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“I leave my brush in the East WE all have our own, but different, ways of referring to the illusory, evanescent nature of this world: asthir in classical terms, or maya; at the folk level, this aani-jaani duniya, this world as a musafir khana where one goes and another comes, this chalo-chali ka mela. One poet might refer to it as duniyaa-e faani, another as an aalam-i naa-paaidaar. Every other culture, too, has its own way of referring to this overwhelming fact of impermanence. “Ukiyo”— “floating world” — seems to have been the favourite word among the Japanese, coming undoubtedly from ancient Buddhist roots and clearly appropriate for a sea-bound land. With the addition, however, of just another letter “e” and turning into “ukiyo-e”, everything moves into another groove. “Pictures of the floating world” is what it means, and thereby, as they say, hangs a tale. For a whole genre of art, ukiyo-e, essentially in the form of woodblock prints came into being somewhere in the 17th century and caught on like a wild fire.
I have touched upon it earlier too, but each time one comes upon the work that fell in this category, one is startled at what it was able to achieve in itself, and how influential it turned out to be. It sprang in the metropolitan culture of the capital city Edo — which later was to change its name to Tokyo — and began by relating closely to the world of theatre, restaurants, teahouses, geishas and courtesans. By turning to observing and portraying real life that they could see all around themselves, great masters like Hokusai, Utamaro, Sharaku, brought into being a unique document of their times. Initially, the prints turned out by many masters might have been meant to serve simply as posters, “advertising theatre performances and houses of pleasure”, or representing figures from the world of glamour — actors and seductive teahouse girls and sumo wrestlers — but quickly real art took over, combining visual poetry and idealised reality. Landscapes came in and the innate Japanese love of nature surfaced in print after print. Some remarkable work was produced and, with the help of the vastly popular and burgeoning industry of woodblock printing, then active in Japan, it was to be seen everywhere, for not only was it alluring in itself, but also affordable. And then, of course, we know that it reached Europe, sometimes through circuitous channels, and made such an impact upon several artists individually — consider van Gogh and Whistler — and the whole of that growing, path-breaking movement: Impressionism. Among the last great painters of the floating world was Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) who is said to have looked at Hokusai, the great master who was his senior with the same sense of awe and admiration as we look at his work today. Born in Edo but not in a painter’s family — his father was a samurai and a fireman — he grew up in difficult circumstances, for both his parents died when he was just 12. But he joined, with determination, a painting school in which his brilliance shone early. At 21, he illustrated a complete book, crowded with images of kabuki actors, samurai warriors and teahouse ‘hostesses’. But he was soon to turn to nature and to the city life that he loved and was soaked in. Following current popular practice — one remembers Hokusai’s One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji — he began producing series of prints of places and sights and one of the very first he turned out was Fifty-three Stages of Tokaido, the Tokaido being the coastal highway that connected Edo with Kyoto, where the Emperor resided, and stages being places along the route that had lodges and simple dhaba-like restaurants.
The series earned him great fame, and from then on, Hiroshige committed himself almost exclusively to making landscape prints though in the vertical or oban format. The most celebrated of his series was One Hundred Famous Views of Edo which he turned out towards the end of his life, between 1856 and 1858. It is a masterly series of works in which, despite the bustling subjects he was looking at as someone remarked, “he made the world seem permanent, unchanging, and, to our eyes, implausibly tranquil”. Hiroshige is said to have turned out close to 5,000 prints in his lifetime, nearly a thousand of them relating to Edo — then possibly the large city in the entire world — each street, each corner, each bridge of which he had explored and looked at with affection. But no two works are alike, for he was constantly innovating. There were endless festivals, snow seasons, views of changing weather and seasons, but there were also those countless restaurants and houses of pleasure which he must have frequented himself and — being a chronicler of the everyday — kept taking into his ambit. He was constantly exploring new ways to render familiar sights: an exploding firework, whirlpools in a river, cherry blossoms paving the street. But while constantly playing with space and distances — viewing somethings from close, rendering others by pushing them far, very far into the distance — he seldom crowded his views. He was only too well aware that too much detail in a work is harmful: the importance of emptiness and of the undescribed, he seemed to say in his work, leaves the viewer free to fill spaces according to his own imagination. There is such joy in Hiroshige’s work. But, in 1856, the year in which he began his One Hundred Famous View of Edo, he also “retired from the world”, becoming a Buddhist monk.
Just before his death, he is said to have written the little poem which I have cited above. But who knows what ‘western land’ was he speaking of in it: the strip of land that lies between Kyoto and Edo? Or, the monk that he had become, to the Paradise of the Amida Buddha?
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’art & soul
