upon us when we have gone to see some of the modern workers. From them
we depart with no more hope. It is like some puzzles, like the having
listened to an argument which you know is based on some inaccuracy that
you cannot at the moment detect. This about the better, the new perfect
work, if I can call it perfect, means only high finish and equal care.
But the individual pieces are less and less individual; there is no more
_surprise_. The means or methods are being carried further and _beyond_,
so that one asks one's self, "Then why these methods at all?" The
_style_ of this finer modern work is poorer, no longer connected with
the greater design, as if ambition was going into method and value of
material. Just how far this is owing to us I cannot tell, but the market
is largely European, and what is done has a vague appearance of looking
less and less out of place among our works, and has, as I said before,
less and less suggestion of individuality. None of it would ever give
one the slight shock of an exception, none of it would have the
appearance which we know of our own best work, the _feeling_ that we are
not going to see more of it. This statement applies to the best work;
the more common work is merely a degradation, the using of some part of
the methods; just enough to sell it, and to meet some easily defined
immediate commercial needs. I saw the beginnings years ago, and I can
remember one of our great New York dealers marking on his samples the
colors that pleased most of his buyers, who themselves again were to
place the goods in Oshkosh or Third Avenue. All other colors or
patterns were tabooed in his instructions to the makers in Japan. This
was the rude mechanism of the change, the coming down to the worst
public taste, which must be that of the greatest number at any given
time; for commerce in such matters is of the moment: the sale of the
wooden nutmeg, good enough until used. Have I not seen through the
enormous West any amount of the worst stained glass, all derived from
what I made myself, some years ago, as a step toward a development of
greater richness and delicacy in the "art of glass"? And my rivalry of
precious stones had come to this ignoble end and caricature. The
commercial man, or the semi-professional man whom we call the architect,
must continually ask for something poorer, something to meet the
advancing flood of clients and purchasers, something more easily placed
anywhere, at random, without trouble or responsibility, and reflecting
the public--as it is more easy to fit in a common tile than the most
beautiful Persian one--in the average of buildings made themselves to
meet the same common demand. And so with all applied beauty; the
degradation is always liable to occur.
Japan is an exceptional place for studying these changes; we can see
them gradually evolved--all as if by vivisection of some morbid anatomy.
The study of these diseases and infections of art at home is attended
with moral distress and intellectual disgust, because we are all in part
responsible; but here we can see it disinterestedly, and speculate
dispassionately upon the degradation of good things resulting from the
demands of business.
Were it quite in the line of what you expect to-day from me, I might
make out for you the lines of the old scheme of civilization under which
former work was done. The feudal organization of Japan divided the
country into provinces of distinct habits and modes of work--more or
less isolated, partly by want of easy or general communication, partly
by the political interests of their rulers and of the main government,
partly by the permanence of the provincial feeling which prevented the
inhabitant of one place moving to another to find occupation and
employment. The rule of the idea of the family, which is still great in
Japan, kept things in the same order, preserved all traditions, and at
the same time offered opportunities, by adoption, to individuals who
might increase or keep up the family reputation or influence. Here, too,
I suppose, is the basis of a certain dignity and personal independence
in the manners of the people which runs in with their courtesy. Every
one must have known what was expected of him, and have felt quite free
after that duty paid. Within this courtesy that I see all about me, I
feel something of what we might call democratic, for want of a better
name. I recognize it in the manner of the subordinate, who takes an
apparently personal interest in things, after his duty of politeness and
obedience is paid. And though there was no absolute caste, as we
understand it, except in such a case as that of the Eta, the lines of
life were strictly laid out, until the new laws, which have made things
open more or less to all.[9] With these changes, with disturbances of
fortune, with the loss of power and of income on the part of the small
rulers, with a country all laid out now in "prefectures," with the
necessarily increasing power of "bureaucracy," the whole tone of
individual life must change, must become less independent in any one
thing, more independent apparently in general--must flatten out, if I
may so express it. And the artisan will have to follow the course of
trade and its fluctuations until some general level has been
established--some general level of manufactures, I mean, for there is
no general level possible in art. Something will happen which will
resemble the ways of France, where art still exists, but where things
have been so managed that any artist out of the general level has had a
very bad time of it--the whole live forces of the nation, in trade and
"bureaucracy," being against his living easily any life of his own. When
the forces of traditional taste and skill and habits of industry now
existing in Japan shall have been organized anew, Japan, like France,
will have undoubtedly a great part to play in industrial trade.
