The School of Torii. The Printers’ Branch of Ukiyo-ye. The Torii School was pre-eminently the exponent of the drama. It was bound up with stage development and ministered to the emotional temperament of the nation; leading in what may be considered a national obsession, a mania for actors and actor-prints. A fascinating subject is this century of dramatic evolution fostered by the printers’ branch of the Popular School. The actor had been consigned, in dark feudal days, to the lowest rung in the ladder of caste, ranking next to the outcast (_Eta_), as in early English days the strolling player was associated with tinkers and the other vagrant population. The _No Kagura_ and lyric drama,—suggesting the mediæval and passion plays of Europe,—prefigured the modern drama in Japan, but the immediate precursor of the present theatre was the Puppet Show, a Japanese apotheosis of our Marionette performances. It is interesting to note that Toyokuni, who M. Louis Gonse declared has carried further than any one the power of mimetic art, and with whose theatrical scenes we are most familiar, began his career as a maker of dolls, and these puppets were eagerly sought for as works of art. If the aphorism “not to go to the theatre is like making one’s toilet without a mirror,” be true, then the Japanese are justified in their national stage passion, which overshadows the love of any other amusement. Taking the phrase literally, it was to the persons of the actors, and the printers who spread their pictures broadcast, that the people owed the æsthetic wonders of their costume. The designers were also artists, as instanced by Hishigawa Moronobu, the Kyoto designer and Yedo embroiderer, the printer and painter, illustrator of books and originator of Ukiyo-ye. Enthusiasm for the portraits of actors, fostered by the Torii printers from the foundation of the school by Kiyonobu, about 1710, hastened no doubt the development of colour-printing. As early as Genroku, the portrait of Danjuro, the second of the great dynasty of actors, who by their genius helped to brighten the fortunes of the playhouse, was sold for five cash, in the streets of the capital. The combined genius of the artists, engravers and printers of Ukiyo-ye evolved and perfected the use of the multiple colour-block. Toward the middle of the century, under the waning powers of Torii Kiyomitsu, successor to Kiyonobu, the school seemed sinking into oblivion, for Harunobu, its rightful exponent, filled with visions of ethereal refinement, scorned the theatrical arena. When most needed, however, a prophet arose in the person of Shunsho, the painter, the pupil of Shunsui and master of Hokusai, thus completing the transformation begun by Harunobu. The great scions of the rival branches of Ukiyo-ye, printing and painting, stepped into each other’s places and bridged the chasm, which threatened the unity of the Popular School.