Many of the prints produced during the early years of the eighteenth century were large single figures of actors, geishas, and women of the Yoshiwara. These were broadly treated, with strong, free brush-strokes based upon the technique of the Kano masters and quite different from Moronobu’s style, which was more nearly like that of the Tosa painters. Each of the classical schools, I may explain, had its own peculiar methods, for which brushes of special shape were required. In their spontaneity, their freedom, their glorious sweep of line, these prints are among the finest works of the Ukiyoé school. Among them are many masterpieces of linear composition. Yet by the people of the upper classes they were regarded as hopelessly vulgar. Though the Kano painters used similar sweeping strokes, they laid great stress upon carefully modulated tone. The notan, or lightness and darkness of the ink in different parts of the drawing, was an essential quality. It should not be confused with chiaroscuro, the science of light and shade. Notan signifies merely difference in lightness and darkness of tone. In the early prints this did not appear. All the lines were uniformly black. And the addition of colouring which was looked upon as coarse and gaudy was a further offence to persons of refined taste. Our vision not being hampered by the canons of the Kano academy, we can appreciate the distinguished character of these compositions. Unquestionably the brush-work of a Sesshu, a Motonobu, or a Tanyu—to name a few only of the most eminent of the Japanese painters—has a precious quality not to be found in any printed line.(2) Nevertheless the primitive Ukiyoé prints have a freshness and vital force peculiarly their own. The word “primitive” as applied to these prints calls for a word of explanation. They are primitive, not in their art, which is highly developed, but merely as regards its application to wood-engraving.