Art may live or may not in the future here; nothing of what has been
done elsewhere to grow it or foster it has made it stronger. It has
always come by the grace of God, to be helped when it is here, or choked
out; but no gardener has ever seen its seed. Some of my friends in Japan
are plunged in a movement to save what there is of the past in art, to
keep its traditions, to keep teaching in the old ways, without direct
opposition to what may be good in the new. They see around them the
breaking up of what has been fine, and the new influences producing
nothing, not even bad imitations of Europe. I know too little upon what
their hopes are based, but O----, who is in the "tendency," sails with
us for America and Europe, and I may find out more through him.
Meanwhile he is to inquire with Professor F---- into the education of
the artist and artisan with us, and to see "how we do it." I am deeply
interested in their undertaking, perhaps the most remarkable of all
similar inquiries--if honestly conducted. But I see vague visions of
distorted values, of commercial authorities looked upon as artistic, of
the same difficulties, for instance, that I might meet if I wished now
to make an official report, not to the public or to government,--that is
always easy,--but to myself, who have no special interest in being
misled, of the methods of art and industry that have been and exist in
the East.
... Three days are wasted. I do scarcely any work, and there comes to
me, as a punishment, a feeling of the littleness of a great deal here,
coming, I think, from the actual smallness of many details--of the sizes
of the little houses, of the little gardens, of the frail materials, of
the set manners.
... To-morrow we shall go to something great, to the great statue, the
"Daibutsŭ," at Kamakura, and perhaps we may even push as far as
Énoshima, but I doubt it. It will be our last day, as we shall sail the
following morning for Kobe. As I run along the streets of Tokio in the
afternoon, with the feeling that I have tried to set down, of things
having narrowed as they become familiar, comes the excited melancholy of
departure, and this same ugliness and prettiness have a new value as I
look upon them for the last time. I sit in the little tea-house near the
station, waiting for A----, and drink the "powdered tea," which tastes
better than ever, as a stirrup-cup. And I do not resent the familiarity
of a big Chinaman, proud of his English, and of national superiority
here in size and commercial value, who addresses me and seeks to find
out whether I, too, have a commercial value. My answers puzzle him, and
he leaves me uncertain as to quantities, and walks off with the impudent
majesty of his fellows among this smaller and less commercial race.
... At dinner I see at the table near me a Japanese gentleman, not very
young, dining with his wife and another lady, who, I am told, is a
well-known _gei-sha_. This information I receive from my more or less
trusty courier, who also gives me some confused intimation that this
gentleman had participated in the murder of Richardson, the Englishman,
many years ago, under the old régime, for which murder somebody else was
decapitated. The wife is correct and immovable, the _gei-sha_ animated,
with a great deal of color and charm. A German or Russian sits at
another table, heavy, diplomatic, thick-bearded; the _gei-sha_
recognizes him, rises, goes over to his table, and bends very low before
him, almost kneeling; then speaks courteously and animatedly, as if in
compliment, to which the diplomat, without turning his head, says a word
or two distantly. Then the _gei-sha_ bends again down to the table, and
walks respectfully backward, and then swings back into her seat. I am
amused by this complete inversion of our own habits, and am reminded of
the manners and assiduous attentions of our men at the theaters when
they call on the indifferent fair. I see, too, that the points of attack
and defense must be different.
