The name of Suzuki Harunobu is familiar to every admirer of Japanese prints. It is in large measure to his genius that the development of full-colour printing is due. He was not only the first artist to make use of the new process, but he took advantage of it to bring out prints of a novel type. Very dainty and graceful these were, and in the poetic allusions or quiet humour with which they were charged, and in the quality of the brush-strokes with which the drawings were executed, they made a direct appeal to men of taste. Success was instantaneous. By the year 1765 Harunobu had come to the front and distanced all competitors for popular favour. The serenity and compelling charm of his compositions brought him wide fame. Realizing the possibilities that now lay before him, he proudly exclaimed, “Why should I degrade myself by the delineation of actors?” His ambition, he said, was to become “the true successor of the painters in the department of printing”; that is to say, to design prints that should be worthy substitutes for paintings. Instead of restricting himself to a few primary or secondary hues and the variations resulting from their superposition, he mixed his colours to get the precise tint desired, and he used as many colour-blocks as were needed for the effects at which he aimed. The Yedo-yé, or Yedo pictures, as the prints had been called from the fact that they were produced only at the eastern capital, were now denominated nishiki-yé, or brocade pictures, from the number of colours woven together in them. To the printing itself, the charging of the blocks with colour, the character and quality of the pigments and of the paper used, Harunobu gave careful attention, and these things were greatly improved as a result of his experiments. Under his leadership the art now entered upon the period of its greatest triumphs. In the eager search for novel subjects scarcely anything was left untouched. History, mythology, and romance, the numberless fêtes and merrymakings of the people and the daily routine of their lives, representations of celebrated poets and heroes, scenes from the drama, portraits of popular actors and courtesans, the revels of the Yoshiwara, animals and plants, familiar scenes and famous landscapes, furnished motives for almost endless broadsheets and book illustrations. No other art was ever more crowded with human interest.