The Rise of Ukiyo-e – the Floating World

The Art of Ukiyo-e 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 characterisation of Jarves sums up forcibly the motive of the masters of Ukiyo-e, the Popular School of Japanese Art, so poetically interpreted as “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-e. 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 scrutinise 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-e print is claiming the attention of the art world.

The development of colour printing is, however, only the objective symbol of Ukiyo-e, for, as our Western oracle Professor Fenollosa said: “The true history of Ukiyo-e, although including prints as one of its most fascinating diversions, is not a history of the technical art of printing, rather an aesthetic 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-e) 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 Korea were the direct sources from which it derived its art; whilst more indirectly she was influenced by Persia and India – the sacred font of oriental art – as of religion, which have always gone hand in hand.

In China, the Ming dynasty gave birth to an original style, which for centuries dominated the art of Japan; the sweeping calligraphic strokes of Hokusai mark the sway of hereditary influence, and his wood-cutters, trained to follow the graceful, fluent lines of his purely Japanese work, were staggered by his sudden flights into angular realism.

The Chinese and Buddhist schools of art dated from the sixth century, and in Japan the Emperor Heizei founded an imperial academy in 808. This academy, and the school of Yamato-e (paintings derived from ancient Japanese art, as opposed to the Chinese art influence), founded by Fujiwara Motomitsu in the eleventh century, led up to the celebrated school of Tosa, which with Kan ō, its august and aristocratic rival, held undisputed supremacy for centuries, until challenged by plebeian Ukiyo-e, the school of the common people of Japan.

The school of Tosa has been characterised as the manifestation of ardent faith, through the purity of an ethereal style. Tosa represented the taste of the court of Kyoto, and was relegated to the service of the aristocracy; it reflected the esoteric mystery of Shinto and the hallowed entourage of the divinely descended Emperor. The ceremonial of the court, its fêtes and religious solemnities – dances attended by daimios (feudal lords), in robes of state falling in full harmonious folds – were depicted with consummate elegance and delicacy of touch, which betrayed familiarity with the occult methods of Persian miniature painting. The Tosa artists used very fine, pointed brushes, and set off the brilliance of their colouring with resplendent backgrounds in gold leaf, and it is to Tosa we owe the intricate designs, almost microscopic in detail, which are to be seen upon the most beautiful specimens of gold lacquer work; and screens, which for richness have never been surpassed.

Japanese Art was ever dominated by the priestly hierarchy, and also by temporal rulers, and of this the school of Tosa was a noted example, as it received its tide from the painter-prince, Tsunetaka, who, besides being the originator of an artistic centre, held the position of vice-governor of the province of Tosa. From its incipience, Tosa owed its prestige to the Emperor and his nobles, as later Kanō became the official school of the usurping Shoguns. Thus the religious, political and artistic histories of Japan were ever closely allied. The Tosa style was combated by the influx of Chinese influence, culminating in the fourteenth century, in the rival school of Kanō.

The school of Kanō owed its origin to China. At the close of the fourteenth century the Chinese Buddhist priest, Josetsu, left his own country for Japan, and bringing with him Chinese tradition, he founded a new dynasty whose descendants still represent the most illustrious school of painting in Japan. The Kanō school to this day continues to be the stronghold of classicism, which in Japan signifies principally adherence to Chinese models, a traditional technique, and avoidance of subjects which represent every-day life. The Chinese calligraphic stroke lay at the root of the technique of Kanō, and the Japanese brush owed its facility elementarily to the art of writing. Dexterous handling of the brush is necessary to produce these bold, incisive strokes, and the signs of the alphabet require little expansion to resolve themselves into draped forms, and as easily they can be decomposed into their abstract element.

The early artists of Kanō reduced painting to an academic art, and destroyed naturalism, until the genius of Okumura Masanobu, who gave his name to the school, and still more, that of his son, Kanō Motonobu, the real “Kanō,” grafted on to Chinese models, and monotony of monochrome, a warmth of colour and harmony of design which regenerated and revivified the whole system. Kanō yielded to Chinese influence, Tosa combated it, and strove for a purely national art, Ukiyo-e bridged the chasm, and became the exponent of both schools, bringing about an expansion in art which could never have been realised by these aristocratic rivals. The vigour and force of the conquering Shoguns led Kanō, while the lustre of Tosa was an emanation from the sanctified and veiled Emperor.

The favourite subjects of the Kanō painters were chiefly Chinese saints and philosophers, mythological and legendary heroes, represented in various attitudes with backgrounds of conventional clouds and mists, interspersed with symbolic emblems. Many of the Kanō saints and heroes bear a striking resemblance to mediaeval subjects, as they are often represented rising from billowy cloud masses, robed in ethereal draperies, and with heads encircled by the nimbus.

