THE REALISTIC MINUTENESS
He was never original in the absolute understanding as Sesshu, Korin, in a lesser degree Harunobu and Hokusai were; it might be that he was born too late in the age, or is it more true to say that his astonishing knowledge of the old Japanese art acted to hold him back from striking out an original line? Education often makes one a coward. When I say that he was himself the sum total of all Japanese art, I do not mean to undervalue him, but rather to do justice to his versatility and the swing of his power. And it was his personality, unique and undefinable, that made his borrowing such an impression as we feel it in fact in his work. After all, he has to be judged, in my opinion, as an artist of technique.
I do not know what picture of his the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum have, except a few reproductions in books, which impressed me as poor examples. It is not too much to say that Professor Conder’s Kyosai book is the first and may be the last; there is no more fit man than he, who as Kyosai’s student knew him personally during the last eight years of his life. The book contains some good specimens which belong to that period; but what I most wish to see, are the pictures he produced in his earlier age. He is one of the artists who will gain much from selection; who will ever publish a book of twenty or thirty best pieces of his life’s production?
[VII]
THE LAST MASTER OF THE UKIYOYE ART
Yoshitoshi Tsukioka, as Kuniyoshi’s home student of high talent in his younger days, it is said, had a key to the storehouse entrusted to his care, where Kuniyoshi treasured foreign colour-prints of saints or devils strayed from a Dutch ship, Heaven’s gift most rare in those days, which made him pause a little and think about a fresh turn for his work. When we know that vulgarity always attracts us first and most, provided it is new to us, we cannot blame Yoshitoshi much when he reproduced in his work, indeed, stealing a march on his master, an immediate response to the Western art, whose secret he thought he could solve through varnishing. Doubtless it was no small discovery for Yoshitoshi. And the general public were equally simple when “Kwaidai Hyaku Senso,” his first attempt after the new departure, quite impressive as he thought, was well received by them; when he went too far in this foreign imitation through his little knowledge, as in his “Battle at Uyeno,” he varnished the whole picture. We have another instance that time is, after all, the best judge, as we know that those pictures of Yoshitoshi’s early days, when he had not yet found his own art, are most peacefully buried under the blessed oblivion and heavy dusts to-day. You cannot make an art only by wisdom and prayer, and it is better to commit youthful sin when one must, like Yoshitoshi, with his period of foreign imitation, since his later work would become intensified, chastened, and better balanced by his repentance.
To speak most strictly, Kuniyoshi should be called the last master of the Ukiyoye school, this interesting branch of Japanese art interpreting the love and romance of the populace, peculiarly developed through the general hatred of the aristocratic people; but I have reason to call Yoshitoshi Tsukioka the very last master of that school, in the same sense that we call Danjuro or Kikugoro the last actors, not less by the fact of the age, already heterogeneous, naturally weakened for holding up the old Japanese purity, against which he struggled hard to find an artistic compromise, than by his own gift. I have often thought that, if he had been born earlier, he might have proved himself another Hokusai, or, better still, if the time were still earlier, when love and sensuality were the same word in peace and prosperity, he would not have been much below Utamaro. If he failed, as indeed he failed, now, looking back from to-day, THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE it was the failure of his age. Although it may sound paradoxical, I am pleased to say that his failure was his success, because I see his undaunted versatility glorified through his failure; he helps, more than any other artist, the historian of Japanese art to study the age psychologically—in fact, he serves him more than Hokusai or Utamaro. He is an interesting study, as I said before, as the last master, indeed, as much so as Moronobu Hishikawa as the recognised first master. I say Yoshitoshi failed, but I do not mean that he was a so-called failure in his lifetime; on the contrary, he was one of the most popular artists of modern Japan—at least, in the age of his maturity; what I should like to say is that the artistic success of one age does never mean the success of another age, and Yoshitoshi’s success is, let me say, the success of failure when we now look back upon it. I can distinctly remember even to-day my great disappointment, now almost twenty-five years ago, as a most ardent admirer of Yoshitoshi, when, appearing before the publisher’s house as early as seven o’clock the morning after I had read the announcement of his new picture of a dancer, I was told that the entire set of copies was exhausted; his popularity was something great in my boyhood’s days. It was in 1875 that he first took the public by storm with his three sheets of pictures called “Ichi Harano,” an historical thing which showed Yasumasa, a court noble, playing a bamboo flute under the moonlight, perfectly unconscious of a highwayman, Hakama Dare by name, following him, stepping softly upon the autumn grasses, ready to stab the noble with his sword. The popularity of this picture was heightened by the fact that Danjuro, the greatest tragedian of the modern Japanese stage, wanted to reproduce the pictorial effect in a play, and have Shinsuke Kawatake write up one special scene to do honour to Yoshitoshi, under the title “Ichi Harano, by Yoshitoshi, Powerful with his Brush.” It was a great honour indeed, such as no artist to-day could expect to receive. We have many occasions, on the other hand, when Yoshitoshi served the actors and his bosom friends, Danjuro and Kikugoro, to popularise their art. Since the day of the First Toyokuni, it had been the custom for the artists of this popular school to work together with the stage artists.
