Allen Hockley’s long-awaited monograph on Isoda Koryūsai (1735–90) is a welcome addition to the literature on Japan’s eighteenth-century print culture. Not only does he focus on one of the too-long neglected masters of the period, he also presents a fine analysis of some of Koryūsai’s major themes as well as his best-known series of single prints, Models for Fashion: New Designs as Fresh Young Leaves. That this study is, indeed, long overdue can be inferred from the fact that Koryūsai has received little scholarly attention in spite of the sheer number of designs for which he was responsible. As Hockley demonstrates, they total over 2,500, exclusive of illustrations to books. Others in the last decades of the eighteenth century with smaller outputs, such as Suzuki Harunobu (some 1,100), Torii Kiyonaga (1,180), and Kitagawa Utamaro (1,833), have been treated to close study. Most of Koryūsai’s designs were produced in a twelve-year period, from 1769 to 1781. Ironically, it was probably due to the circumstance that he was active in this specific period that Koryūsai may have never made it to the first rank of print designers. It must also be stated, however, that we do not know whether he was considered so during his own time or whether this is due to the scholarship of a much later day.

Until now, Koryūsai has received almost cursory mention only as a designer of prints, being praised for his “excellent kachōga, bijinga, and particularly hashira-e” (Laurance Roberts, A Dictionary of Japanese Artists: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Prints, Lacquer, Tokyo and New York: Weatherhill, 1976, 90ff.), or else dubbed one of “three outstanding masters . . . who were each of them brilliantly gifted” (Laurence Binyon and J.J. O’Brien Sexton, Japanese Colour Prints, London: Faber and Faber, 1960 [first edition, 1923], 76); the two others being Kitao Shigemasa and Katsukawa Shunshō, the latter the subject of a monograph study of 1922 (Friedrich Succo, Katsukawa Shunshō [Haruaki], Julius Kurth, ed., Ostasiatische Graphik, vol. 3, Plauen im Vogtland: C.F. Schulz, 1922]) or selected as one of a number of forgotten masters and thus allotted one chapter in Jack Hillier’s New Approach of 1960 (The Japanese Print: A New Approach, London: G. Bell and Sons, 1960). In The Prints of Isoda Koryūsai, Hockley discusses his oeuvre in terms of the printmaking medium (chapter 3), his prints of courtesans (chapter 4), and his career (chapter 5). This analysis is further complemented in the appendices by a first attempt at an inventory of his work.

When Koryūsai started designing woodblock prints, the single-sheet format had just come of age through the newly developed technique of full-color printing and catered to the demands of a large-scale audience in Japan’s capital city of Edo (present-day Tokyo). More precisely, the method of producing an essentially almost unlimited number of reproductions of the same image, printed in color from various color-blocks, had been developed in 1764 and used on a large-scale for the New Year of 1765. From the mid-1760s, designers such as Harunobu and Shunshō had monopolies on the genres of fashionable women and stars of the kabuki-stage, respectively. The latter died in 1791 having established a tradition of highly skilled followers, such as Katsukawa Shunkō, Katsukawa Shun’ei, and others, who would keep the Katsukawa tradition alive and flourishing until the turn of the century. When Harunobu died in 1770, having explored the possibilities of polychrome printing for a period of some five years, none of the handful of his direct followers was capable of holding the market-share of prints of fashionable women engaging in equally fashionable pastimes.

Even though there was clearly room at the time for an artist such as Koryūsai, he was not the only one to see this opportunity. In addition to the somewhat independent Shigemasa, Kiyonaga emerged from the Torii line of actor print-designers to make the switch to prints of beautiful women (bijinga). Both Kiyonaga and Koryūsai started their careers in the late 1760s, and both tried to take their share in the 1770s print market, focusing on designs of fashionable townswomen or the popular courtesans of the licensed quarters of the New Yoshiwara. Both designers worked in most of the various formats in which publishers issued these prints, ranging in size from the small koban, to the more standard chūban, to the larger aiban and ōban formats (twice the size of the koban and chūban respectively). Moreover, both also designed large numbers of pillar prints (hashira-e), a long and narrow upright format deriving its name from the notion that such prints could be pasted on the pillars of a house. Both were also prolific in the genre of erotic prints (shunga). Koryūsai seems to have explored an even wider range of themes than Kiyonaga, including almost two hundred prints on the theme of flowers and birds (kachōga). Yet what may have been a fierce competition at the time was undoubtedly lost posthumously by Koryūsai—and all the more so in the Western scholarship over a century later.

