book is concerned only with sosaku hanga, the creative prints which are one-man works. It cannot cover all the artists, for there are more than three hundred working in the media of sosaku hanga today. My aim has been a representative and diversified selection, but such a choice is necessarily controversial and I shall be delighted if controversy ensues. My hope is that the reader will seek out the prints of the movement—for they are now to be found all over the world—and decide for himself.
With the exception of the great pioneer, Yamamoto, and the great realizer, Onchi, whose death midway in the preparation of this book saddened the whole effort, attention is confined to artists who are actively working today. I have tried' to tell something of their lives and their thinking, of the way they work and the background of their prints, but I have not attempted a critical analysis of their art, because I feel that the prints speak for themselves.
There is a woeful lack of material on this subject in English. James A. Michener has provided a brilliant introduction in the last chapter of The Floating World, telling the story in terms of but two artists, Koshiro Onchi and Un'ichi Hiratsuka. The only other comprehensive reference in English is Dr. Shizuya Fujikake's invaluable handbook, Japanese Wood-block Prints, published in the Japan Travel Bureau's Tourist Library. Because of the limited material available, I have tried to avoid reproducing prints already shown in either of these two books, but in some cases an important print demanded inclusion.
I cannot list here all those who helped me, but I must acknowledge the helpful suggestions made by Ellen Psaty and the kind assistance of Professors Joseph Roggendorf, S. J., and Edward G. Seidensticker, who translated the poems of Koshiro Onchi which appear in the appendix. And I am especially grateful to Ansei Uchima, who saw me through my language difficulties. The fact that Uchima is also an artist made everything easier, and one of the pleasantest rewards of this work has been entirely unexpected: Uchima himself has turned to the medium of prints with every indication of brilliant success. He does not belong in this book, because he is an American, but his prints show again what happy results can come from cross-fertilization in art.
This book would be incomplete without mention of William Hartnett. I, and many more like me, first saw modern Japanese prints through the exhibitions he arranged in the early days of the Occupation. Hartnett's taste and enthusiasm played an enormous part in giving these artists the encouragement and recognition they needed, and for his good work we may all be grateful.
The frontispiece is the gift of Toyohisa Adachi, one of the notable publishers of prints in Japan today. In producing this woodblock reproduction of Koshiro Onchi's Impression of a Violinist, Adachi drew on the finest skills available, and the result is faithful even in spirit. His gift is not only a warm act of friendship but a generous tribute to the work of Onchi and the sosaku artists.
Both general and technical information concerning the prints reproduced in the book will be found in an appendix. Also given in an appendix is brief data on the woods used by contemporary Japanese artsts to make the blocks for their prints.
Paper is obviously of vital importance in print-making, but the subject is an extremely technical one. Prints are invariably made on handmade papers (to the Japanese these are "Japanese" papers; machine-made papers are "Western" papers). The fibers of most of the handmade papers of Japan come from the inner bark of one of three plants. Gampi (Wickstroemia shikpfyana, Franchetet Savatier) papers are tough, lustrous, and long-lived, but non-absorbent and therefore little used for prints. Mitsumata (Edgeworthia papyrifera, Siebold et Zuccarini) is of the same family as gampi but more refined; mixed with pulp it is used to make modern torinoko, a paper which is very popular among the sosaku hanga artists (the frontispiece is made on a torinoko paper). Kozo (Broussonetia kazinoki, Siebold) is of the same family as mulberry; its fibers are sinewy and tough, with an appealing roughness; kozo papers are strong, elastic, and porous, and are widely used in print-making. Japanese writers have ascribed noble dignity to gampi papers, gentle elegance to mitsumata papers, and tough masculinity to kozo papers, but the print artist is less concerned with these poetic attributes than he is with practical considerations such as absorbency, strength, and color reaction.
Japanese names are given throughout in the foreign manner, that is, with the given name first and the family name last. For those who are interested, in the index the long vowels of Japanese words have been indicated and, in the case of names, Japanese characters added.
And finally, though this is by no means a technical treatise, a few Japanese words relating to the technique of the woodblock reoccur, and definition here may simplify things. They are:
Baren: the pad, faced with a bamboo sheath, with which the printer rubs the back of his paper as it lies on the printing block in order to fix the impression on the paper.
Kento: the marks on the corners of a printing block by which the printer positions his paper on the block to insure registry.
Sumi: the black ink which the Japanese use for painting, for writing with a brush, and, of course, for making prints.
OLIVER STATLER
Tokyo, February 15, 1956
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The quotation from James A. Michener's The Floating World is used by permission of Random House, New York; the quotation from Langdon Warner's The Enduring Art of Japan, by permission of the Harvard University Press, Cambridge; and the quotation from Elise Grilli's review of the work of Koshiro Onchi, by permission of the writer.
The present work had its genesis in a paper read before the Asiatic Society of Japan on February 14, 1955, a revised version of which was published in Sophia University's quarterly, Monumenta Nipponica, July, 1955. Grateful acknowledgment is made to both the Society and the University for the cooperation which helped to make this publication possible.
MODERN
JAPANESE
PRINTS
1
AN ART
REBORN
"ART MUST MOVE IN CYCLES, THERE MUST BE CONTINUOUS INTER-change. The new must become old and the. The old must come back...."
With these words James A. Michener closes The Floating World, the trenchant and illuminating book in which he pictures the life and death of the traditional art of ukiyoe, the great woodblock prints of Japan. As we look back at the history of ukiyoe, its inglorious death is as evident as its magnificent life, and yet, because art does move in cycles, Michener was able to end on a note of optimism as he described the rebirth of prints today.
For Japanese prints have been reborn. Revived is not the proper word. You will look in vain for modern prints of beautiful women like Utamaro's, of actors like Sharaku's, or of landscapes like Hiroshige's. What we are experiencing is a renascence, not a restoration. The new prints are as much a part of today as old ukiyoe prints were of their day. And it does not take a historian to grasp the difference between the Japan of today—industrial, centralized, inextricably caught up in international currents—and the Japan of ukiyoe's day—agricultural, feudal, sealed from the outside world, an introverted recluse.
This is no place to dwell on the death of ukiyoe. The era of the Emperor Meiji (1868-1912), ushered in by Perry's knock on the door, saw Japan look about, take stock, and then plunge headlong into the modern world. In the upheaval there were many casualties; ukiyoe, already weakened by the factors Michener describes so well, was only one of these.
In
