Japanese Colour-Prints and Their Designers

by Frederick W. Gookin

KIYONAGA. Holiday Group at Gotenyama.

13	Large sumi-yé. An actors' boating party on the Sumidagawa.
14	Large tan-yé. The actors Yoshizawa Ayame and Kanto Koroku.
15	Large tan-yé. The actors Kanto Koroku and Ikushima Daikichi.
16	Large beni-yé. Ichikawa DanjuÌ roÌ as an enraged warrior.
17	Beni-yé. Onoe KikugoroÌ in a female rôle.
18	Beni-yé. Scene from a drama. The actors Tomazawa SaijiroÌ (on horseback), OÌ tani Hiroji, and Segawa KikunojoÌ . The beni has turned to a low-toned yellow.
19	Urushi-yé. Scene from a drama. OÌ tani Oniji (on horseback) threatening Sannogawa Ichimatsu in the rôle of a woman who has seized his bridle rein.
20	Beni-yé. Scene from a drama. Sawamura SojuÌ roÌ as Sasaki no SaburoÌ and Nakamura TomijuÌ roÌ as Mago no Koroku.

FURUYAMA MOROMASA

Pupil, and perhaps the son, of Moronobu. He devoted himself chiefly to painting, but designed a few prints, most of which are ukiyé, or perspective pictures, in the style of Okumura Masanobu.

LENT BY THE ESTATE OF FRANCIS LATHROP, DECEASED

21	Large hand-coloured ukiyé, or perspective print. A game of ken in a room in a nobleman's house.

OKUMURA MASANOBU

One of the most eminent of the Ukiyoé artists. His drawings were greatly admired for their rare combination of force and refinement, and he exercised wide influence over his contemporaries and successors to the end of the eighteenth century. He was the first artist to use blocks from which prints were coloured in flat tints. These were printed in the red known as beni, green, and black, and were known as beni-yé. He was also the first artist to make the tall, narrow pillar prints (ha-shira-yé), and was the inventor of the perspective prints which he called ukiyé. His true name was Okumura Genpachi, and he was commonly known as honya (bookseller) Genpachi, from the fact that he was the proprietor of a wholesale and retail book and print shop at the sign of the “red gourd” in Tori-shio cho̅, Yedo.

LENT BY THE ESTATE OF FRANCIS LATHROP, DECEASED

22	Large sumi-yé. Woman seated by a writing-table, reading a book.
23	Urushi-yé. Bando Hikosaburo as a warrior resisting the opening of a castle door.
24	Tall beni-yé. A geisha playing upon a samisen.
25	Large sumi-yé. A woman with a pet cat watching a man dip water from a chozubachi.