the mountain; then we turn at right angles toward a great esplanade,
lost at its edges in trees, from which again the forest would be all the
picture were it not that farther back upon the hill rises a high wall,
with a platform and lofty steps, and the carved red-and-gold face of a
cloister, with another still richer gate of a red lacquer, whose
suffering by time has made it more rosy, more flower-like.
Up these steps we went, the distant trees of the mountains ascending
with us, and we rested in the red-and-gold shade. Above us the gold
brackets of the roof were reflected back, in light and dark, upon the
gold architrave, adorned by the great carved peonies, red and white, and
great green leaves which stood out with deep undercutting. From the
fluted red columns projected great golden tapirs' heads and paws,
streaked with red like the bloom of tulips. The gilded metal sockets and
joinings and the faint modeled reliefs of the wall, all of dull gold,
looked green against the red lacquer. Beyond, the inner lintel was
green, like malachite, against the sunny green of the forest. Its
chamfered edge reflected in gold the lights and shadows beyond, and
against the same green trees stood out the long heads and trunks of the
tapir capitals in red and gold.
Through this framework of red and many-colored gold we passed into the
inner court, made into a cloister by walls and narrow buildings, rich in
red lacquer and black and gold. As before with Iyéyasŭ, so also within
this inclosure, is another raised upon a base faced with great blocks of
granite, fretted, spotted, and splashed with white and purple lichens.
The sun-embroidered wall or fence that edges it is black with a
bronze-and-gold roof; its trellises are of white, edged with gold; as
usual, bands of carved and colored ornament divide so as almost to
pierce its face; and its beams are capped with jointings of chiseled
metal. The central gate spots joyously the long line of black and gold
and color and bronze, with imposts of white carving, framed in rosy
lacquer, and with gold pillars and a gold lintel, upon which is spread a
great white dragon, and with a high gold pediment, divided by recesses
of golden ornament on ultramarine, and with golden doors fretted with a
fairy filagree of golden ornament.
Through this lovely gate, with an exquisite inlaid ceiling of pearl and
gold and walls of carved and colored trellises, we pass to the main
shrine, only just behind it.
Here again, less pretense than with Iyéyasŭ, and greater and more
thoughtful elegance. The long white carved columns of the portico run
straight up to the brackets of its roof--except where, to support the
cross-beam of the transoms, project red lions' heads and paws, looking
like great coral buds. The entire architrave of the building is divided
into a succession of long friezes, stepping farther and farther out,
like a cornice, until they meet the golden roof. Only a few gold
brackets support the highest golden beam--carvings, color, and delicate
stampings of the lacquer embroider the gold with a bloom of color. The
gold doors look like jewelers' work in heavy filagree.
All within was quiet, in a golden splendor. Through the small openings
of the black-and-gold gratings a faint light from below left all the
golden interior in a summer shade, within which glittered on lacquer
tables the golden utensils of the Buddhist ceremonial. From the coffered
ceiling hangs the metal baldachin, like a precious lantern's chain
without a lamp.
[Illustration: IN THE THIRD GATE OF THE TEMPLE OF IYÉMITSŬ,
LOOKING TOWARD THE FOURTH.]
[Illustration: A PRIEST AT IYÉMITSŬ.]
The faces of the priests who were there were known to us, the elder's
anxious and earnest, the younger's recalling an Italian monsignore. One
of them was reading by the uplifted grating and rose to greet us, and to
help to explain. We entered the narrow passage which makes the center,
through whose returning walls project, in a curious refinement of
invention, the golden eaves of the inner building beyond. Gratings which
were carved and gilded trellises of exquisite design gave a cool,
uncertain light. We passed out of a trellised door on to the black
lacquered floor of a veranda, and then sat awhile in a simple room with
our hosts to look at temple manuscripts and treasures, and at the open
palanquin which once brought here the dead Iyémitsŭ--not reduced to
ashes, as his grandfather Iyéyasŭ, but wrapped and covered up in
innumerable layers of costly and preserving vermilion. We passed into
the corridor behind the building and looked at the picture hanging on
the wall, which faces the mountain and the tomb, in which Kuwan-on the
Compassionate sits in contemplation beside the descending stream of
life. Then for a few moments we entered by a low door the sanctuary,
narrow and high and with pyramidal roof.
