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 Sketch-tour books and prints of the early twentieth century [continued]
Scott Johnson
All of the remaining illustrations are by Nakazawa Hiromitsu. The woodcuts
for the Kyôto and Nara volumes were produced by Igami Bonkotsu and Nishimura
Kumakichi, thus reuniting the artist and artisans of the 1905 Gojûsansugi
Suketchi. Kanao Tanejirô's involvement as publisher had a marked effect on
both artist and artisans. Hiromitsu's palette is lighter and the woodcuts have a
fresh luminous quality. Hiromitsu was in his prime, and the Kinai
Kembutsu books began a long and fruitful collaboration between the artist
and publisher, first in books and later in single-sheet prints.
Kumakichi was the printer for the Ôsaka volume, but Bonkotsu was not the
engraver for this final and most ambitious volume. The blockcutters are listed
as Hasegawa Kôkoku, Maeda Kôji and Chikamatsu Shigeru. There is no noticeable
difference in technical approach or skill, and it seems likely that these men
were trained by Bonkotsu and worked under his direction. Hiromitsu was only one
of the contributors to the text of Kinai Kembutsu. Among the others was
Yosano Akiko, one of the most accomplished poets ofthe time; her popularity as a
poet was due in part to the care with which her poetry books had been printed
over the years by Kanao Tanejirô. In fact Kanao's long career as a publisher of
contemporary literature enabled him to attract a variety of writers,
enrichingthe texts of books such as Kinai Kembutsu.
The fourth 1911 sketch-tour book was Bungei Chiri Tokaidô Gojûsantsugi
(The Topography of the 53 Stations of the Tôkaidô in Words and Pictures). This
is certainly an illustrated travelbook, but it differs from others in the genre
in that the text is clearly considered more important than the illustrations.
The text records a rambling trip mainly by steam train from Tôkyô to Kyôto by
the author Yokoyama Kendô. Still, the urge to enhance a text with evocative
illustrations had not diminished. Notes on the prints,and comments by the
artists are found in an appendix.
The artists were Kosugi Misei, Hirafuku Hyakusui,Ishii Hakutei, Mitsutani
Kunishirô, Nakazawa Hiromitsu and Oka Rakuyô (1879-1962). Kosugi Misei (better
known in Japan by his later art-name, Hoan) recorded that his lithographic
endpapers of Edo Period travelers at the base of Mt. Fuji were sketched from his
imagination as he watched the mountain from a train window. Mitsutani Kunishirô
noted that he took an electric tram as far as it went up the slope of Mr. Fuji.
Already, he noted, horse-drawn wagons such as he sketched for his color woodcut
were scarce.
Bungei Chiri Tokaidô Gojûsantsugi contains two lithographs and five
stitched-in color woodcuts, but in addition there are 30 single-color woodcuts
within the text, all of which were designed by Oka Rakuyô. These are described
in the notes as mokuhan kuga, 'woodblock illustrations'. Significantly,
the stitched-in woodcuts are described as tezuri, 'hand-printed'. The
simple fact that the woodblock illustrations are not described as handprinted
suggests that these are other examples of what later came to be called
kikai-zuri, 'machine-printed' woodcuts. By 1911 type-set texts were
virtually universal, and as we have seen Japan had come to adopt the
centuries-old Western technique of setting the woodblocks within the type-set
text on the bed of the press. The newness of the procedure in Japan is evidenced
by the lack of standardised terminology.
As appealing as such cuts are, especially the contrast between the fluid
lines of Oka Rakuyô's illustrations and the sharply detailed type-set text, it
should be repeated that the growing use of machine-printed woodcuts, not to
mention lithographs and other media, steadily reduced the need for professional
woodblock printers for book illustrations; they were the most vulnerable of the
woodcut artisans.
© Boston Book
Co. 2001
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