Beneath the brush of Kanō Motonobu, formal classicism melted. In this new movement, says Kakuzo Okakura: “Art fled from man to nature, and in the purity of ink landscapes, in the graceful spray of bamboos and pines, sought and found her asylum.”

Space will not permit a glance at the personnel of the many schools of Japanese Art. A lengthy catalogue alone would be required to enumerate the masters who inaugurated schools, for if an artist developed exceptional talent in Japan, he immediately founded an individual school, and it was incumbent upon his descendants for generations to adhere rigidly to the principles he had inculcated, so becoming slaves to traditional methods.

During the anarchy of the fourteenth century art stagnated in Japan, but a revival, corresponding with the European Renaissance, followed. The fifteenth century in Japan, as in Europe, was essentially the age of revival. Anderson epitomises in one pregnant phrase this working power: “All ages of healthy human prosperity are more or less revivals. A little study would probably show that the Ptolemaic era in Egypt was a renaissance of the Theban age, in architecture as in other respects, while the golden period of Augustus in Rome was largely a Greek revival.” There seems to have been a reciprocal action in Japanese Art. Tosa, famed for delicacy of touch, minutiae of detail and brilliance of colour, yielded to the black and white, vigorous force of Kanō . Kanō again was modified by the glowing colouring introduced by Kanō Masanobu and Kanō Motonobu. Later we see the varied palette of Miyagawa Chōshun efface the monochromic simplicity of Moronobu, the ringleader of the printers of Ukiyo-e.

The leading light in art in the beginning of the fifteenth century was Cho Densu (also called Minchō, 1352-1431), the Fra Angelico of Japan, who, as a simple monk, serving in a Kyoto temple, must in a trance of religious and artistic ecstasy have beheld a spectrum of fadeless dyes, so wondrous were the colours he lavished upon the draperies of his saints and sages. The splendour of this beatific vision has never faded, for the masters who followed in the footsteps of the inspired monk reverently preserved the secret of these precious shades until at last, in the form of the Ukiyo-e print, they were broadcast and revolutionised the colour sense of the art world.

It has been remarked that Japanese Art of the nineteenth century is often nothing but a reproduction of the works of the ancient great masters, and the methods and mannerisms of the fifteenth century artists simply served as examples for later students. The glory of the fifteenth century was increased by Tosa Mitsunobu, and above all by the two great Kanō artists, Kanō Masanobu and his son, Kanō Motonobu, who received the title of “Hogen,” and is referred to as “Ko Hogen,” or the ancient Hogen, of whom it has been remarked: “He filled the air with luminous beams.”

By the close of the fifteenth century the principles of art in Japan became definitely fixed, as, almost contemporaneously, Giotto established a canon of art in Florence, which he in turn had received from the Attic Greeks, through Cimabue, and which was condensed by Ruskin into a grammar of art, under the term “Laws of Fésole”.

The two great schools, Tosa and Kanō, flourished independently until the middle of the eighteenth century, when the genius of the popular artists, forming the school of Ukiyo-e, gradually fused the traditions of Tosa and Kanō, absorbing the methods of these rival schools which, differing in technique and motive, were united in their proud disdain of the new art which dared to represent the manners and customs of the common people. Suzuki Harunobu and Katsushika Hokusai, Torii Kiyonaga and Utagawa Hiroshige were the crowning glory of all the schools – the artists whose genius told the story of their country, day by day, weaving a century of history into one living encyclopaedia, sumptuous in form, kaleidoscopic in colour.

Ukiyo-e prepared Japan for intercourse with other nations by developing in the common people an interest in other countries, in science and foreign culture, and by promoting the desire to travel, through the means of illustrated books of varied scenes. To Ukiyo-e, the Japanese owed the gradual expansion of international consciousness, which culminated in the revolution of 1868 – a revolution, the most astonishing in history, accomplished as if by miracle; but the esoteric germ of this seemingly spontaneous growth of Meiji lay in the atelier of the artists of Ukiyo-e.

To trace the evolution of the Popular School in its development through nearly three centuries is a lengthy study, of deep interest. The mists of uncertainty gather about the lives of many apostles of Ukiyo-e, from the originator, Iwasa Matahei, to Utagawa Hiroshige, one of the latest disciples, whose changes of style and diversity of signature have given rise to the supposition that as many as three artists are entitled to the name. These mists of tradition cannot be altogether dispersed by such indefatigable students as Louis Gonse, Professor Fenollosa, Edmond de Goncourt, W. Anderson, John S. Happer and many others, but by their aid the methods of Oriental Art are clarified and explained.

