Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/521

Rh With the twentieth century, the "new woman" has begun to assert herself even in Japan. Her name figures on committees; she may be seen riding the "bike," and more usefully employed in some of the printing-offices and telephone exchanges. Such developments, however, affect but a small percentage of the nation.

 Wood Engraving. A far-off Chinese origin followed by centuries in the chrysalis stage, a wakening from torpor soon after A.D. 1600 when peace had replaced continual civil tumults, then a gradual working up to perfection, a golden age from, say, 1730 to 1830, after which sudden decline and death,—such we have seen to be the life-history of many Japanese arts, such is the life-history of the lovely art of wood engraving.

In a country where printing is done, not with movable types, but from wooden blocks, and where consequently the same process would naturally serve for both letterpress and pictorial illustration, we may assume that if the former of these exists, the latter probably exists along with it. Now we know block-printing to have been practised in Japan in the eighth century, if not sooner. There is, therefore, no reason for discrediting the tradition that the printed Buddhist charms and paper slips of that period sometimes bore figures of divinities, though few, if any, of the surviving specimens can with certainty be dated back earlier than the year 1325. Even that date precedes by nearly a century the German block of St. Christopher. The earliest illustrated book at present known is the 1608 edition of a classical romance entitled Ise Mono-gatari,—a very crude production, to some copies of which a rough hand-colouring has been applied, not unlike that of the old English chap-books. But the father of really artistic xylography was Hishigawa Moronobu, who flourished between 1680 and 1701, and was the first to adopt that decorative use of masses of black which has lent such piquancy to the colour scheme of Japanese engravers since his time. And do not object, and tell us that this arbitrary 