certain parts which together form the unity of a single building, there
are other principles before us. The relation of man to nature, so
peculiarly made out in the Japanese beliefs, is made significant,
symbolized, or typified through the manner in which these buildings are
disposed. A temple is not a single unity, as with us, its own beginning
and end. A temple is an arrangement of shrines and buildings meaningly
placed, often, as here, in mountains--a word synonymous with temples;
each shrine a statement of some divine attribute, and all these
buildings spread with infinite art over large spaces, open, or inclosed
by trees and rocks. The buildings are but parts of a whole. They are
enveloped by nature, the principle and the adornment of the subtle or
mysterious meaning which links them all together.
Besides all this is the religious symbolism underlying or accompanying
all, as once with us, of which I know too little to speak, but which can
be felt and occasionally detected because of many repetitions. But this
would carry me beyond my limits; and, indeed, we find it very difficult
to obtain any more information from our instructors, whether they do not
know securely, or whether they reserve it for better minds and worthier
apprehensions. Nor do I object to this Oriental secrecy or mystery, as
it adds the charm of the veil, which is often needed.
And I should wish that soon some one might undertake to make out in full
the harmony of proportions which has presided over these buildings. It
is evident that a delicate and probably minute system of relations,
under the appearance of fantasy, produces here the sense of unity that
alone makes one secure of permanent enjoyment. My information on the
subject is fragmentary: I know that the elegant columns are in a set
relation to the openings of the temple; that the shape of these same
columns is in another relation to their exquisite details; that the
rafters play an important part, determining the first departure. I have
seen carpenter's drawings, with manners of setting out work and
measurements, and I feel that there is only a study to carry out.
Nor is my wish mere curiosity, or the interest of the antiquarian. What
we need to-day is belief and confidence in similar methods, without
which there is nothing for ourselves but a haphazard success; no
connection with the eternal and inevitable past, and none with a future,
which may change our materials, but will never change our human need for
harmony and order.
You have heard of the little gardens, and of their exquisite details,
in which the Japanese makes an epitome of nature, arranged as if for one
of his microscopic jewels of metals, ivory, or lacquer.
Here in our own garden there would seem no call for an artificial
nature. The mountain slope on which we live must have always been
beautiful of itself; but for all that, our garden--that is to say, the
space about our landlord's house and our own--has been treated with
extreme care. Our inclosure is framed towards the great temple groves,
and the great mountains behind them, by a high wall of rock, over which,
at a corner edged with moss, rolls a torrent, making a waterfall that
breaks three times. The pool below, edged with iris that grow in the
garden sand, is crossed by a bridge of three big flat stones, and
empties secretly away. On each side of the fall, planted in the rock
wall, stands a thick-set paulownia, with great steady leaves, and
bending towards it a willow, whose branches drop far below itself and
swing perpetually in the draught of the waterfall. Bunches of pink
azalea grow in the hollows of the rocks, and their reflections redden
the eddies of the pool. Steps which seem natural lead up the wall of
rock; old pines grow against it, and our feet pass through their
uppermost branches. On the top is planted a monumental stone, and from
there a little path runs along, leading nowhere nowadays, as far as I
can make out. I am right in calling this mass of rock, which is a spur
of the mountain's slope, a wall; for I look down from its top to the
next inclosure far below, now overgrown and wild. What is natural and
what was made by man has become so blended together, or has always been
so, that I can choose to look at it as my mood may be, and feel the
repose of nature or enjoy the disposing choice of art.
Where the little bridge crosses over, and where mossy rocks dip down a
little to allow a passage, edged by a maple and a pine, I look over
across the hidden road to a deserted _yashiki_, with one blasted tree,
all overgrown with green and melting into distances of trees which, tier
behind tier, reach to a little conical hill, that is divided and
subdivided by sheets of mist at every change of heat and damp, so that I
feel half as if I knew its forms perfectly--half as if I could never get
them all by heart.