The heat was still intense even in the night, within fifty yards of the
sea; we went down to the quay and hired a boat with man and boy, to
drift out into the hazy moonlight. The boy did the main part of the
work: we lay in the boat, seeing nothing but this little body, and the
flapping of its garments, and everything else a vague space of lightened
shadow. We rowed or sculled far away, came near to a shore where there
was a tea-house, for women opened its closed sides and, revealed by
their lanterns, came down and called to us. But we pulled off and later,
in a far-off ocean with no shore nor sky, came across a little
summer-house built on piles, through which the volume of the sea pressed
and recoiled. Nothing could be more abandoned, more improbable. There
was nothing in sight. Had we entered the little pavilion, and moored our
boat or let it float away, we might have felt as if out in the distant
sea. We were the center of a globe of pearl; no edges nor outlines of
anything visible, except a faint circular light above, from which the
pearly color flowed tremulously, and a few wrinkles of silver and dark
below; no sound but a gentle sway of water. And we came home, having
had the sense of the possibility of intense isolation in a fairyland of
twilight.
AT SEA, OFF IZU, September 3.
We sailed this morning on the French steamer. It is now quite late in
the afternoon. The Pacific keeps its blue under us, and a blue sea haze
separates us from the violets and greens of the mountains of the shore,
behind which the light is slowly sinking. All is gentle and soothing;
but our captain says that he is not sure, and that "_hors d'Izu nous
aurons la houle du Pacifique_." While waiting for this long, angry roll,
I shall tell you about yesterday, of which there was little--for we had
undertaken too much.
We left rather too late, and drove a good way in the foggy morning,
passing much culture, and under many trees, of all of which I remember
little. It was late when we stopped to breakfast at the little inn from
which we were to be taken by _kuruma_, first to the big statue of
Buddha, then wherever we might have time to go. We left the place, and
reached the hollow between hills where the statue dwells, after passing
through a curious deep cutting right through the rocks, which marks some
old approach to the former city; for these hollows and fields were once
covered by a great city, the city of Kamakura, the city of Yoritomo, and
the great statue now out of doors was once in a temple of that city.
Places are shown you in the dells: this was where was once the mansion
of such a hero, here was that of the administrators of the military rule
in the fifteenth century; here stood the palace where, with his two
hundred and eighty last followers, such a one retired to perform
harakiri, and perish in the flames, when overwhelming forces had
captured the great city which was once the other capital of Japan. Trees
and ordinary culture cover these spaces now.
And here was the temple. Sixty-three pillars supported its roof, and
many of their bases are still there. But a great inundation from the
sea, now some miles distant, destroyed the temple and its adjacent
buildings. This happened as far back as the end of the fifteenth
century, and the temple has not been rebuilt. The desire of Yoritomo to
see the great statue made during his lifetime was not granted; but one
of his waiting-ladies, after his death, collected the necessary funds,
and it appears to have been cast in 1252 by Ono Go-rō-ye-mon. I know
nothing about him, but if he be the artist, it is pleasant to record his
name. The image is made of bronze cast in pieces brazed together and
finished with the chisel. It is nearly fifty feet high as it sits; and
if these points help you to its size, learn that its eyes, for instance,
are four feet long, the length across its lap from knee to knee is
thirty-five feet, and the circumference of the thumb is fully three
feet. But these measures, though they show a large scale and great size,
do not indicate a proportion, as we should understand it. The whole
modeling is for effect, and the means and methods of the modeling are
simple and elementary. Like all work done on archaic principles, the
main accentuations are overstated, and saved in their relations by great
subtleties in the large surfaces. It is emphatically modeled for a
colossus; it is _not a little thing made big_, like our modern colossal
statues; it _has always been big_, and would be so if reduced to
life-size.
