The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, January 19, 1902, Page 11

THE SUNDAY CALL. 11 He = now in San Frangisco and has scmething %0 52y abclt ITugtrating as pragiiged A Jzpzn. SHIMADA, the famous b se newspaper illustrator, fact Mr. Shimada has some months, with the distin- r has so far re- either would it be as modest for e artist is £ I had not happened to | paper mountain in a tudio on Pine street 7 1 demanded, what wings of every de- a Whistler etch- g minde Abbey or Hugh g of yet others h in its chic direct- ve of our Kind— appeal, and a to the West- foreign el anese art. nown all The draw e him and g picture in s and purples, the color of old ntent moment lifted with th ter translated: reprints s. Did choose please nd accept them I said, but the little hurt ve brown face. “Yes, tful child faces will re. But I want to ese newspaper art.” promptly placed his ble disposal,” ordered sweetmeats, and, what I e bouche, ess held for me the gasp sle of my first olive—the epicu- seaweed of Nippon. Then, over ps, 1 learned something e newspaper. no English—with his he has a full vocab- ure and expression. by the sensitive the face, fine, vivid and nts the tale, and the translator kind of paper on which ted?” I asked, parchment-like paper paper is very bad— n, altogether bad,” the e spoils the draw- the only absolutely in- e heard of this ple. w something about the picking up a cleverly subject, with soldlers, and a personage and his ftude—"‘this 1s Exhibition at d Empress. Italian general, You recognize the mu id at first glance. ast said Shimada, and pointed, smiling, to the characteristic collar, whose fame had reached even to Japan. There were humorous drawing: scientist with a literal “big h a spirited sketch of a ho turn of the Americanized father and so forth. little sketches of architecture, tions of ancient fairy legends, cxquisite little land: all h led in a free, sure fashion, at once strong and delicate. There were all sorts of p kinds of people, unm vet seen through Oriem were animal drawings, some ridiculously clever chickens, some rather shing horses, anything and everything, but all showing a master’s hand. “We have in Japan our daily papers, just as you,” Shimada begins again. I assent, though my acquaintance with the Oriental press has been limited to that part of itethat comes wrapped around Japanese porcelain at Christmas time. You know the kind. It looks to the un- initiated like the print of chickens’ in a wet vard, spread In formal fashion over a sheet about half as large again fee a War Cry. “Oh, ye the artist says proudly, “we have papers with a daily circulation of 50,000 and 100,000. The Tok! Hochi, for example, will run up to the latter num- ber. “The Hochi?—doubtless a sheet devoted to art, literature, political reform and the like?" T asked. “Not exactl stammers the trans- lator with comical embarrassment. Then it came out, bit by bit, to my unkind amusement that the Hochi is the yellow, yellow journal of Japan, devoting most of its space to scandals in high life, geisha scrapes, political flub-dub and red- hot news generally. “But there are others?’" T suggest at last to the artist, who was industriously covering as much of his expressive coun- tenance as would lie under a tiny tea cup. “Indeed, yes!” he replied eagerly. ge stamp recently issucd ch postoffice bears on picture of a man hold- ich is inscribed rights of man. a violent protest on the rights societies of erblast, they have h is a duplicate of the Government, only ch the man holds is a Femme" —the rights stamps have been cir- e faithful, with instruc- e one on every letter along- ernment stamp. Thousands have been sold at 10 ed, and thousands of letters ugh the French post bear woman suffrage. The pos- are h annoyed, for look sharp to see which where the letter bears d the female stamps, and a letter does not go only the stamp of the ablet w 40 it. So far the postal authorities have besn OF FRANCE ISSUE THEIR OWN STAMPS. too gallant to protest openly, but “some- thing official” will have to be done about it. Possibly the whole issue of the rights of man stamps will have to be called in. The stamp collector had better be fore- armed against such a contingency and procure a sample of the offending stamps before it is too late. A singular thing is revealed by the number of these “rights of woman” stamps which are now befhg used in Paris, and that is the extent of the woman suffrage sentiment in France. It would seem that the movement for the enfran- chisement of women had become more popular there than any one had an idea of. Perhaps those who are deeply inter- ested in the woman suffrage movement have kept track of its growth in France; but to the general public the extent of it there, as revealed by the many thousands of rights of woman stamps sold, will be a surorise. —_———— Twenty-eight mechanics from Birming- ham are about to visit the polytechnic at Zurich for the purpose of studying the lat- est methods of electrical machinery, * [ was myself artist for the Dai Nihon Kyo Iku, the principal educational journal of Japan. The Capital of Tokio 1s a splendid paper, like your New York Her- 1; the Toshi Mune—Morning Sun—an- other, and the Na#ional Gazette is the best of all. Then there is the Maru Maru Shinbun, like your Life, that is excel- lent for caricature, and many others. And there are the weekly and monthly maga- zines, devoted to art, poetry, science and foreign events and illustrated by the best artists of Japan. “Our néwspaper reflects our life and character exactly as your newspaper does. There is, if you please, however, one large difference between our press and yours. Like you, we have the radical press, the socialist press, even the an- archist press, that are permitted to criti- cize the Government to their full satis- faction. But the head of the Government, the Emperor, is never attacked under any circumstances by any one—as your Mec- Kinley was attacked by your press.” It was my turn to change the subject. “Whe are your famous illustrators?”’ I asked. The interpreter, who should before have been introduced as a cultured young stu- dent and host of Mr. Shimada, himself answered smilingly: “You know Mr. Shimada is himself one of our famous illustrators,” a dictum that has since been confirmed by a distin- guished connolsseur of Japanese art, him- self an accomplished artist and Orlental scholar, Henry F. Bowle of San Mateo, who has interested himself very practl- cally in Mr. Shimada’s American career. “There Is Eisen,” Shimada replied through His.courteous proxy. “Elsen, fa- mous for beautiful girls—like your Gib-. son. He is on ‘The Capital.’ He fllus- trates novels that appear every day in the paper, like the French feulilleton, and people cut out the storles and plctures and bind them into books. There is Kubota, best man of the best school. He illustrated the Chinese and Japanese war for his paper.” 5 “From nature?’ “Oh, yes. We illustrate news entirely from nature. Taguchi is our first artist in caricature. He is on the Maru Maru Shinbun. Every important newspaper bas its artist, one only, and a monopoly of his work, though Eisen and a few SQ/X”‘IGS )1:‘1 ad ofo by ~ N eormenrsy others are privileged to do work for other papers on occasion.” “What is the salary of your Japanese Gibson?” “Efsen? month, and that is about the average. That will perhaps mean three pictures in Eisen gets 150 yen (375 a a day. Then {llustrations will be bought in addition, from 50 cents upward, from other artists. The famous artists, how- ever, all contribute to the newspapers oc- casionally sketches of their pictures that are on exhibition and the like. The a vertisements, like yours, are mostly donl by inferior workmen.” “What is the standing of the newspa- per artist?” “The most distinguished men of the day belong to the newspaper fraternity. Of course the magazines, as with you, con- tain better reproductions, but no better work, The magazines illustrate foreign events and famous people largely mostly by photography. They also have geisha photographs and illustrations concerning themselves with the time of the cherry blossoming, the time of the blooming of the lotus and other events of natlonal importance. The newspapers lllustrate these things also as well as such things as festivals, floods, fires, train wrecks, new bridges, etc.” g “How much does your newspaper cost?” “Two cents, and the magazines 15 cents (30 sen), mostly.” “You use a brush entirely to work with?” I asked, for so I had heard, though the delicacy of the line work in Mr. Shi- mada’s drawings seemed to indicate the use of a pen, and that of the finest. “Yes, it is all brush work,” said the artist, picking up one of the supple little Instruments in question and making with 1t lines thinnest varying in lightness from the pen strokes to a broad, rich stroke that the largest stub could never hope to equal. “It is therefore wash drawing, with the effect of pen drawing,” I decided, for my own satisfaction. “Is your drawing ever enlarged or re- duced In the process of reproduction? I asked. “No,” said the artist. “The drawings themselves are pasted on wooden blocks and directly reproduced therefrom. These Plocks ars often sold, by the way—at §1 a pound—to the little country newspapers that cannot afford to employ an artist of their own. Only the inferior papers do this, of course.” t “This is all very interesting. May I write a little story about 1t?* I asked, and on recelving the permission that I knew would be forthcoming asked the further favor of a characteristic {llustration, that would serve both as example of the artist’s work and of the illustrative art of Japan. The above strong and spirited sketch of & tiger, done In incredibly short time, was the response to my request. Fish, birds and tigers are the “strong suit” of this Japanese ‘“animalier,” and the tiger sketch is of particular appropriateness at this season in Japan. This is their New Year, and its distinguishing zodiacal and cyclical signs the tiger and the stream. Once only in sixty years is this particular combination ble, as with twelve zodiacal signs and only ten cyeclical are po; 3 PEAVIR S T ST SR signs Orlental subtlety has made possible the sixty different astrological conjunc- tions. The tiger illustrates fittingly the quality of the artist’s work, but his paint- ings on silk of fish that were on exhibi- tion in the Vickery art galleries some time ago are still more characteristic. His fish are all but alive, supple, slippery, wet things, curving through wet water in in- describably graceful line. He also paints monkeys and squirrels delightfully, and has lately done some rather wonderful (from a meéchanical standpoint) copies of such Occidental studies as the Cabanel Venus. But I would give a dozen other of any of his things for one small fish. Shimad@a himself is perhaps prouder of some very bad photographs that he has lately turned out than of anything else he has done. BLANCHE PARTINGTON, |