Chats on Japanese Prints

by Arthur Davison Ficke

All of Choki's work is of great rarity; that signed Shiko is possibly even rarer than that signed Choki. Rarest and most highly treasured of all are his silver-prints; the ordinary collector will probably never have an opportunity to obtain one.

Nagahide II and Ichirakusai Nagamatsu (Chōshō) may be mentioned as followers of Choki. The fact that we do not know of more disciples of so brilliant a designer is another one of the inexplicable things that surround him.

Toyokuni.

The Pupil of Toyokuni.

I walk the crowded Yedo streets,
And everywhere one question greets
My passing, as the strollers say—
"How goes the Master's work to-day?
We saw him sketching hard last night
At Ryogoku, where the bright
Trails of the rockets lit the air.
You should have seen the ladies there!
All the most famous of the town
In gorgeous robes walked up and down
The long bridge-span, well-knowing he
Was there to draw them gorgeously.
I'm sure he'll give us something fine—
Dark splendid figures, lights ashine,
A great procession of our best
And costliest Oiran, with the West
Burning behind them. When it's done,
Pray, of the copies, save me one."

Yes, I am pupil to the great.
How well he bears his famous state!
With what superbness he fulfills
The multitude's delighted wills,
Giving them, at their eager call,
Each play and feast and festival
Drawn with a rich magnificence:
And they come flocking with their pence
To buy his sheets whose supple power
Captures the plaudits of the hour—
Till even Utamaro's eyes
Turn, kindled with swift jealousies.

Strange! that before this crowded shrine
One voice is lacking, and that mine—
I, learner in his lordly house—
I, on whose cold, unwilling brows
The lights of his strong glory burn,
Blinding my heart that needs must yearn
Far from the measure of his state—
I, liegeman to another fate.
Would that some blindness came on me
That I might cease one hour to see,
For all his high, ambitious will,
His is a peasant's nature still....
What utter madness that my thought
Weighs him—I who am less than naught!
Where he walks boldly, there I creep.
Where his assured long brush-strokes sweep
Unhesitant, there I falter, strain
With agony—perhaps in vain—
For some more subtly curving line,
Some musical poising of design
That shall at last, at last express
My frailer glimpse of loveliness.
And yet, for all his facile art,
I hug my impotence to my heart.
For there are things his marching mind
In steady labours day by day
With all its sight shall never find,
With all its craft can never say.
There are lights along the dusky street
That his bold eyes have never caught;
There are tones more luminous, more sweet
Than any that his hopes have sought.
There are torturing lines that curve and fall
Like dying echoes musical,
Or twine and lave and bend and roll,
In labyrinths to lure my soul.
His ladies sumptuous and rare
Move princess-like in proud design
Of glowing loveliness: but where
His bannered pomps and pageants shine,
I feel a stiller, rarer peace,
A cadence breathless, slender, lone.
And where his facile brush-strokes cease
Begins the realm that is my own.

I wander lonely by fields and streams.
I lie in wait for lingering dreams
That brood, a tender-lighted haze
Down the wide space of ending days—
A secret thrill that hovering flies
Round some tall form, some wistful eyes,
Some thin branch where the Spring is green—
A whisper heard, a light half-seen
By lonely wanderers abroad
In crowded streets or solitude
Of hills—to haunt with dim unrest
The empty chambers of the breast.

Perhaps some day a heart shall come,
Like me half-blind, like me half-dumb,
Like me contentless with the clear
Sunlighted beauties men hold dear.
Perhaps he will more greatly prize
My faltered whispers from afar
Than all the Master's pageantries
And confident pomp and press and jar.
Yet, well or ill, how shall I change
The measure doled, the nature given?
Mine is the thirst for far and strange
Echoes of a forgotten heaven.
I listen for the ghosts of sound;
Remote, I watch life's eager stream;
Through wastes afar, through gulfs profound,
I, Toyohiro, seek my dream.

Utagawa Toyokuni was born in 1768, and early began his apprenticeship as a pupil of Toyoharu. From this master he learned the rules of European perspective—a device which he soon abandoned for the true Japanese convention. He may have studied under Shunyei for a short time. Though he was later to become a fertile producer of actor-prints, he inaugurated his work with the figures of women. His first works imitate the type of face and figure made famous by Shunsho's and Shigemasa's book, "Mirror of the Beautiful Women of the Yoshiwara." Before 1790 he gave up this type for one copied from Kiyonaga, who was at this time at the height of his fame. But Toyokuni was no such draughtsman as Kiyonaga, and his figures in this manner are generally poorly drawn and awkward. At this time he frequently adopted colour-schemes from Shunman. After Kiyonaga's retirement Toyokuni began to use the delicate type made popular by the rising genius of Choki; but after a short interval he went over to Utamaro, who was then coming into supreme mastery.