Modern Japanese Prints - Statler. Oliver Statler

      INTRODUCTION

      The publication of this book could not come at a better time. In the natural course of historical events, Japan is temporarily drawing away from the orbit of American influence. This is both inevitable and healthy, for a Japan which supinely hid behind American leadership would in the long run prove to be a very weak friend indeed.

      But in such uncertain and difficult times it is good to have a book like this appear to remind us all that American interest in Japanese culture is not only permanent but occasionally profound.

      This book is a work of love. It is an account of modern Japanese creative prints written by a man who under his own initiative has studied the art and championed the artists. There is no Japanese woodblock artist working today who does not know and revere Oliver Statler, a quiet American who entered Japan as a civilian employee of the army during the first years of the Occupation, and ended as a private citizen dedicated to scholarship.

      Mr. Statler has personally collected what is probably the world's finest collection of modern Japanese creative prints. He has personally arranged for the sale of hundreds of other prints to museums throughout the United States. He has taken dozens of American tourists to the workshops of Tokyo woodblock artists and has acted as intermediary in literally hundreds of sales. He has mailed Japanese prints on approval to many private citizens in the United States.

      And he has performed all these services without accepting a penny or a yen of commission. He is the best friend a group of living artists ever had.

      As a scholar, Mr. Statler probably knows more about modern Japanese prints than anyone not a Japanese, and possibly more than any Japanese other than experts like Un'ichi Hiratsuka, Shizuya Fujikake, and Toyohisa Adachi. He has studied intimately with at least eight of the artists represented in this book and has closely followed the work of all the others.

      He therefore becomes yet another American in the long history of modern Japan who has immersed himself in the culture of the Japanese islands. Ernest Fenollosa was the first American, and almost the first human being, to awaken the world to the scholarly problems relating to Japanese prints. Louis Ledoux was merely the last in a long line of experts who taught the West to appreciate the beauties of classical Japanese prints. After the war, William Hartnett, a soldier-civilian like Mr. Statler, pioneered in the discovery of contemporary Japanese prints.

      This interests me a great deal, because I travel much in Asia and am constantly being told that Americans cannot appreciate either the art or the spirit of another land. Yet while the men named were studying Japanese prints, other Americans were among the first to recognize the merit of modern French painting, so that today, just as the finest collections of Japanese prints are in the United States, whose scholars early realized the merit of this art, so the finest assemblies of modern French painting are also in the United States, where men like Renoir, Manet, and Cezanne were almost immediately recognized as great artists.

      I would not want to compare Jun'ichiro Sekino or Kiyoshi Saito with the great French moderns. I am not qualified to say how good Munakata and Hiratsuka are in comparison with artists of the last century. But I do know that at least a dozen of the living men discussed in this book are very wonderful artists.

      I can attest to the tremendous effectiveness of their work. I have shown their prints in several American cities and have listened to the remarks of observers who saw for the first time the dazzling work being done in contemporary Japan. I find in it a power, a mastery of color, and a variety that make it the equal of any other graphic work being done in the world today.

      For example, one who studies the illustrations contained in this book would find great difficulty in identifying more than half the prints as Japanese. This is good. It means that the artsts who did these prints had outgrown the trivial job of creating pretty little tourist postcards showing Mount Fuji and geisha girls. These artists are in the full world stream of art.

      Yet, at the same time, some of the most immediately appealing prints contained in this book are those which clearly bespeak their Japanese heritage. This also is good. It means the artists who did these particular prints were not afraid to go to purely Japanese subject matter for their inspiration. Although part of the great world stream of art, they remained Japanese.

      What pleases me most is that, in almost every instance, the same artist is able to do both international prints, whose subject matter is universal, and emphatically Japanese subjects, whose spirit is unmistakably Japanese. This is maturity. This proves that modern Japanese creative prints can be judged by world standards of great art, rather than as tourist art to be sold to Westerners who want some "Japanesey trinkets" to take home.

      But this book is not only an excellent introduction, well illustrated, to modern Japanese prints; it is also a loving record of the artists who have created this beauty. Suppose Mr. Statler had not studied so hard in order to explain how Koshiro Onchi worked? Now that Onchi is dead, where could we have looked for the faithful reporting contained in this record? I am positively convinced that in decades to come our descendants will prize the work of Saito and Sekino, to name but two, in the way we prize the prints of Kiyonaga and Utamaro. It seems to me inconceivable that their work could remain unrecognized.

      In that day how fortunate the scholars will be to have before them this record of how Azechi became an artist, how Shinagawa feels for form, how great Onchi burst the shackles of an art and set whole families of artists free. In fact, if Mr. Statler had done nothing but assemble from old memories the account of Kanae Yamamoto, the founder of the school, he would have earned our gratitude. That he has done so much more makes it a pleasure for me to commend his book to the public, both American and Japanese.

      JAMES A. MICHENER