Yoshitoshi brought out the series of three called “Snow, Moon, and Flower,” two of them commemorating Danjuro in his well-known rôle of Kuyemon Kezuri, and one Kikugoro in Seigen, whose holy life of priesthood was disturbed by love beyond hope. Although I hesitate to say they are the best specimens—yes, they are in their own way—they have few companions in the long Ukiyoye annals as theatrical posters, for which exaggeration should not be much blamed. THE CARVER AND PRINTER The striking point of emphasis in design, hitting well the artistic work, make them worthy. I have them right before me while writing this brief note on Yoshitoshi. I recall what I heard about the Kezuri picture; it is said that the artist spent fully three days to draw this “hundred-days wig,” to use the theatrical phrase. What an astonishing wig that rôle had to wear. And what painstaking execution of the artist; and again what wonderful dexterity of the Japanese carver and printer. At the time when these pictures were produced it is not too much to say that the arts of carving and printing had reached the highest possible point—that is to say, they had already begun to fall. I am pleased to attach a special value to them as the past pieces which well combined those three arts. By the way, the name of the carver of those pictures is Wadayu. Now, returning to Yoshitoshi and his actors-friends. The former was always regarded by the latter as an artistic adviser whose words were observed as law; Yoshitoshi was the first person Danjuro used to look up when in trouble with the matter of theatrical design in dress. I have often heard how the artist helped Kikugoro. This eminent actor once had a great problem how to appear as Shini Gami, or the Spirit of Death, in the play called Kaga Zobi, and asked Yoshitoshi for a suggestion; and it is said that a rough sketch he drew at once enlightened Kikugoro’s bewildered mind, and, as a result, he immortalised the rôle. It was the age when realism, of course, in more vague, doubtful meaning than the present usage, had completely conquered the stage, the old idealistic stage art having fallen off the pedestal. Certainly Danjuro, the first of all to be absorbed in that realism which prevailed here twenty or twenty-five years ago, did never serve the stage art for advancement, but, on the contrary, it was the realism, if anything, that cheapened, trivialised, and vulgarised the time-honoured Japanese art; but it seemed that there was nobody to see that point of wisdom. It is ridiculous to know how Danjuro insisted, as Tomonori, in the play of Sembon Sakura, that the blood upon his armour should be painted as real as possible, and troubled the great artistic brush of Yoshitoshi on each occasion during the whole run of the play; but how serious the actor was in his thought and determination! Again that realism was the main cause why Yoshitoshi’s art failed to compete with the earlier Ukiyoye artists like Shunsho, Utamaro, and even Hokusai; it was an art borrowed from the West doubtless, when I observe how Yoshitoshi, unlike the earlier artists, was delighted to use the straight, forceful lines as the modern Western illustrators; the picture called “Daimatsuro” is a fit example in which he carried out that tendency or mannerism with most versatility. I daresay that his pictures, whether of historical heroes or professional beauties, which were least affected by the so-called realism or Western perspectives and observed carefully the old Ukiyoye canons, limiting themselves in the most artistic shyness, would be only prized as adorning his name as the last master; for the ninety per cent. we have no grief for their hastening into blessed dusts. I have in my collection the three-sheet picture called “Imayo Genji,” showing the view of Chigoga Fuchi at Yenoshima, with the romantic posture of four naked fisherwomen, which is dated very early in Yoshitoshi’s artistic life, no doubt being the work of the time when he was still a home student at Kuniyoshi’s studio or workshop; you can see the artist’s allegiance to his teacher in those somewhat stooping woman figures; there is no mistake to say that Yoshitoshi, at least in this picture, had studied Hiroshige and Hokusai to advantage for the general effect of rocks and fantastic waves.
“IMAYO GENJI"
Although it is clear that it is not a specimen of his developed art, I have in mind to say that it will endure, perhaps as one of the best Ukiyoye pictures of all ages, through its youthful loyalty to the traditional old art and the painstaking composition for which the best work is always marked. How artistically troubled, even lost, are his later works, though once they were popular and even admired!