JAPANESE WOOD-CUTTING AND WOOD-CUT PRINTING. 23'J 



the hands of an intelligent being-. The roller, on the contrary, even in 

 the hands of the most skilled printer, is much less pliable, and on the 

 steam press it is without any pliancy. This quality has, indeed, be- 

 come a merit in the steam press, so that it is now looked upon as more- 

 reliable than the hand press. But this is true only in so far as uni- 

 formity of result in the impressions is concerned. The artist can do 

 nothing- with it, while with a bare block or plate and a brush full of 

 color he can do wonders. We have seen this of late years in the re- 

 newed development of the monotype, and it may. indeed, be said of 

 Japanese printing that it involves, at least in its best productions, the 

 principle of the monotype. It follows from this that the Japanese 

 printer must be something of an artist. In the words of Mr. Tokuno, 

 he must have the skill to produce "the various hues and shades with 

 printing brushes, in precisely the same way as the water-color painters 

 do.'" • 



As the color is laid on the block with the brush, the facilities offered 

 by this tool can, as a matter of course, be utilized, and are utilized to 

 their fullest extent, by the Japanese printer. He can deposit more or 

 less pigment on the block, according as he may need a stronger or a 

 more delicate tint, and he can even produce gradations on it quite inde- 

 pendent of the wood-cutter ; that is to say, on a perfectly flat block. All 

 the gradations from light to dark seen in Japanese color-prints are the 

 result of the printer's brush used on the block, assisted sometimes, it 

 is said, by wiping with the finger. The roller which we use for inking 

 our blocks is not capable of producing such gradations,* as it deposits 

 a uniform film of ink all over the surface. The consequence is that 

 with us the gradations are produced by the engraver, who cuts away 

 more and more of the wood, either in lines or in dots, as he proceeds 

 from dark through lighter tints to white, while the Japanese wood- 

 cutter furnishes to the printer blocks which are solid even in those 

 parts which in the impression are to be gradated. It follows that what 

 we call "engraved tints," either flat or gradated, are never seen in 

 purely Japanese wood-cuts. The blocks offer nothing but flat masses, 

 and such lines as appear in them serve merely to bring out the forms, 

 patterns of stuffs, textures, etc. Whenever a European engraver has 

 to render a sky gradated simply from a darker blue, through lighter 

 tints downward, and finally merging into a tint so light that he must 

 express it by white, he cuts a series of white lines, narrower and farther 

 apart where the color is to be strongest, and gradually increasing in 

 width and nearness as it decreases in strength, until, where the white 

 paper is to show, he cuts away all the wood. His Japanese colleague, 

 on the contrary, gives the printer a flat block, on which those parts 

 merely are cut away which correspond to objects seen against the sky, 

 such as trees, mountains, houses, etc., and which, therefore, must be 

 kept free from the blue of the sky behind them. On this block the 



'Except iii '"Iris printing," which, however, need not he considered here. 