We saw it first from the side through trees, as we ran rapidly to the
front, where are a temple gate, and a long courtyard still in order,
that leads up to the statue. From the side one can see how it bends
over, and rough as it is from behind, the impression of something real
was strong as its gray form moved through the openings of the trees. The
photographs must long have made you know it, and they also show the
great base and the immense temple ornaments that stand upon it at the
feet of the statue. They show also the little lodge at the side, where
the priest in attendance lives, and gives information, and sells
photographs and takes them, and generally acts as showman. We took many
photographs from new points of view, and we even removed the thatch of a
penthouse so as to get nearer and under the statue to the side; and I
painted also, more to get the curious gray and violet tone of the bronze
than to make a faithful drawing, for that seemed impossible in the
approaching afternoon. We did not know how long a time we had spent
lingering about it. The clouds had begun to open, and a faint autumnal
light filled the little hollow, which has only small trees, and no
imposing monuments like the great cryptomeria, which alone might seem
fit to grow about here. All, on the contrary, was gentle and small--the
lines of the hills, the trees, the garden plants about us: we might have
been anywhere. Perhaps it is just as well; the whole impression comes
from the statue, with the only objection or detraction that we can get
near enough to it to see the mechanism, the means, and details of its
expression. An accident, the breaking of its prison temple by a great
cataclysm of nature, a great wave of the sea coming far inland and
destroying the great building, has given to the statue something that it
could never have had to the physical eye--in the degree it has now. Now,
freed from its shrine, the figure sits in contemplation of entire
nature, the whole open world that we feel about us, or its symbols--the
landscape, the hills, the trees and fields, the sky and its depths, the
sunshine playing before the eyes of the seated figure, the air in which
dance all the things that live in air, from the birds that fly to the
atoms of dust, and the drifting leaves and blossoms, the confusion or
the peace of the elements, the snow in crystals, and the rain in drops.
All this world of ours, which to the contemplative mind is but a
figurative fragment of the universe, lies before the mental gaze of the
Buddha. Unwinking, without change of direction, he looks forever; his
will is forever subdued and held beneath him, as his fingers pressed
together indicate his freedom from all the disturbances of that past of
being which is subject to time and change, and his cognition,
undisturbed, envelops and images the universe in final contemplation.
Astounding success of the artist in what he has really done, for there
is no trace of means; the sum of realism is so slight, the conventional
has so great a part; each detail is almost more of an ornament than of a
representation. One almost believes that the result may be partly
accidental: that, as one cannot fathom the reason of the expressiveness
of a countenance, or of the influence of a few musical notes, even
though one knows the mechanism, so it seems difficult to grant that
there was once a choice in the other mind that caused it, that there
were once many paths opened before it.
And still more do I believe that the accident of the great tempest has
given a yet more patent and subtle meaning to the entire figure. Once
upon a time its details, indeed, if not its entirety, must have looked
more delicate in the reflected light of the temple building, when the
upper part of the figure was bathed in mysterious gloomy light, while
the lower glittered in answer to the openings of the doors. But could
anything ever have rivaled the undecidedness of this background of
veiled sky and shifting blue, which makes one believe at times that the
figure soon must move? As one looks longer and longer at it, with
everything around it gently changing, and the shadows shifting upon its
surface, the tension of expectation rises to anxiety. The trees rustle
and wave behind it, and the light dances up and down the green boughs
with the wind; it must move--but there is no change, and it shall sit
forever.
As we left, and I walked down the long pavement in front of the statue,
in the early autumn sunshine and the rising freshness of the wind, I
turned again and again, each time with the realization that the statue
was still sitting, until we turned out of sight, a vague, unreasonable
sense of having left it alone accompanying me, until other, different,
light, and gay impressions broke the influence and allowed me to think
of what I had seen as a work of art, such as I could understand and
decompose--and, if I wished, make also.
