Whence art thou come,
Tall figure clasping to thy tragic breast
Thy orange robe, a flame amid the gloom—
By what wild doom
Art thou forever onward—onward pressed?
A wreath is on thy brow,
A crown of leafage from some lonely haunt
Where might Medea's shade brood ministrant.
Thy shoulders bow
Beneath what fearful weight, what need, what vow?
A leopard fierce—
A ghost that wanders down the wandering wind—
A fury tracking toward some shaken mind—
Where shall I find
The divination that thy veil shall pierce?
How shall I wrest
From thee the secret of thy lofty doom—
From what wild gulf of midnight thou dost come
Who, with clutched breast,
Stalkest forever onward—onward pressed?
Few people approach Sharaku's work for the first time without regarding him as a repulsive charlatan, the creator of perversely and senselessly ugly portraits whose cross-eyes, impossible mouths, and snaky gestures have not the slightest claim to be called art. At first these strange pictures may even seem mirth-provoking to the spectator—a view of them which he will remember in later years with almost incredulous wonder. To overcome one's original feeling of repulsion may take a long time; but to every serious student of Japanese prints there comes at last a day when he sees these portraits with different eyes; and suddenly the consciousness is born in him that Sharaku stands on the highest level of genius, in a greatness unique, sublime, and appalling.
TOSHIUSAI SHARAKU.
Toshiusai Sharaku is a figure more shadowy than most, even in this region of shadows. The wilful neglect of a public that hated him has folded him in a mystery deeper than the mere accidental obscurations of time. Of his birth and death we know absolutely nothing, nor of the name of his teacher, if he had one. The resemblance between his work and that of Shunyei cannot be fully explained until we know more accurately their relative dates. Kiyonaga's noble drawing certainly affected his style. The influence of Shunsho upon his colour-schemes is fairly obvious; but we do not know whether this was due to personal contact, or only to familiarity with Shunsho's work. The one indisputable fact about Sharaku is that he was originally a Nō-performer in the troupe of the Daimyo of Awa. The Japanese authorities state that he worked at print-designing only one or two years, somewhere between 1790 and 1795. Dr. Kurth, in his stimulating but somewhat too imaginative volume, "Sharaku," believes that the evidence justifies us in fixing Sharaku's working period as a much longer time—1787 to 1795; but he cannot be said to have wholly proved his case. Whether or not these dates are accurate, we may at least say that Sharaku's years of activity lay chiefly within the early part of the last decade of the eighteenth century.
