Five white egrets.

Kachō-e ‘bird-and-flower pictures’ offered print lovers a charming antidote to the melodrama of kabuki-e. Early kachō-e drew on Chinese conventions and "aimed to capture the spirit of nature in connection with the seasons, poetic allusions, or religious values". Bird images often conveyed symbolic meanings – tsuru, the crane, for example, was associated with longevity. By the 20th century, the simpler pleasures of enjoying intimate views of nature had somewhat supplanted these metaphoric associations.
Ohara Shōson (1877-1945), the most celebrated of shin-hanga ('new print') kachō-e artists, is reputed to have designed over 450 bird compositions. Under the name Koson, he had trained in Nihonga Japanese-style painting, specialising in the naturalistic modes of the Maruyama-Shijō school. He found early employment designing senso-e triptychs of the Russo-Japanese War. Subsequently, however, he specialised in intimate shin-hanga views of birds in their natural settings.

Delicate watercolour washes clearly distinguish Shōson’s naturalist style from idioms of contemporary kachō-e designers, and account for his popularity in Japan and in the West. That delicacy challenged the skills of his craftsmen, and Shōson found favour with the best. Works published by Akiyama Buemon (Kokkeidō) and Matsuki Heikichi (Daikokuya) and signed Koson were "principally destined for the foreign market". He changed his name to Shōson from 1912, and used it from around 1923 in his work with the pre-eminent shin-hanga publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō. All five bird prints currently in Te Papa's collection are signed and sealed Shōson, and also bear Watanabe’s small circular seal.

The delicate watercolour effects of the egrets and moon in Shōson's Pair of white egrets (Te Papa 2016-0008-24) brought new challenges to Shōson’s printers. Both that composition, and this later view of five egrets are exquisite celebrations of the block-cutter’s and printer’s crafts. Their skills are evident in the application of crisp curves of karazuri-e gauffrage to the descriptive representations of overlapping white feathers in each print. They inform the delicate grey contours around shapes, and also the tsukekate ‘boneless technique’ they employ to describe the softest edges of feathers or crests, or swaying silhouettes of leaves. The floating snowflakes were crafted by punching holes into the surface of the background colour block, so ink could not transfer to the paper from those tiny areas.

This synthesis of brush and print technique accounts also for the commercial success Shōson’s works enjoyed. His Watanabe-published shin-hanga were especially popular, and were acquired and exhibited by major museums in European and North American markets during the 1920s and 1930s. Their fine craftsmanship and naturalistic colours were complemented by their affordability – in 1930 his works, published in editions of 200, sold for two to three dollars each, compared to ten or twenty dollars for works by artists like Hashiguchi Goyo (1880-1921).

Sources:

David Bell, 'A new vision: modern Japanese prints from the Heriot collection', Tuhinga, 31 (2020), forthcoming.

A. Newland, J. Perrée and R. Schaap, Cows, cranes & camellias: the natural world of Ohara Koson 1877-1945 (Leiden, 2001).

Dr Mark Stocker  Curator, Historical International Art    May 2019