Chats on Japanese Prints

by Arthur Davison Ficke

HARUSHIGE.

Shiba Kokan has already been mentioned as the forger of Harunobu's work. His ability needs no further recommendation when we admit that we cannot with certainty tell his prints from Harunobu's. This is his chief title to fame. He was born in 1747 and died in 1818. During his life he signed many names to his work and attempted many manners. From the Dutch at Nagasaki he learned something of the rules of European perspective, and tried, in the eighties, with success but without much beauty, to carry them over into Japanese art. In addition, he introduced shadows into some of his compositions—a device alien to the whole spirit of Chinese and Japanese painting. He was the first Japanese artist to attempt copper-plate engraving. Queer renderings of European scenes by him remain to us. In a hundred different spheres of art, invention, and speculation he tried his hand. His intellectual curiosity in every field reminds one of Leonardo da Vinci. He remains one of the most interesting and puzzling figures of his time—an adventurer, a restless experimenter, a forger and a man of extraordinary though chaotic genius.

A poem written when he was dying has a curious vibrancy: "Kokan now dies, for he is very old; to the passing world he leaves a picture of the world that passes."

Komai Yoshinobu did work in the style of Harunobu during the seventies. He furnishes another example of the obscurity that covers so much of Japanese print history; for it is not known whether he was an independent artist, or identical with Yamamoto Yoshinobu, who produced two-colour prints in the fifties, or worse yet, an early signature of Koriusai. The first theory is the most probable. His work is rare, beautiful in colour, and well worthy of further research.

MASUNOBU.

Masunobu, the second of that name, whose work, in clear, delicate colour and charming arrangement, generally follows Harunobu's closely, is also not definitely located. He appears to have been originally a pupil of Shigenobu and Shigenaga. Most writers erroneously regard him as the same man who, under the name of Sanseido Tanaka Masunobu, produced two-colour prints in the forties, and hand coloured prints still earlier.

One of the Second Masunobu's pillar-prints, representing a girl with an open umbrella jumping from a balcony to meet a waiting lover, has a unique and most charming individuality of poise and colouring. His pillar-prints, of which about ten are known, are particularly fine.

Ujimasa, Kamegaki Hoōriu, Muranobu, Tachibana Minko, Banto, Chiryu, Ryushi, Kisen, and Suiyo are rare men who worked contemporaneously with Harunobu. The Hayashi Catalogue also names Shoha, Soan, Sogiku, Kogan and Seiko.