TOYONOBU. Actor reading Letter
From about 1670, when Moronobu began to issue single-sheet prints, until about 1742, a period of at least seventy years, the prints were in black outline and were coloured by hand. They were, in fact, cheap paintings. Early in the eighteenth century the chief pigment used in colouring them was red lead. The Japanese name for this pigment is tan, and the prints upon which it appears are designated as tan-yé. About 1710 yellow and citrine were commonly used with the tan. Four or five years later a new style of hand-colouring, said to have been [pg 12] devised by Torii Kiyonobu, came into vogue and greatly modified the style in which the prints were designed. In place of tan he substituted beni, a very beautiful but fugitive red extracted from the saffron. This was used in combination with a greenish yellow (probably gamboge) and low-toned blues and purples. Finer details were introduced into the designs, and the colouring in general was more carefully done. In response to a growing demand for less expensive pieces smaller prints (hoso-yé) became common. To give brilliance to the pigments a little thin lacquer (urushi) was mixed with them, and, while wet, parts of the design were sprinkled with metallic powder, which was probably applied by blowing it through a small bamboo tube. These prints were known as urushi-yé, or lacquer prints. A little later the custom grew up of painting parts of the prints with black lacquer.
Not until the year 1742 did the practice begin of applying colour by impressions from flat wood blocks. Why the invention should have been so long delayed, and why, after it was once made, nearly fourteen years more should have elapsed before the number of colour-blocks was increased beyond two, are questions to which no certain answer is yet forthcoming. It is incredible that during the forty years when innumerable hand-coloured prints were issued no one should have conceived the idea of printing the colour as well as the black outline. Without doubt some practical difficulty connected with the printing stood in the way. Possibly the thing that awaited discovery was the trick of mixing rice paste with the colour to keep it from running. Or, as is more likely, it took a long while to discover a practical method of securing accurate register in impressions made upon damp paper which was liable to stretch or shrink during the printing process. Whatever the problem may have been, the honour of the solution is due to Okumura Masanobu. Being a publisher as well as an artist, he was no doubt alive to the economic advantage of a cheaper process and to the attraction of novelty. Some years earlier he had invented the hashira-yé, or pillar-print, and had also put forth a series of prints that show a fair understanding of the laws of linear perspective to which he gave the name of Ukiyé. Being an artist as well as a publisher, Masanobu perceived that the change in process called for a change in the [pg 13] style of the designs. The very first of the new prints, therefore, were characterized by finer and more exquisite detail than was suitable for the hand-coloured editions. The colours used were beni and a soft green; and the name beni-yé, which had been applied to the hand-coloured prints in which beni was used, was also given to them. A happier selection of colours could not have been made. By thinning the red and modifying the hue of the green a wide range of effects was secured. Almost every possible combination and variation was tried during the fourteen or fifteen years that the beni-yé were in vogue. The world is far richer because of this long period before the number of colour-blocks was increased, since time was afforded to work out the decorative possibilities resulting from the limitation to two colours and black and white. This limitation demanded fine skill and creative resource in the invention of pattern and the distribution of the colours employed.[4] The results achieved were remarkable. Until one has seen them it is impossible to realize that so much life and vivacity of colouring could be given by impressions from two blocks charged with rose and green.
KIYOMITSU. Daimyo Procession Game.
By many the beni-yé are regarded as the choicest products of the school. So charming were they when first printed that they speedily drove the urushi-yé prints out of the market, with the exception of the tall hashira-yé, or pillar prints, of which hand-coloured editions continued to be produced for a year or two, to satisfy those who still wished paintings rather than prints. Most of the beni-yé that have survived until our time are very much faded. The beni has quite generally turned into a soft yellow or disappeared altogether. The green is more stable, but that also has in many instances become a warm citrine or russet. Extremely rare are the specimens in which the original colour has not suffered material modification.
From the testimony of the prints themselves it appears probable that very soon after Okumura Masanobu issued the first prints in beni and green, similar prints were put forth by Nishimura Shigenaga, Ishikawa [pg 14] Toyonobu, Torii Shiro (otherwise Kiyonobu the second), and all the Yedo print-designers, among them the veteran Torii Kiyomasu. None of these men seems to have attempted any marked departure from the type established by Okumura. About 1755, however, a group of young men appeared upon the scene, who were fired with zeal for further experiments. The leaders were Torii Kiyomitsu, Kitao Shigemasa, and Suzuki Harunobu. Kiyomitsu began by trying novel colour schemes such as two tones of beni instead of beni and green. Then he tried a third colour-block. After this new developments followed in rapid succession. The variety and range of the colour schemes broadened almost from day to day. At first the wider resources proved an embarrassment, but the mastery attained in dealing with the simpler means soon enabled the artists to take advantage of them. Invention was stimulated. In 1764 a printer named Kinroku discovered a method by which printing in colours from many blocks became possible. We can only guess at the nature of the difficulty that was surmounted; but as it is known that the printing was usually done upon dampened paper, it is evident that the stretching or shrinking of the sheets, to which I have already referred, must have proved extremely troublesome, and that every additional block must have multiplied the liability to defective register. It is reasonably safe to assume, therefore, that to find some means of overcoming this was the problem which remained unsolved for so many years.
HARUNOBU. Young Woman before Torii.