[Illustration: KUWANON, BY OKIO.]
By the flickering torch which alone gave light, all seemed of gold--the
wall, the columns which run up to the central golden roof, and the
transoms which connect them. In the darker shade stood a golden shrine,
never opened. Whatever precious details there may be were bathed in a
shade made of reflected gold. An exquisite feeling of gentle solemnity
filled the place. We passed out suddenly into the glare of day and under
the blazing blue sky, which hung over the inclosure of tall trees and
the temple like the ceiling of a tent.
Again a great wall, spotted with moss and lichens, is built around as an
inclosure. It makes a base for the greater wall of the mountain rising
above it, which is covered with forest trees, as if the skirting of the
wilderness of northern Japan were here suddenly limited. Across one
single opening, on the one side, where show the seams of the immense
cyclopean construction, and joining two corners, broken by great patches
of the shadows of the gigantic trees, stretches a white wall, heavily
roofed, against a shadow almost black. In its center is a strange, white
gate-building, moundlike in shape, absolutely plain, but capped by a
great roof, which is stretched out upon a mass of brackets, all of gold
and colors, and with carved golden doors, whose central panels are all
fretted and chiseled and stamped with the Wheel of the law. Here begin
the distant steps leading through the trees to the tomb where lies the
body of Iyémitsŭ, cased in layers of vermilion, under golden bronze,
like his grandfather Iyéyasŭ, and surrounded by the still more solitary
splendor of the forest.
Astonishing as is the contrast to-day, in the abundance and glory of
summer, of the bronze and the lacquered colors, and the golden carvings,
with the wild rocks and trees, the grass and the mosses, I should like
to see in the snow of winter this richness and glitter and warmth of red
and white and black and gold.
Can it bring out still more the lavishness of refinement, which wells
up as if exhaustless? Does its white monotony and the dark of the great
cedars make one feel still more the recklessness of this accumulation of
gold lacquer and carving and bronze, all as if unprotected and trusted
to the chances of the recurring seasons?
As we repeat each look, on our slow return through the temples, the
same elegance, the same refinement, the same indifference to the
outrages of time, contrast again with the permanence and the forces of
nature. With the fatigue and repetition of the innumerable beauties of
gold and color, carving and bronze, the sense of an exquisite art brings
the indefinable sadness that belongs to it, a feeling of humility and of
the nothingness of man. Nowhere can this teaching be clearer than in
this place of the tombs. It is as if they said, serenely or splendidly,
in color and carving and bronze and gold: "We are the end of the limits
of human endeavor. Beyond us begins the other world, and we, indeed,
shall surely pass away, but thou remainest, O Eternal Beauty!"
TAO: THE WAY
NIKKO, July 28.
Osomi and Tategawa were the architects of Nikko; Osomi planned the
lovely pagoda,--so I am told,--and I hasten to put down their names. At
that time the great Tenkai was abbot. He was a friend and adviser of
Iyéyasŭ, as he was the teacher of Iyémitsŭ, the grandson, and of
Hidetada, the less illustrious son. It may be with him that Iyéyasŭ
arranged the plan of fixed endowment for the Church; an endowment not to
be added to or diminished, so that it should be an element of stability
and no longer a fluctuating danger. With this seems to have ended the
possible reasons for military dependents in the service of the Church.
Tenkai is said to have planned or prepared beforehand the temples of
Iyéyasŭ, which might explain the extremely short time given in the
record for their building; so that, begun in 1616, the stable, the
surrounding edifices, and the shrine were completed in the third month
of 1617.
