School of Torii. The Printers’ Branch of Ukiyo-e
The Torii School was pre-eminently the exponent of drama. It was bound up with stage development and ministered to the emotional temperament of the nation; leading in what may be considered a national obsession, a mania for actors and actor-prints.
A fascinating subject is this century of dramatic evolution fostered by the printers’ branch of the Popular School. Actors had been consigned, in dark feudal days, to the lowest rung in the ladder of caste, ranking next to the outcast (Eta), as in early English days the strolling player was associated with tinkers and other vagrant populations.
The No Kagura and lyric drama – suggesting the mediaeval- and passion-plays of Europe – prefigured modern drama in Japan, but the immediate precursor of the present theatre was the Puppet Show, a Japanese apotheosis of European marionette performances. It is interesting to note that Toyokuni carried further than any one the power of mimetic art, and with whose theatrical scenes we are most familiar. He began his career as a maker of dolls, and these puppets were eagerly sought after as works of art.
If the aphorism “not to go to the theatre is like making one’s toilet without a mirror,” be true, then the Japanese are justified in their national passion for the stage, which overshadows the love of any other amusement. Taking the phrase literally, it was to the actors, and the printers who broadcast their pictures, that the people owed the aesthetic wonders of their costume. The designers were also artists, as instanced by Hishikawa Moronobu, the Kyoto designer and Edo embroiderer, the printer and painter, illustrator of books and originator of Ukiyo-e.
Enthusiasm for the portraits of actors, fostered by the Torii printers from the foundation of the school by Kiyonobu, in about 1710, hastened no doubt the development of colour-printing. As early as Genroku, the portrait of Danjūrō the second of the great dynasty of actors, who by their genius helped to brighten the fortunes of the playhouse, was sold for five Yen cash, in the streets of the capital.
The combined genius of the artists, engravers and printers of Ukiyo-e evolved and perfected the use of the multiple colour-blocks. Toward the middle of the century, under the waning powers of Torii Kiyomitsu, successor to Kiyonobu, the school seemed to be sinking into oblivion, for Harunobu, its rightful exponent, filled with visions of ethereal refinement, scorned the theatrical arena. When most needed, however, a prophet arose in the person of Shunshō, the painter, the pupil of Shunsui and master of Hokusai, thus completing the transformation begun by Harunobu. The great scions of the rival branches of Ukiyo-e, printing and painting, stepped into each other’s places and bridged the chasm, which threatened the unity of the Popular School.
Katsushika Hokusai, Farmers Crossing a Suspension Bridge, on the Border of Hida and Etchu Provinces, from the series Famous Bridges of Various Provinces, 1834.
Colour woodblock print, 26 × 38.3 cm.
Pulverer Collection, Cologne.
Katsushika Hokusai, Suspension Bridge on the Mount Gyōtō, next to Ashikaga, from the series Famous Bridges of Various Provinces, c. 1834.
Colour woodblock print, 25.7 × 38.4 cm.
Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo.
Both branches were united, however, in the use of multiple colour-blocks, although Shunshō followed Harunobu’s experiments in colouring, varying his actor designs with domestic scenes and book illustrations, whilst Harunobu resolutely refused to portray the life of the stage, and in this determination he was followed by his pupil and successor, Koriusai.
About 1765, the art of printing colours by the use of individual blocks, technically called chromo-xylography, was perfected. It is an interesting reflection, from the standpoint of Buddhism – which teaches that in the fullness of time, the great masters in religion, art and learning become reincarnated upon earth for the benefit of humanity, that at this period Hokusai was born, the crowning glory and master of Ukiyo-e. Had he appeared earlier in the century, his genius might have been diverted to the technical development of printing, and the world thus been the loser of his creative flights.
Professor Fenollosa beautifully defines the inception of the Ukiyo-e print as “the meeting of two wonderfully sympathetic surfaces – the un-sandpapered grain of the cherry-wood block, and a mesh in the paper, of little pulsating vegetable tentacles. Upon the one, colour can be laid almost dry, and to the other it may be transferred by a delicacy of personal touch that leaves only a trace of tint balancing lightly upon the tips of the fibres. And from the interstices of these printed tips, the whole luminous heart of the paper wells up from within, diluting the pigment with a soft golden sunshine. In the Japanese print we have flatness combined with vibration.”
The process of wood-cutting seems a simple art, but a close study of the making of prints will show the consummate skill required to produce them. The artist’s design was transferred by tracing paper, then pasted on to the face of the wood block, and the white space hollowed out with a knife and small gouges. After the block had been inked, a sheet of damp paper was laid upon it, and the back of the paper was then rubbed with a flat rubber till the impression was uniformly transferred. Where more than one block was employed, as in colour-printing, the subsequent impressions were registered by marks made at the corners of the paper. The colouring matter laid upon these early blocks was extracted by mysterious processes from sources unknown to the Western world, which, alas by supplying the Eastern market with cheap pigments, led to the deterioration of this essential skill.
From 1765 to 1780 the school of Ukiyo-e was dominated by four great artists and creators of separate styles: Suzuki Harunobu, succeeded by Isoda Koryūsai, taking for motive the subjects of Shunsui; Katsukawa Shunshō (changed by Shunsui from its former title of Miyagawa), upon whose shoulders had fallen the mantle of the Torii; Kitao Shigemasa, working upon Shunshō’s lines, but breaking into a rival academy, the Kitao; Utagawa Toyoharu, pupil of old Torii Toyonobu, founder of the school of Utagawa, whose most illustrious pupil was Utagawa Toyokuni, the doll-maker, and brother of Utagawa Toyohiro, Hiroshige’s master. (Utagawa Kunisada, noted for his backgrounds, succeeded Toyokuni, and after the death of his master signed himself Toyokuni the Second.)
Keisai Eisen, Landscape under the Moon, c. 1835.
Colour woodblock print, 71.9 × 24.9 cm.
Baur Collection, Geneva.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Kasumigaseki, from the series Famous Places of the Oriental Capital [Edo], c. 1830–1844.
Colour woodblock print, 25.6 × 37.7 cm.
Chiba Art Museum, Chiba.
Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Distant View of Mount Fuji from Shōhei Hill, from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji from Edo, c. 1843.
Colour print from woodblocks, 38 × 25.5 cm.
Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Utagawa Toyoharu, Fireworks at Ryōgoku Bridge, 1820–1825.
Woodblock print on paper, 38 × 25.5 cm.
Utagawa Toyokuni, Fireworks on Ryōgoku, 1830–1844.