Hockley traces the scholarly account back to a mix of European and US writers and to verdicts made as early as 1897 by Woldemar von Seidlitz (Geschichte des japanischen Farbenholzschnitts, Dresden: Gerhard Kuhtmann, 1897) who was, in turn, inspired foremost by such writers as Ernest Satow (“On the Early History of Printing in Japan,” in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 10 (1881): 48–83) and William Anderson (Pictorial Arts of Japan, 4 vols., Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1886; and “Japanese Wood Engravings,” in Portfolio, London: Seely, 1895, 4–80). Hockley thus provides us with an interesting analysis of early ukiyo-e scholarship. He then proposes that this early verdict was later also followed by Raymond Koechlin (“Harunobu Koriusaï Shunsho,” in Harunobu Koriusaï Shunsho. Estampes japonaises /…/ exposées au Musée des Arts Décoratifs en janvier 1910, Paris, 1910, 7–15), James Michener (The Floating World, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1954), J. Hillier (The Japanese Print: A New Approach, Rutland, Vt., Charles e. Tuttle, 1960), and even by Richard Lane (Images from the Floating World, New York: Putnam, 1978); and he confirms that all of these writers attempted to impose a Western-biased view upon Japanese art. They not only tried to define a periodization for the history of Japanese prints, but also to nominate their favorites as its greatest representatives. In Hockley’s account, this process much resembles a game of chess where Koryūsai was the sacrificed Queen. This, at least, must be the summary conclusion of the first chapter of Hockley’s book, which also provides a critical review of various other biographical sources. Yet whether early Japanese writers were also influenced by these Western sources, as well as overall patterns of Japanese evaluations of Koryūsai, remains vague, as Japanese scholarship is not taken up in Hockley’s consideration of the historiography of ukiyo-e.

Although Hockley’s analysis certainly proposes some interesting views on the history of ukiyo-e scholarship, he himself also fails to come up with a critical review of Koryūsai’s oeuvre, let alone to make the badly needed comparison between Koryūsai and his contemporaries, such as Shigemasa and Kiyonaga, to name but two. Even in his discussion in chapter 4 of the Hinagata series, Hockley does not answer the obvious question of whether Nishimuraya Yohachi’s commissioning of Kiyonaga circa 1778 to complete this series might indicate that Koryūsai had lost the competition in the eyes of the publisher. Instead, the comparisons Hockley makes are always focused on Koryūsai’s predecessor, Harunobu (who died in 1770). In addition, Hockley does not engage the reasons why Kiyonaga has instead emerged as one of the so-called ”Six Masters” of ukiyo-e—Harunobu, Kiyonaga, Utamaro, Tōshūsai Sharaku, Katsushika Hokusai, and Utagawa Hiroshige—nor evaluate whether Kiyonaga’s position is deserved. In the absence of such a discussion and, furthermore, without providing the reader with necessary information about what was occurring during this crucial period, how can we be expected to agree with Hockley that, indeed, an unjust treatment has befallen Koryūsai?

Rather, Koryūsai’s importance for Hockley depends foremost on the production of more than 2,500 designs. Hockley claims instead that: “One would assume that an artist as productive as Koryūsai would have a high profile in ukiyo-e scholarship” (3), and “Koryūsai may not have been up to great master standards in a connoisseurial sense . . . but he was obviously a highly productive and, therefore, a highly popular artist” (6). This productivity is broken down into “one hundred seventy print series—five times the combined output of his predecessors,” “four hundred fifty hashira-e (pillar prints)—constituting nearly forty percent of all extant designs in this format,” “roughly one hundred eighty designs” of flower and bird prints, “two hundred plus ichimai-e (single sheet designs)” and “four ehon (illustrated books),” “roughly five hundred shunga (erotic pictures) for albums of various formats,” plus “approximately ninety” paintings (3). However, this count of Koryūsai’s quantity neglects to discuss Koryūsai’s production of books and of erotic pictures, leaving out this significant body of work (Hockley references a few titles for information about period hairstyles). Yet in spite of Koryūsai’s greater quantity, it may be argued that Kiyonaga gained more lasting fame with a smaller production. Indeed, quantity is not the way to evaluate their respective contributions to the Japanese print. Productivity is neither equal to popularity nor necessarily to importance. Popularity and relative importance have to be based on a discussion of quite a different nature, and this Hockley does not do.

