themselves, and do not know them in private life." Even Shunsho, who had created the heroic designs of these men in their great rôles, dared not acknowledge himself as their familiar.
When they appeared on the stage, the faces of the actors were frequently painted with startling streaks of red and white, an effect reproduced in some of the prints. The elaborate robes worn when they represented heroic figures of bygone ages formed superb material for the designs of the artists. The Japanese stage of to-day probably does not differ very much from what it was in Shunsho's time; and we still see on it that florid elaboration of gesture, bombastic delivery, and intensification of facial expression which the prints have perpetuated.
The actors were divided into clans or schools; the name of a famous head of a clan would be handed down for generations from master to pupil. Thus there were many of the name of Danjuro, Hanshiro, and Kikunojo in succession, who were not related to each other by blood. Certain clans such as the Kikunojo specialized exclusively in women's rôles. Each clan had its mon or crest, worn on the sleeve, and each actor had a personal mon; in the prints these generally appear. In [Plate 20], for example, the circle with eight crossed arrow-buts indicates the mon of Nakamura Matsuye; in other prints, the three great concentric squares of Danjuro, the trisected concentric circles of Hanshiro, or the iris within a circle of Kikunojo ([Plate 9]), are easily identified.