In the sand of our little garden are set out clumps of flowers,
chrysanthemum mostly, and occasionally iris and azalea; and the two
houses make its other two sides. The priest's house, an old one, with
large thatched roof projecting in front and supported there by posts
covered with creepers, is nearer the water. I see the little priest with
his young neophyte curled on the mats in the big front room whose whole
face is open; while in a break, or wing, is the opening to the practical
housekeeper side of the dwelling.
Our own house, which faces south like the priest's, completes the
square, as I said. It is edged on the outside by a small plantation of
trees with no character, that stretch away to the back road and to a
wall terracing a higher ground behind. There a wide space overgrown with
bushes and herbage, that cover former care and beauty, spreads out
indefinitely toward conical hills hot in the sun, behind which rises the
great volcanic slope of Nio-ho. A little temple shrine, red, white, and
gold, stands in this heat of sunlight and makes cooler yet the violets
and tender greens of the great slopes. This is to the north. When I look
toward the west I see broad spaces broken up by trees, and the corner of
Iyéyasŭ's temple wall half hidden by the gigantic cedars, and as I
write, late in the afternoon, the blue peak of Nan-tai-san rounded off
like a globe by the yellow mist.
The garden, embosomed in this vastness of nature, feels small, as
though it were meant to be so. Every part is on a small scale, and needs
few hands to keep things in order. We have a little fountain in the
middle of the garden, which gives the water for our bath, and sends a
noisy stream rolling through the wooden trough of the wash-room. The
fountain is made by a bucket placed upon two big stones, set in a basin,
along whose edge grow the iris, still in bloom. A hidden pipe fills the
bucket, and a long, green bamboo makes a conduit for the water through
the wooden side of our house. With another bamboo we tap the water for
our bath. In the early morning I sit in the bath-room and paint this
little picture through the open side, while A----, upstairs in the
veranda, is reading in Dante's "Paradiso," and can see, when he looks
up, the great temple roof of the Buddhist Mangwanji.
Occasionally the good lady who takes care of our priest's house during
his weeks of service at the temple of Iyémitsŭ salutes me while at my
bath, for the heating of which her servant has supplied the charcoal.
She is already dressed for the day, and in her black silk robe walks
across the garden to dip her toothbrush in the running water of the
cascade. Then in a desultory way she trims the plants and breaks off
dead leaves, and later the gardener appears and attends to one thing
after another, even climbing up into the old pine tree, taking care of
it as he does of the sweet-peas; and I recall the Japanese gardener whom
I knew at our Exposition of 1876, as I saw him for the last time,
stretched on the ground, fanning the opening leaves of some plant that
gave him anxiety.
Thus the Japanese garden can be made of very slight materials, and is
occasionally reduced to scarcely anything, even to a little sand and a
few stones laid out according to a definite ideal of meaning. A
reference to nature, a recall of the general principles of all
landscapes,--of a foreground, a distance, and a middle distance; that is
to say, a little picture,--is enough. When they cannot deal with the
thing itself--when they do, they do it consummately--they have another
ideal which is not so much the making of a real thing as the making of a
picture of it. Hence the scale can be diminished, without detriment in
their eyes, until it becomes lilliputian to ours. All this I take to be
an inheritance from China, modified toward simplicity. I do not know to
what type our little garden belongs. For they have in their arrangements
manners of expressing ideas of association, drawing them from nature
itself, or bringing them out by references to tradition or history, so
that I am told that they aim to express delicate meanings which a
Western imagination can hardly grasp; types, for instance, conveying the
ideas of peace and chastity, quiet old age, connubial happiness, and the
sweetness of solitude. Does this make you laugh, or does it touch
you--or both? I wish I knew more about it, for I am sure that there is
much to say.
