JAPANESE WOOD-CUTTING AND WOOD-CUT PKINTING. 243 



given above, and the answers returned by him-. The contrast becomes 

 still more marked when Ave recall, for instance, the methods of prepar- 

 ing colors described by Mr. Tokuno. It is true, no doubt, that, influ- 

 enced by us, the Japanese are coining to depend more and more on 

 machinery, but it is also true that by their old and simple methods, 

 trusting to their experience, their skill, and their artistic feeling, they 

 have produced the best of their work, in which their national charac- 

 teristics have found their most original expression. Nor have they, ac- 

 cording to Mr. Tokuno's statements, suffered in productiveness in con- 

 sequence of their methods. The short time spent in cutting the .">7 

 planks needed for the printing of k ' Yinaka genji," i. c. twenty days, is 

 astonishing enough in spite of the simplicity of the blocks, but our as- 

 tonishment increases to wonder when we read of the number of im- 

 pressions made per day by the Japanese printers, and consider at the 

 same time the tedious methods employed in charging the block with 

 color. As I feared a misunderstanding on my part of the figures 

 given by Mr. Tokuno, I asked him to consider my interpretation of 

 his statements, and in reply the original flgures were confirmed, viz., 

 3,000 sheets per day of about eight hours from the black block, and 

 700 to 800 sheets per day from the color blocks of u Yinaka genji," 

 and on an average 943 sheets per day of u Nandina domestiea," the 

 number varying from 1,800 for the simplest to 600 for the most diffi- 

 cult blocks. It is impossible to make a direct comparison between the 

 productivity of the Japanese and our own printers, as the methods 

 differ too radically, and as long editions of wood-engravings are but 

 very rarely printed nowadays on the hand-press. The following figures 

 will nevertheless be of some interest: Mr. Thos. H. Brennan, wood- 

 engraving proof-printer, of Boston, assures me that 250 impressions 

 from a block measuring 11 by 14 inches and 350 from one measuring 5 

 by 7 inches is a fair average for a working day of nine hours. This is, 

 of course, for first-class work and for first class engraving. Messrs. 

 L. Prang & Co., the well known chromolithographers, also of Boston, 

 write me that the number of impressions which a lithographic printer 

 prints on the hand-press, whether it be from a crayon stone or a pen- 

 and-ink stone, in black or in colors, varies from 175 to- 250 per day of 

 nine hours, and that 200 would be considered a good average. 



It goes without saying that the Japanese methods described above 

 are not suitable for application to our art. A complicated sky, tor in- 

 stance, with all its wealth of delicate tints, such as we And it in the 

 works of our best landscape painters, or the human countenance, ex- 

 pressive of the deepest emotions of the soul, as our best figure painters 

 set it ii] i before us, can be interpreted for us by the skill of our wood 

 engravers, and even their coloring can be successfully approached by 

 our color-printing processes in their most refined development, but they 

 can never be rendered by means of flat blocks, even when painted in 

 delicate gradations by the most skilled of Japanese printers. In try- 