Iwasa Matabei, the date of whose birth is given as 1578, is considered to be the originator of the Popular School. The spontaneous growth of great movements and the mystery of the source of genius are illustrated in the career of Matabei. His environment fitted him to follow in the footsteps of his master, Tosa Mitsunobu. Yet the city of Kyoto, veiled in mystic sanctity, where religion and princely patronage held art in conventional shackles, gave birth to the leader of the Popular School. Still, was not Kyoto, the sacred heart of Japan, a fit cradle for Ukiyo-e, the life and soul of the Japanese people?

Matabei and his followers entered into the spirit of the Japanese temperament, and from the Popular School sprang liberty and a novelty of horizon. The aristocratic schools had confined themselves to representations of princely pageantry, to portraiture, and to ideal pictures of mythical personages, saints and sages. The tradition of China showed in all their landscapes, which reflected ethereal vistas classically rendered, of an alien land. Therefore Matabei was contemptuously disowned by Tosa for depicting scenes from the life of his countrymen, yet the technique of Kanō and Tosa were the birthright of the artists of Ukiyo-e, an inalienable inheritance in form, into which they breathed the spirit of life, thus revivifying an art grown cold and academic, and frosted with tradition. The colouring of Kanō had faded, tending continually toward monochrome, but the Ukiyo-e painters restored the use of gorgeous pigments, preserving the glory of Kanō Yeitoku, the court painter to Hideyoshi.

In the middle of the seventeenth century appeared Hishikawa Moronobu, considered by many to be the real founder of Ukiyo-e. His genius welded with the new motif the use of the block for printing, an innovation which led to the most characteristic development in Ukiyo-e art. This art of printing, which originated in China and Korea, had, until the beginning of the seventeenth century, been confined solely to the service of religion for the reproduction of texts and images, but Moronobu conceived the idea of using the form of printed book illustration, just coming into vogue, as a channel to set forth the life of the people. Besides painting and illustrating books, he began printing single sheets, occasionally adding to the printed outlines dashes of colour from the brush, principally in orange and green. These sheets, the precursors of the Ukiyo-e prints, superseded the Otsu-e – impressionistic hand-paintings, drafted hastily for rapid circulation. The Otsu-e were sometimes richly illuminated, the largest surfaces in the costumes being filled in with a ground of black lacquer, and ornamented with layers of gold leaf attached by varnish.

Moronobu acquired his technique from both Tosa and Kanō, but was originally a designer for the rich brocades and tissues woven in Kyoto. He added to this art that of embroidery, and leaving Kyoto, took up this branch at the rival city Edo, where all the arts and crafts were developing under the fostering care of the Tokugawa Shoguns, the dynasty with which Ukiyo-e art is practically coextensive. It was he who designed for his countrywomen their luxurious trailing robes, with enormous sleeves, richly embroidered – gorgeous and stately garments which he loved to reproduce on paper, with marvellous powers of sweeping line. As in all fashions of dress, in time the graceful lines became exaggerated until, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, they overstepped the limits of beauty, and approached the realm of caricature. Today, in the modern poster, we see perpetuated the degenerate offspring of the genius of Moronobu, of whom it is remarked that his enlarged compositions have the plasticity of bas-reliefs.

An artist who greatly influenced Moronobu was Kanō Tanyu of the School of Kanō, whose masterpiece may be seen at the great temple in Kyoto – four painted panels of lions of indescribable majesty. Under Tanyu’s direction the task of reproducing the old masterpieces was undertaken. The artists of Ukiyo-e were always ready to profit by the teaching of all the schools; therefore, to properly follow the methods of the Popular School, we must study the work of the old masters and the subjects from which they derived their inspiration.

In this brief résumé we cannot follow the fluctuations of Japanese Art through the centuries. During long periods of conflict and bloody internecine strife, art languished; when peace reigned, then in the seclusion of their yashikis these fierce and princely warriors threw down their arms and surrendered themselves to the service of beauty and of art. Nor had the dainty inmates of their castles languished idly during these stirring times. Often they defended their honour and their homes against treacherous neighbours. It was a Japanese woman who led her conquering countrymen into Korea. In the arts of peace the cultured women of Japan kept pace with their lovers and husbands. A woman revised and enlarged the alphabet, and some of the most beautiful classic poems are ascribed to them. Well might the Japanese fight fiercely for his altar and home, with the thought of the flower-soft hands that were waiting to strip him of his armour and stifle with caresses the recollection of past conflict. The early history of Japan suggests a comparison with ancient Greece, and the Japanese poets might have encapsulated their country, as did Byron the land of his adoption:

“The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!

Where burning Sappho loved and sung,

Where grew the arts of war and peace –

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!”