INTRODUCTION

THE JAPANESE in the 6th century A.D. came into close contact with Korea and then with China. They took a great many ideas from these countries but once they took an idea they quickly adapted it to their own needs. It was more a matter of selection than a copy. They took the beautiful Chinese written language but added to it a more flexible and grammatical writing of their own. They took architecture and scaled it to their own pretty little mountains and valleys. They took Buddhism with its various cults and developed them. The Japanese in the beginning took their way of making sculpture and painting first from Korea and a little later directly from China. The earliest painting and sculpture is often so like Korean painting and sculpture that there is sometimes the rather silly argument among scholars as to whether the actual sculptor or painter was an imported Korean or a native Japanese. But very soon whatever inspiration the Japanese took from other countries they developed into something of their own.

In Japan the prints came out of a school of painting called Ukiyoye—“Pic-tures of the Floating World.” Its beginning is associated with Iwasa Matabei (1578-1650). Until his time painting, just as it was in the West, was mostly de-voted to religion and the enrichment of temples or to the decoration of palaces. The subject matter was appropriate.

Matabei turned from the conventional subject matter of his day and presented dancing girls and picnics—shocking but appreciated by his generation. We have a likeness to this in Degas, who for the first time made race horses and ballet girls important subjects and thus enriched our understanding of worldly beings. More than one moralist was saddened that Degas, obviously a genius, could only be inspired by such subjects. The Japanese took much the same attitude towards Matabei.

This is how Japanese prints were made: the artist drew the design on thin paper, then the engraver pasted it face downward on a flat block of wood (usually cherry), scraped the paper away at the back until the design showed clearly, and cut away the wood in the areas that were not to be inked, leaving the design raised. This block was printed in black, and the artist filled in his color by hand. Later, when color was printed rather than applied bv hand, other blocks were made, raised in those areas where color was desired. Rice paste was mixed with the colors to keep them from running.

The instant pictures could be made so cheaply the Ukiyoye prints in Japan were available to a large public—a much larger public than could ever own paint¬ings either here or in Japan. For painting is rather an expensive business.

These prints came at a time when the Japanese capital Yedo (now Tokyo) and the old capital of Kyoto were teeming beehives. They were reflections of the popular taste and fashions decade after decade; they were frowned upon by the critics of the day, but they were made by some of the best artists. A long line of artists are now famous for their prints and scarcely known for their paintings.