I have spoken of simplicity. The domestic architecture is as simple, as
transitory, as if it symbolized the life of man. You can see it all in
the drawings, in the lacquers, and it has recently been treated
completely in the charming book of Professor Morse. Within, the Japanese
house is simplicity itself; all is framework, and moving screens instead
of wall. No accumulations, no bric-à-brac; any lady's drawing-room with
us will contain more odds and ends than all that I have yet seen
together in Japan. The reserved place of honor, a sort of niche in the
wall, the supposed seat of an ideal guest, has upon its bench some
choice image on a stand, or a vase with elegant disposal of flowers or
plants, and above it the hanging roll with drawing or inscription.
Perhaps some other inscription or verse, or a few words on a tablet upon
some cross-beam, and perhaps a small folding screen. Otherwise all works
of art are put aside in the fireproof store-house, to be brought out on
occasions. The woodwork is as simple as it can be--occasionally, some
beautiful joinery; always, when it can be afforded, exquisite
workmanship; and, above all, exquisite cleanliness. For there are no
beds--only wadded coverlets and the little wooden pillow, which does not
disturb the complicated feminine coiffure in the languors of the night.
No tables; food is laid on the cleanly mats, in many trays and dishes.
No chairs; the same mats that serve for bedstead and table serve for
seats with, perhaps, a cushion added.
And this is all the same for all, from emperor's palace to little
tradesman's cottage. There is nothing, apparently, but what is
necessary, and refinement in disposing of that. The result is sometimes
cold and bare. There is the set look of insisting upon an idea--the idea
of doing with little: a noble one, certainly; as, for instance, when the
emperor's palace at Kioto is adorned merely by the highest care in
workmanship and by the names of the artists who painted the screen
walls--in solitary contradiction to the splendor and pomp of all
absolute rulers, no storehouse for the wasted money of the people, but
an example of the economy which should attend the life of the ruler. It
is possible that when I return I shall feel still more distaste for the
barbarous accumulations in our houses, and recall the far more civilized
emptiness persisted in by the more esthetic race.
BRIC-À-BRAC
NIKKO, August 12.
I need not tell you that the pervading manner of spending time and money
is always within our reach. We do not go after the owner and seller of
bric-à-brac; he comes to us.
Coming from afar,--from Tokio, a hundred miles away, and from Ozaka,
four times that distance,--bales of merchandise are unloaded at our
door, or at our friends' for us. Patient pack-horses stand in the
inclosure of the yards; big parcels, and piles of boxes and bundles,
encumber the verandas. Weary hours, beginning with excitement and ending
with gentle disappointment, are spent in indecision of judgment and
uncertainty of purchase. But there remains always at the bottom of the
boxes a delusive hope, and some treasure may perhaps reward our
patience.
And then, besides occasional beauties in color or design, there is
something in looking over all these débris of civilization in their own
home; and odds and ends, having not much more excuse for themselves than
that they remain, help to explain either the art or the habits of the
country, or its history, or the nature we see about us. We have found
almost nothing among the things brought us which can rank as work of
high art, and I am afraid that we must be looked down upon by our
friends for purchases which have no excuse in any lofty esthetic code.
But they have the charm of being there, and of explaining, and in
another way of teaching, even when they are bad, and often because they
are bad. Because their very poverty helps to a classification and to an
analysis of the means through which the artist worked, and to a
knowledge of the prevalent subjects and arrangements which he found
ready to his hand, bequeathed to him by an earlier and nobler choice.
From all this poor stuff exhales the faded scent of a greater art and
refinement, which is now invisible, or destroyed, or subsisting only in
fragments, difficult of access, or which are far away. And there is a
peculiar unity in the arts of the extreme East. We must remember that
this very sensitive Japanese race has developed in its art, as in
everything, without being subjected to the many direct and contradictory
influences which have made our Western art and civilization. There have
been here, within historic times, no vast invasions of alien races,
bringing other ways for everything in thought and in life, and obliging
an already complex civilization to be begun over and over again on
readjusted bases; no higher living and advanced thought obliged to yield
for times and half times, until the grosser flames of energy could be
purified; no dethronement, within society tried by every other calamity,
of the old primeval faith. Instead of a tempest of tastes and manners of
feeling blowing from every quarter, and in which the cruder dislikes
have held for centuries the balance against cultured likings and
devotion, Japan has been carried on in one current, in which have
mingled, so as to blend, the steady influences of the two most
conservative civilizations of India and of China.