I have been careful to give you some account of the temples of Iyéyasŭ
and Iyémitsŭ, because I regret having said so little of those temples of
Shiba in Tokio, where the remainder of the Tokugawa rulers repose in a
state adorned by similar splendors. But these temples of the founders
are of a more complete type, and, with one exception, seem to me more
impressive. Yet even with the beauties that I have tried to describe, I
am still not quite so carried away as I might have been by such complete
works of art. There is a something, a seeming of pretense or effort or
ingeniousness, which I cannot seize, but which seems to me to belong to
a splendor not quite secure, or perhaps only just secured,--something
like what I might call the mark of the parvenu.
Yes; I think that is it. It is still, after all this time, just a little
new. But what thorough adaptation of means to ends; how delicately
subtle the arrangements, and simple; and how impossible to describe
through words or drawings. How the result alone is aimed at, and what
little parade is made of the intention and preparation. This work, which
seems to betray an inferiority to its own ideal--this work, which has
even a touch of the vulgar, is charming enough to look like a fairyland.
It displays a capacity for arrangement which none of us to-day could
hope to control; has a charm that any passer-by could feel; has more
details of beauty than all our architects now living, all together,
could dream of accomplishing in the longest life. When I began to
reflect how this wood and plaster had more of the dignity of art and of
its accessible beauty than all that we have at home, if melted together,
would result in; that these frail materials conveyed to the mind more of
the eternal than our granite, it seemed to me that something was
absolutely wrong with us.
And the cause of this result was not the splendor of line and color; it
was not the refinement. The last time I could recall a similar sensation
had been before some little church tower of England; it was certainly
the subordination of all means to a single end, and their disappearance
in one impression.
... Since my first visit to the temples my mind has been dwelling more
and more in an involuntary manner upon the contrast with all modern art,
and I venture to note down for you some of the thoughts forced upon me.
It seems as if I were really reminded of what I always knew, or ought to
have known; and perhaps what I may say about ourselves is as good a way
as any other of giving an opinion upon what I see here. For, indeed,
what I see here that I admire I feel as though I had always known, had
already seen; it is rather most of our own that seems queer, strange,
and often unreasonable.
I can make no set and orderly arrangement of my rather confused
thinking, but can only trace it out as it occurred to me--as if it were
from outside; as if something whispered to me now and then out of small
occurrences, and said, "Don't you understand more clearly?"
... On leaving the temples we went back to our friends' house, which was
once the residence of the regent of Japan--a large, low wooden building
of the kind so carefully described by Mr. Morse in his book. All is
extremely simple; there is nothing to call any attention. The woodwork
is merely put together with great care; some little panels of the
closets are nicely trimmed with metal and highly ornamented. This, with
metal nail-heads and a pretty wall-paper, is all the decoration.
Here we found the mail and papers, and enjoyed the watering-place
feeling of news from town. There were copies of "Life" and of the London
"Punch," many of whose drawings did not look out of place in this land
of clever sketchers. Indeed, that in them which once seemed good across
the seas still held its own in presence of the little prodigies of
technique that one meets in Japanese drawings.
Indeed, they recalled one another. Both call out one's sudden
recollection of some facts in nature; and besides, all good sketches
resemble one another as being the nearest approach to the highest
finished work. They have in common with it the essential merit of being
better than they appear, of indicating more than is necessary to tell
the tale, of not being strictly measurable quantities. We grow so
ungrateful when too well treated that we forget how Mr. Du Maurier
throws in, over and above the social epigram in lines, an elegance and
grace that might belong to a poetic picture; that Mr. Keene tells his
story over and over again in the very folds of each individual's dress;
that he will, unconcernedly, present us with a landscape as full of
nature as his human figures, instead of the indifferent background which
would have been sufficient for the story of the caricaturist. Now, the
feeling of disenchantment, of having "found out" appearances, of having
come to the end of a thing, is never forgiven by the average healthy
mind. In greater things one turns, some day, to those which are always
richer and fuller of meaning with time,--as one looks to-day at a Corot
or a Delacroix or a Millet once uncared-for,--and that means that at
length our eyes are opened. The sketch, like the great work of art, is
better than it appears, and recalls to me the emperor in the story, whom
the old woman could not recognize in the presence of the big drum-major.
