Page:Brinkley - The Art of Japan, vol. 1.djvu/54

30 served for printing pictures of deities which were distributed to pilgrim worshippers. Apparently the idea of using engravings for illustrating printed matter did not suggest itself until the sixteenth century, but from that time wood-cuts began to be freely inserted in the pages of historical romances, poetical anthologies and other kinds of literature. These pictures were not remarkable. Draughtsmen of talent did not concern themselves in their production, and it was not until the last quarter of the seventeenth century that xylography began to be applied to really artistic purposes. Hishigawa Moronobu and Okamura Masanobu were the two artists who supplied drawings for this new departure. Their work was vigorous, their composition clever, and the engraver did his part so well that wood-cuts of really high merit were produced. Almost immediately the potentialities of this branch of art were recognised, and a number of very beautiful albums appeared, chiefly from the brushes of Ooka Shunboku and Tachibana no Morikuni. They contained accurate copies of pictures by the great Chinese and Japanese masters of previous eras, as well as lessons for young painters and suggestions for decorative designs covering the whole range of applied art. Another extensive field for the employment of wood-cuts was the popular novel, which grew out of the monogatari, or historical romance. Nearly all the great artists of the Ukiyo-ye School assisted in the illustration of these books, though it is plain that they did not consider the task worthy of their best efforts. Much more elaborate work appears in the pages of the “illustrated accounts of celebrated places” (meisho-zuye), several of which were compiled in each important city or province, for the purpose of depicting the scenic features of the locality and recording everything of topical interest. In fine, before the middle of the eighteenth century, Japanese xylography had attained a stage of development much higher than that reached at the same epoch in Europe.

Very soon after the wood-cut began to be used artistically for purposes of illustration, the practice of colouring it by hand came into vogue. At first, only two colours were used, orange and green, but yellow was afterwards added. It is evident that the painter desired to preserve the quality of the line engraving, and that he subordinated these broad, decorative effects of colour to the character of the black and white drawing. Among hand-coloured prints two kinds are sometimes mistaken for chromo-xylographs. They are the tan-ye, or orange picture, and the urushi-ye, or lacquered picture. The former derived its name from the fact that orange was the dominant colour, yellow the secondary; and the latter was so called because of the addition of black lacquer, which helped to emphasize the delicate lines of the engraving, though occasionally it threw the other colours out of scale. In some cases the heaviness of the black lacquer was relieved by a sprinkling of gold leaf. All this work, though it produced many beautiful examples, needs only cursory mention.

China could have taught chromo-xylographic processes to Japan while the latter was