Shunsho's large square prints and pillar-prints are of extreme rarity.
Buncho.
Connected by association with the school of Shunsho, yet lifted by his originality to a place quite apart from it, is the artist Ippitsusai Buncho. His master, a certain Ishikawa Kogen (or Yukimoto) of the classical Kano School, seems to have meant little to him; from the beginning of his production, about 1765, Shunsho's and Harunobu's influence chiefly guided him. He and Shunsho jointly published in 1770 three volumes of actor-portraits enclosed in fans. Little is known of his life except that he was originally a Samurai; he is said to have turned from his original master to the Ukioye School and to have led a life of dissipation until eventually his friends persuaded him to abandon such things and procured for him the honorary title of Hokyo. After this, we hear nothing of him. He died in 1796.
IPPITSUSAI BUNCHO.
Buncho's work attracts the observer with a charm different from that of any other Ukioye artist. A curious mannerism in his way of drawing faces and a fascinating perverse grace in the attitudes of his figures mark his prints. Practically all his work is in the hoso-ye form. His subjects are chiefly young male actors in the rôles of women. Harunobu's influence, manifest in [Plate 22], brought him grace but not sweetness. There is an astringent quality in his work that prevents it from ever being serene. His figures, whose line-work is the apotheosis of suavity and studied refinement, are arched into slightly strained and tortured attitudes; complex forces seem to dominate them like unseen winds; consuming or delicate passions move obscurely through their limbs and faces. Their heads poise at unnatural angles as if consciously turning their indifferent eyes from the spectacle of common things toward a secret and hypnotizing world of their own. These alien beings haunt one; it seems as if they had some mystery to reveal, some disturbing wonder to communicate could one but make them speak.
BUNCHO: COURTESAN AND HER ATTENDANT IN SNOWSTORM.
Size 12 × 5½. Signed Ippitsusai Buncho ga. Mansfield Collection.
Plate 22.