An ideograph does not make upon the Japanese brain any impression
similar to that created in the Occidental brain by a letter or
combination of letters--dull, inanimate symbols of vocal sounds. To the
Japanese brain an ideograph is a vivid picture: it lives; it speaks; it
gesticulates. And the whole space of a Japanese street is full of such
living characters--figures that cry out to the eyes, words that smile or
grimace like faces.
What such lettering is, compared with our own lifeless types, can be
understood only by those who have lived in the farther East. For even
the printed characters of Japanese or Chinese imported texts give no
suggestion of the possible beauty of the same characters as modified
for decorative inscriptions, for sculptural use, or for the commonest
advertising purposes. No rigid convention fetters the fancy of the
calligrapher or designer: each strives to make his characters more
beautiful than any others; and generations upon generations of artists
have been toiling from time immemorial with like emulation, so that
through centuries and centuries of tireless effort and study, the
primitive hieroglyph or ideograph has been evolved into a thing
of beauty indescribable. It consists only of a certain number of
brush-strokes; but in each stroke there is an undiscoverable secret art
of grace, proportion, imperceptible curve, which actually makes it seem
alive, and bears witness that even during the lightning-moment of its
creation the artist felt with his brush for the ideal shape of the
stroke equally along its entire length, from head to tail. But the art
of the strokes is not all; the art of their combination is that
which produces the enchantment, often so as to astonish the Japanese
themselves. It is not surprising, indeed, considering the strangely
personal, animate, esoteric aspect of Japanese lettering, that there
should be wonderful legends of calligraphy relating how words written by
holy experts became incarnate, and descended from their tablets to hold
converse with mankind.