We can appreciate what suffering the little old woman underwent when she
discovered her mistake, and how she never forgave the big drum-major.
For mankind has never believed at heart that the work itself is to be
judged, but has always (at least in the case of one's neighbor)
acknowledged that it is the _work of art which judges us_.
So says a Japanese friend, and I think that he has it exactly. Hence an
importance attaches to criticism which otherwise would be
inexplainable,--the importance there is in being right,--because we
shall be judged ourselves if we are wrong, and often by ourselves as
judges.
... And late numbers of the magazines had come, pleasant to look over
before dinner,--while the noiseless servants glided over the matting,
and our hostess put on her Japanese costume,--serving to make the
distance greater, as we feel that all goes on at home with the usual
regularity.
Some architectural sketches in facsimile in a magazine became entangled
with the thread of my thinking and brought to my mind an inevitable
lesson.
They were charming, and so different from the realities which they were
meant to embody. One I dwelt upon, bright and clever, where every dark
of window or of shadow intensified the joyfulness of the white wall of a
residence at home, which you daily pass. In the reality, alas! its Fifth
Avenue monotony is unrelieved. The wall is not bright, the windows are
paler than the walls, and the projections and adornment are duller yet.
The drawing was an abstraction, probably meant for the sweet enticement
of the client, and was what the building _should have been_. The
draughtsman "knew better than he builded." As my mind analyzed this
curious professional misstatement of truth, it seemed to me that I could
see how the art of architecture in Japan was real compared to ours, even
though none of their architects, any more than those of the great past
of the world, could have made such a drawing--such a brilliant promise
of a performance not to be, such a beautifully engraved check upon a
bank where there were no funds. Not knowing the science and art of
perspective drawing, nor the power of representing shadows according to
rule, nor having the habit of ruling lines with a ruler to give
interest, nor of throwing little witty accents of dark to fill up
blanks, they were perhaps the more obliged to concentrate their powers
upon the end of the work; and their real motive was the work itself.
This may be strange and contradictory to the modern Western mind,
gradually accustomed to polished cartoons for bad paintings and worse
glass, to remarkable designs for decoration and architecture which look
their best in woodcuts, to great decorative paintings which are carried
out so that they may be photographed without any injury to their color,
nay, to its vast improvement. Do you remember how B----, the famous
sculptor, used to preach to me that to-day no one looked at a thing
itself, no one expected to, and that the fame of the artist was for
those whose work could be adequately represented in the newspapers. That
an excellence which could not be duplicated, that a tone which could not
be matched, that a line which could not be copied, was not to be
appreciated and could not be cared for. In fact, that such refinements
were only worthy of the mind of an Oriental, "of a man accustomed to
wear the moon embroidered on his back." Why spend days in obtaining the
color of a wall which any architect will think can be adequately
replaced by his description of something like it to the painting firm
around the corner? Why make the thing itself, if something like it will
do as well? Why strike the note exactly, if any sound near it satisfies
the average ear? For us, to-day, things and realities no longer exist.