All here to-day, and for far back, is interwoven with Chinese thought,
breaks through it, returns to it, runs alongside of it. And through
Buddhism, its fervor, its capacity for taking up in its course boulders
of other creeds or habits, a something different, higher in aspiration
and in form, has lived with everything else and affected all.
This impressionable race found, contrasting with and supporting its
nature, secure, steady, undeviating guides, so that these foreign ideals
have persisted here with a transplanted life. In fact, it is possible to
look to Japan to find something of what ancient China was. So much of
what has here been done, as their language does to-day, saves for us a
hint or a reflection of the great Chinese ages, when China had not yet
been conquered by the foreigner, and when energies apparently unknown to
the China of to-day flourished with the strength of youth. The art and
literature of Japan, therefore, represent in great part the Chinese
prototype--an original which for us has practically disappeared. We
cannot easily know what arrangements and compositions, what free
interpretations of the world, or severe imitations of nature, the old
Chinese adopted, but they are reflected or continued in the styles and
subjects and treatments of what we call Japanese. The limits and
definitions of each may be clear to the Japanese critic, but to our
casual Western eye they merge or derive one from the other, like some
little-known streams which make one river.
Almost all the arrangements that we know so well on Japanese drawings,
screens, bronzes, lacquers, ivories, etc., have Chinese prototypes. And
all this is over and above the constant use of Chinese legend, and
story, and philosophy, which are to Japan what Greece and Rome used to
be to us--a storehouse of associated meanings and examples.
Would it amuse you if I made out some of the types that you see?
Here are the pine-tree and the stork, emblems of long life; or the
bamboo and the sparrow, which typify the mildness and gentleness of
nature.
The willow waves in the wind to and fro, and the swallows swing forth
and back again.
The names of Color and of Love are joined by a similarity of sound, and
probably by a mystic association: and so you will see upon the screens
that the leaves of the maple turn red in autumn, when the stag calls the
doe. The cherry-blossom's splendor is for show, like the pheasant's
plumage.
Long centuries ago the plum became the poet's tree, because of an early
poet's verses; and the nightingale, also a singer and a poet, is
associated with the tree.
The tiger hiding in the jungle has a background of bamboo, as the oxen
have the peach-tree, from an old Chinese sentence: "Turn the horse loose
on the flower-covered mountain, and the ox into the orchard of peaches."
The cock stands on the unused war-drum, which is a Chinese symbol of
good government, the aim of which is peace.
Or, again, legends and stories are referred to.
The cuckoo flies across the crescent of the moon, and the story of
Yorimasa is called up, who slew with bow and arrow the mysterious
monster that had tormented the life of the Mikado Narihito. I despair of
telling the story without great waste of words, and I half-regret having
chosen the example; but, perhaps, it is all the more Japanese for its
complication.
You must know that the Mikado--this was about the year 1153--had been
ill night after night with terrible nightmares, to the confusion of
his numerous doctors; and that his many feminine attendants had done
all they could to soothe him, to no avail. Every night, at the hour of
the Bull (two A. M., an hour when evil power is great), the dovecote
was fluttered by this fearful visitation. But, at length, either
these gentle dames or other watchers noticed that before each access
a cloud had drifted over the palace, and that, resting just above the
sleeping-apartments, two lights shone out from the dark mass. Then the
bells of the city temples sounded the hour of the Bull. The gentlemen
of the palace and the imperial guards were set on watch, the priests
prayed to ward off the evil influence; but uselessly. Then Yorimasa--a
brave warrior, a famous archer, one of the guards--was allowed, or
ordered, to try to destroy the evil thing, whatever it might be. He,
with a follower, watched nightly until the dark cloud and the shining
orbs were near, when the great bow of Yorimasa was discharged, and a
strange and wonderful beast fell blinded to the ground.
