240 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1892. 



printer paints the gradations needed, and if be can not get a .satisfac- 

 tory result with one printing, lie uses the same block twice, only vary- 

 ing the ''inking." In the picture " Yinaka genji," for instance, the sky 

 is printed once with a gradation reaching from the top of the picture 

 to about the middle of the sky, and again a second time with a grada- 

 tion reaching considerably farther down. It is evident that the upper 

 part of the sky may thus be strengthened, and the gradual shading- 

 off into the Avhite along the horizon made still more gradual. 



From what has just been said, it is apparent that the same block 

 may be used twice on the same picture. This is true not only of the 

 printing of skies, but the same device is resorted to also in other parts 

 of the design. A block may lie printed in a flat tint or color the first 

 time, and it may then be charged a second time with another color, 

 say a gray, but gradated, and printed on top of the first color to pro- 

 duce modulations. The number of planks cut for a Japanese color- 

 print, therefore, is very far from corresponding to the number of print- 

 ings. It is, moreover, reduced still further by painting the same block 

 with different colors in different parts. These colors may. indeed, be 

 printed at the same time,* but it happens frequently that they are used 

 separately; that is to say. that the block is painted and printed in part 

 only, and then laid aside, to be taken up again later and painted on 

 those parts which were left uninked before. Thus of the three sheets 

 which together "make up the picture "'Yinaka genji," the first has 25 

 impressions, the second 26, the third 23. Of blocks used, however, 

 there are only 13 for the first, 10 for the second, and II for the third, or 

 37 cuts, executed on 21 planks, for 71 printings. 



It is seen from the number of impressions needed for the completion 

 of the picture just alluded to, that the Japanese printers are not bent 

 on saving labor in this respect, a fact which is occasionally shown in a 

 most curious manner, as when a single pair of red lips is printed by 

 itself in a flat red, although several other red blocks are used for the 

 same picture. From 23 to 26 impressions for a print like *' Yinaka 

 genji," seems to us an excessive number. Even for a refined, although 

 brilliant fruit piece, like "Nandina domestica," 33 printings impresses 

 us as extraordinary, in spite of the fact that the use of flat blocks makes 

 it necessary to multiply them so as to produce the desired gradations. 

 With our means of producing gradations by either wood- en graving 



'According to Dr. Bpnckmann (p. 228), tbe inking of one block with several colors 

 is occasionally carried so far as to produce a complete picture in several colors atone 

 impression. Amon# other prints, he describes one of a gray grasshopper feeding on 

 th<- reddish meat of a piece of watermelon, the green rind and the black seeds of 

 which are also seen. The four colors named are applied, each separately, to dif- 

 ferent parts of the block. We have here the principle of rubbing in a plate in 

 different colors, used so extensively by the printers of the colored stipples produced 

 iu the eighteenth century and now again popular. The principle has not, however, 

 been applied to relief printing among us, except by Wm. Blake, and even by him 

 onlv to a very limited extent. 