It is in their descriptions that we believe. Even in most cultivated
France an architect or designer like Viollet-le-Duc will seriously
undertake to restore old work, every square inch of which has had the
patient toil of souls full of love and desire of the best, by rubbing it
all out, and making a paper drawing or literary description for others
to restore again in a few modern weeks the value of ancient years of
ineffably intelligent care. Consider this impossibility of getting a
decent restoration carried out by our best intelligences, and note that
while they are unable with all money and talk and book-learning to
replace the past in a way that can deceive us, there exist patient,
obscure workmen who, beginning at the other end of the work, produce
little marvels of deception in false antiquities--purchased by museums
and amateurs for sums their authors never could get in their proper
name. But these latter have only one object, the thing itself, and are
judged by the result; while we, the arbiters and directors better known,
who never employ them, are satisfied, and satisfy others by our having
filed in the archives of to-day notices that we are going to do
something in the utterly correct way. I took as an example our friend
Viollet-le-Duc, the remarkable architect whose works we have both
studied, because he has written well,--in some ways, no one more acutely
and more wisely; because of his real learning, and on account of his
very great experience. Is all that this man and his pupils did in their
own art of making, worth, as art, the broken carving that I kick to-day
out of my path?
Has such a risible calamity ever occurred before in any age? Destruction
there has been, replacing of old, good work with better or with worse by
people who did not understand, or care, or pretend to care; but the
replacing of good with bad by people who do understand, and who claim to
care, has never been a curse until to-day. This failure in all
restoration, in all doing of the thing itself, must be directly
connected with our pedantic education and with our belief in convenient
appliances, in propositions, in labor-saving classifications, in action
on paper, in projects for future work, in soul-saving theories and
beliefs--in anything except being saved by the--work itself.
Indeed, I have always felt that perhaps in the case of poor Richardson,
just dead, we may begin to see the shape of an exception, and can
realize what can be accomplished through what we called deficiencies. He
was obliged, in the first place, to throw overboard in dealing with new
problems all his educational recipes learned in other countries. Then,
do you think that if he had drawn charming drawings beforehand he would
have been able to change them, to keep his building in hand, as so much
plastic material? No; the very tenacity needed for carrying out anything
large would have forced him to respect his own wish once finally
expressed, while the careful studies of his assistants were only a
ground to inquire into, and, lastly, to choose from.
For many little prettinesses and perfections do not make a great unity.
Through my mind passes the reminiscence of something I have just been
reading, the words of an old Chinese writer, an expounder of Tao (the
Way), who said what he thought of such matters some twenty-five
centuries ago. What he said runs somewhat in this way:
The snake hissed at the wind, saying: "I at least have a form, but
you are neither this nor that, and you blow roughly through the
world, blustering from the seas of the north to the seas of the
south."
"It is true," replied the wind, "that I blow roughly, as you say,
and that I am inferior to those that point or kick at me, in that
I cannot do the same to them. On the other hand, I blow strongly
and fill the air, and I can break huge trees and destroy large
buildings. _Out of many small things in which I do not excel I
make_ ONE GREAT ONE _in which I do excel._"
* * * * *
In the domains of the One there may not be managing.
Hence, also, the difficulty, I had almost said the impossibility, of
finding a designer to-day capable of making a _monument_: say, for
instance, a tomb, or a commemorative, ideal building--a cathedral, or a
little memorial. There is no _necessity_ in such forms of art, nothing
to call into play the energies devoted to usefulness, to getting on, to
adaptation, to cleverness, which the same Taoist says is the way of man,
while integrity is the way of God.
Art alone, pure, by itself, can be here the object of the maker's
contemplation; the laws of the universe that men call beauty are the
true and only sufficient materials of construction.
With what preparation does a designer of humbugs come to such work,
failure in which cannot be excused because of any practical reasons,
because of any pressing necessities--that really belongs to the public,
to everybody more than to its possessor, or to its owner, or to those
who have paid for it--that, finally, can be saved from adverse criticism
only for a short time, while passing interests are concerned.
Who knows this better than yourself? Where on earth to-day can you find
a thing done by us designers that an artist will go to look at for love,
for the deep desire of enjoyment which makes us visit so many little
things of the past, and go far for them? If you can, imagine any painter
desiring to note, so as to make them his own by copy, a modern set of
moldings, the corner of a modern building.