The sword of Yorimasa despatched it in nine separate blows, and the
thing,--said to have had something of the monkey, the tiger, and the
serpent,--was burned to ashes. For this Yorimasa was given the girl he
loved, the Lady Iris-flower (who, therefore, had not watched in vain),
and with her the celebrated sword called Shishino-o (King of Wild
Boars). Now the imperial deputy, as he presented this sword to Yorimasa,
tried him with a punning verse, while a cuckoo sang. This is what the
verse said:
"The cuckoo above the clouds, how does it mount?" But it meant, "Like
the cuckoo to soar so high, how is it so?" To which Yorimasa answered,
filling in the necessary couplet, "The waning moon sets not at will,"
which might also mean, in modest disclaimer of ambitious effort, "Only
my bow I bent; that alone sent the shaft." And so this moon stands in
the picture, as in the verses, for the bent bow of Yorimasa.
It is a shorter story, that which makes the allusion in the type of the
chrysanthemum and the fox. It is a variation of the perpetual story. The
prince royal of India had a lovely mistress, who had bewitched him, and
who fell asleep one day in a bed of chrysanthemums, where her lover shot
at and wounded a fox in the forehead. The bleeding temple of the girl
discovered the evil animal she really was. For the fox, as in China, is
in Japan a wicked animal, capable of everything in the way of
transformation and suggestion.
There are endless stories about him, and the belief or superstition is
still very strong. O---- was talking to us lately about the scorcerers
and spiritual mediums and fortune-tellers, and, as an explanation of the
power of some medium, told us that he claimed to have in his service
tame foxes. Only, when I asked where they might be lodged in the little
city house, he explained that they were not living in the body, and
therefore cumbersome, but were the spirits of foxes, thus subservient,
and able to penetrate everywhere and report.
The badger also is a misleading creature, and the cat is considered
uncertain.
Or take the way in which Hokusai refers to ancient story when, at the
end of one of his books, he makes a picture of the devoted knight Kojima
Takanori clad in armor, covered with the peasant's rain-cloak; and he is
writing on the trunk of the cherry-tree the message of warning for his
master, the Emperor Go-Daigo Tenno. But instead of the old verse,
Hokusai has put: "In the sixth year of the era Tempo, in the month of
April, my seventy-sixth year, this is written by me, formerly by name
Hokusai, but now more correctly known as 'The Old Man gone Mad for
Painting.'"
Here I have been wandering into Japan, while my theme was rather the
persistence of Chinese subjects, or of subjects connected with China,
the list of which would be endless, from Shoki, the devil-killer,
hunting his prey of imps over sword-guards and round the corners of
boxes, to pictures of aphorisms, such as this saying of Confucius, of
which I found a drawing yesterday: "Avoid even the appearance of evil;
do not stop to tie your shoes in the melon-patch of an enemy." And so
these innumerable subjects are common property, and serve as a field
for the artist to try to be himself, to bring out the story or part of
it, or his way of looking at it, or its decorative capacity, or any way
of anchoring the Japanese imagination. I cannot say that for many of the
ordinary arrangements, the most simple and conventional, one does not
often suffer the boredom of repetition, as we do at home, with the eagle
and the stars, and armorial bearings, and the stereotyped symbolism of
churches. But it suffices to see the thing well done again, to start
once more into some new enjoyment of the choice of subject.
So there can exist with regard to these subjects, apparently mere
motives of form, and partly because they are conventional, a deeper
convention or meaning, more or less visible to the artist when at work,
according to his temperament or his school, as in our poetry, where an
idea may or may not be overlaid with realistic or esthetic decoration.