The Rise of Ukiyo-ye.
The Floating World.
HE Art of Ukiyo-ye is a “spiritual rendering of the realism and naturalness of the daily life, intercourse with nature, and imaginings, of a lively impressionable race, in the full tide of a passionate craving for art.” This characterization of Jarves sums up forcibly the motive of the masters of Ukiyo-ye, the Popular School of Japanese Art, so poetically interpreted “The Floating World.”
To the Passionate Pilgrim, and devotee of nature and art, who has visited the enchanted Orient, it is unnecessary to prepare the way for the proper understanding of Ukiyo-ye. This joyous idealist trusts less to dogma than to impressions. “I know nothing of Art, but I know what I like,” is the language of sincerity, sincerity which does not take a stand upon creed or tradition, nor upon cut and dried principles and conventions. It is truly said that “they alone can pretend to fathom the depth of feeling and beauty in an alien art, who resolutely determine to scrutinize it from the point of view of an inhabitant of the place of its birth.”
To the born cosmopolite, who assimilates alien ideas by instinct, or the gauging power of his sub-conscious intelligence, the feat is easy, but to the less intuitively gifted, it is necessary to serve a novitiate, in order to appreciate “a wholly recalcitrant element like Japanese Art, which at once demands attention, and defies judgment upon accepted theories.” These sketches are not an individual expression, but an endeavour to give in condensed form the opinions of those qualified by study and research to speak with authority upon the form of Japanese Art, which in its most concrete development the Ukiyo-ye print is now claiming the attention of the art world.
The development of colour printing is, however, only the objective symbol of Ukiyo-ye, for, as our Western oracle, Professor Fenollosa, said, “The true history of Ukiyo-ye, although including prints as one of its most fascinating diversions, is not a history of the technical art of printing, rather an æsthetic history of a peculiar kind of design.”
The temptation to make use of one more quotation, in concluding these introductory remarks, is irresistible, for in it Walter Pater sets his seal upon art as a legitimate pursuit, no matter what form it takes, though irreconcilable with preconceived ideas and traditions. “The legitimate contention is not of one age or school of art against another, but of all successive schools alike, against the stupidity which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to form.”
As the Popular School (Ukiyo-ye) was the outcome of over a thousand years of growth, it is necessary to glance back along the centuries in order to understand and follow the processes of its development.
Though the origin of painting in Japan is shrouded in obscurity, and veiled in tradition, there is no doubt that China and Corea were the direct sources from which she derived her art; whilst more indirectly she was influenced by Persia and India,—the sacred fount of oriental art,—as of religion, which ever went hand in hand.