And we lunched at Hase, near by, and from the comfortable inn could see
on the gray hill above the temple of Kuwannon, and its red buildings and
balustrades. After a very long lunch, we walked up to the temple, and
from the platform in front looked toward the afternoon sea right before
us, and the plain of Kamakura. Then we entered, and were taken in behind
the great screen doors to a narrow but high place--lighted only from the
little entrance--wherein stood right by us and over us a standing figure
of the divinity, all golden in the dark. It is over thirty feet high,
and whether it be great art or not,--for the darkness was too great to
judge of form,--the glitter of a smile of gold far up above our heads,
in the obscurity of the roof, was an impression that, even so near to
the great statue out of doors, remains distinct. It was late afternoon;
we dared look at no more statues, nor at relics of warriors of Kamakura,
and started for the beach, partly with the hope of seeing Fuji behind
us. But all was veiled in the sky; we walked along the beach, our
_kurumas_ dragging behind us, and crossed a little stream, and while
A---- bathed in, and thereby took possession of, the Pacific, I walked
up the sand-hills toward the little village at the end of the strand. As
I came near it, an unfortunate distorted being, scarred with some
leprous disease, plunged toward me in the twilight from some vague
opening in the hills, and begged piteously, following me afterward with
a thankful wail of "O Danna San! Danna San! Danna San!" that I hear yet.
We reëntered our _kurumas_ and drove in triumph to the inn of the little
village. I say in triumph: _I_ drove in triumph, observed of all
observers--I had my usual costume and was clothed. A----, rather than
wait to get dry, rode along with only a partial covering of _yukatta_,
and attracted no attention. Had he had nothing on at all, he would have
been still more in keeping with many of our neighbors. Night was
falling, nothing more could be done; we got back to our carriage and
horses, and drove back in the warm darkness to Yokohama. And I close as
we begin to feel the roll, "_la houle du Pacifique_."
[9] The gentry, the old Samurai, however, still constitute the
governing class to-day apparently, and the aristocratic spirit
stands in the way of indiscriminate rise of the plebeians.
KIOTO
September 16.
We came into Kioto from Osaka, by rail, one fine afternoon. I had a
half-childish hope of being surprised, a memory of days when, a boy, I
read of the great forbidden city. Only a few years ago it was still
forbidden, and now the little respectable car was hurrying us there as
prosily as older life translates the verse of our early dreams. We were
in September heat and glare. We passed over wide spaces of plain, edged
by sharp mountains, looking hot and barren; through great plantations
and stretches of green, with here and there a temple half hidden,--and
over dried river-beds.
The station closed all views on our arrival, and the sudden transfer to
streets showing no European influences was as if we had passed through a
city's walls.
The first sensation was merely the usual one of a whirl through
innumerable buildings, low, of wood, and more or less the same;
extremely wide streets, all very clean; many people; a great bridge
across the stony bed of a river almost dry; then some trees and little
gardens and corners of temples with heavy roofs, as we turned through
little roads and drove up to the gate of the hotel inclosure, which is
placed on the edge of the outside hills and looks down upon Kioto. We
were high up, in rooms, looking over trees just below; next to us the
corner of temple grounds that rounded away out of sight.
[Illustration: KIOTO IN FOG--MORNING.]
Early on most mornings I have sat out on our wide veranda and drawn or
painted from the great panorama before me--the distant mountains making
a great wall lighted up clearly, with patches of burning yellow and
white and green, against the western sky. The city lies in fog,
sometimes cool and gray; sometimes golden and smoky. The tops of pagodas
and heavy roofs of temples lift out of this sea, and through it shine
innumerable little white spots of the plastered sides of houses. Great
avenues, which divide the city in parallel lines, run off into haze; far
away always shines the white wall of the city castle; near us, trees and
houses and temples drop out occasionally from the great violet shadows
cast by the mountain behind us. Before the city wakes and the air
clears, the crows fly from near the temples toward us, as the great bell
of the temple sounds, and we hear the call of the gongs and indefinite
waves of prayer. Occasionally a hawk rests uneasily on the thin branches
below. Then the sun eats up the shadows, and the vast view unites in a
great space of plain behind the monotony of the repeated forms of the
small houses, broken by the shoulders of the roofs and pagodas of many
temples. But near us are many trees and tea-houses and gardens, and we
are as if in the country.