I am afraid that Hockley cannot, in this way, convince me of Koryūsai’s importance, nor of his being underestimated in the history of Japanese prints. Fortunately, there is no need to do so. I have long believed that Koryūsai represents one of only a handful of geniuses in the history of Japanese print culture, a list that includes Hishikawa Moronobu, Torii Kiyonobu, Nishikawa Sukenobu, Okumura Masanobu, Shunshō, Shigemasa, Kiyonaga and Katsukawa Shunchō taken together, Utamaro, Utagawa Toyokuni, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Hokusai, and Kawanabe Kyūsai. Not included is Harunobu who happened to be in the right place at the right time but who made no contribution to furthering the development of Japanese prints or ensuring their future, other than his own (rather limited and not very imaginative) production. Sharaku is also not included in my list, although he was undoubtedly one of the greatest designers of prints, creating his own very important oeuvre; but the way was nicely paved for him by various others. Kiyonaga and Shunchō are on my list for their expert handling of the ideal of feminine beauty, their successful efforts to integrate background settings in their designs, their novel compositions, and their working in a variety of formats, including multiple-sheet compositions. Koryūsai is included as the first to explore the variety of new print formats to the full, catering for various segments of the market, and, above all, exploring numerous novel themes and working these into titled series, thus laying the basis for much of the work of his contemporaries and followers.

In this respect, Koryūsai’s contribution to the future of the Japanese print cannot be overestimated. This is probably what Hockley wants to say when stating that, “Koryūsai designed one hundred seventy print series—five times the combined output of his predecessors” (3), but the importance is not so much in the figures as in the scope. In other words, how many new themes did Koryūsai contribute to the realm of Japanese prints? Furthermore, comparison with his predecessors is not altogether fair, since the pattern of print consumption was altogether different in previous decades; with probably seventy to eighty percent of all prints featuring kabuki actors in specific roles, there was little incentive to bring these out in titled series. It is exactly the changing market for prints combined with how they were being marketed that led to the invention of themes and to the further development of prints in series. Simply put, such a market did not exist prior to the period in which Koryūsai worked. Moreover, in so far as Hockley does discuss the market, there is no mention of those responsible for the marketing: the publishers.

In addition, when Hockley discusses the development of the production of serialized prints in the 1780s and 1790s (45), his suggestion that this would have been affected by such factors as the popularity of diptychs and triptychs as well as by several fires in the Yoshiwara strikes this reader as unlikely. By way of comparison, consider Kiyonaga’s work in the 1780s. Of his prints that depict beautiful women (bijin), only an extremely small percentage (less than 10 percent) represent identified (named) courtesans. It seems very unlikely that such prints and those issued in series would have made up a larger percentage of the total if so many had not been consumed by fires. Most likely, as remarked above, Kiyonaga was more interested in exploring the compositional possibilities of the diptych and the triptych format, focusing on a different audience as well, and for this he deserves our high esteem. Hockley seems to have been misled by Koryusai’s production patterns, failing to notice how much the artist himself or his publishers apparently preferred to issue prints of named and identified courtesans in print series.

After all this, it still comes as a surprise to note that Hockley’s failure to discuss Koryūsai’s oeuvre in any rational way is also reflected in the bewildering organization of the five appendices, taking up some hundred pages listing Koryūsai’s designs. Furthermore, how this list was constructed is unclear—were these seen and catalogued by Hockley or were the titles accumulated from various sources?—and this leaves open the possibility that there is potential duplication of designs. In spite of his own statement that he “found the organization presented here to be the most efficient way of locating any one print” (189), I would venture to say that even for those who can read Japanese (since it seems of limited value to those who cannot), a strictly alphabetical order, possibly organized first by main themes such as figures and nature subjects and then by format (koban, chūban, ōban, and pillar prints—or the other way around), would have been of considerable aid. Similar lists using the standard work, the Ukiyo-e shūka volumes (the standard reference work of major collections in Europe and the US with lists of the known works of foremost designers of prints, such as Harunobu, Kiyonaga, Utamaro, Hosoda Eishi and his followers, Sharaku, Utagawa Kunimasa, Hokusai and Hiroshige) that establish basic lists of their prints and their locations, would have provided a good model of organization.

Hockley finds in Koryūsai “all the necessary ingredients of an interesting and provocative case study” (10). His monograph certainly contains a wealth of interesting information, very nice discussions of some themes and aspects (see, for example, his treatment of the mitate-concept [47ff.]), but also, alas, an abundance of provocative statements for which I can detect no base. Nevertheless, along with the many important points this book makes, it is also the first attempt in many years to position a designer in his times, and as such it is a most stimulating contribution to the field.