Transcriber’s Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and
punctuation remains unchanged.
Sidenotes, page headings in the original, have been placed at the
beginning of the relevant paragraphs and marked [Sidenote: ....]
On Page 26 lespedozas has been corrected to lespedezas.
Italics are represented thus _italic_.
The Wisdom of the East Series
EDITED BY
L. CRANMER-BYNG
Dr. S. A. KAPADIA
THE SPIRIT OF JAPANESE ART
WISDOM OF THE EAST
THE SPIRIT OF
JAPANESE ART
BY YONE NOGUCHI
AUTHOR OF “THE SPIRIT OF JAPANESE POETRY”
[Illustration; Sun rising over ocean]
LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1915
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 9
I
KOYETSU 17
II
KENZAN 25
III
UTAMARO 32
IV
HIROSHIGE 38
V
GAHO HASHIMOTO 44
VI
KYOSAI 56
VII
THE LAST MASTER OF THE UKIYOYE ART 67
VIII
BUSHO HARA 79
IX
THE UKIYOYE ART IN ORIGINAL 93
X
WESTERN ART IN JAPAN 100
APPENDIX I
THE MEMORIAL EXHIBITION OF THE LATE
HARA 109
APPENDIX II
THE NERVOUS DEBILITY OF PRESENT
JAPANESE ART 113
TO
EDWARD F. STRANGE
OF THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM
EDITORIAL NOTE
The object of the Editors of this series is a very definite one. They
desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall
be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and
West—the old world of Thought and the new of Action. In this endeavour,
and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example
in the land. They are confident that a deeper knowledge of the great
ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival
of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the
nations of another creed and colour.
L. CRANMER-BYNG.
S. A. KAPADIA.
NORTHBROOK SOCIETY,
21 CROMWELL ROAD,
S. KENSINGTON, S.W.
INTRODUCTION
In the Ashikaga age (1335-1573) the best Japanese artists, like Sesshu
and his disciples, for instance, true revolutionists in art, not mere
rebels, whose Japanese simplicity was strengthened and clarified by
Chinese suggestion, were in the truest meaning of the word Buddhist
priests, who sat before the inextinguishable lamp of faith, and
sought their salvation by the road of silence; their studios were in
the Buddhist temple, east of the forests and west of the hills, dark
without, and luminous within with the symbols of all beauty of nature
and heaven. And their artistic work was a sort of prayer-making, to
satisfy their own imagination, not a thing to show to a critic whose
attempt at arguing and denying is only a nuisance in the world of
higher art; they drew pictures to create absolute beauty and grandeur,
that made their own human world look almost trifling, and directly
joined themselves with eternity. Art for them was not a question of
mere reality in expression, but the question of Faith. Therefore they
never troubled their minds with the matter of subjects or the size
of the canvas; indeed, the mere reality of the external world had
ceased to be a standard for them, who lived in the temple studios.
Laurance Binyon said of them: “Hints of the divine were to be found
everywhere—in leaves of grass, in the life of animals, birds, and
insects. No occupation was too humble or menial to be invested with
beauty and significance.” Through them the Ashikaga period becomes very
important in our Japanese art annals. Binyon says: “The Ashikaga period
stands in art for an ideal of reticent simplicity. A revulsion from the
ornate conventions, which had begun to paralyse the pristine vigour
of the Yamato school, and fresh acquaintance with the masterpieces of
the Sung era, brought about by renewed contact with China, after a
hermit period of exclusion, created a passion for swift, impassioned or
suggestive painting in ink, on silvery-toned paper.”
People, like myself, who are more delighted at the National Gallery
in Trafalgar Square with, for instance, “A Summer Afternoon after a
Shower,” or a “View at Epsom,” by Constable, and with “Walton Reach,”
or “Windsor from Lower Hope,” by Turner, than with their other bigger
things, will be certainly pleased to see “Temple and Hill above
a Lake,” by Sesshu, or “Travellers at a Temple Gate,” by Sesson,
representing this interesting Ashikaga period, exhibited in the new
wing of the British Museum. You have to go there and spend an hour or
so with the Arthur Morrison collection of Japanese art, if you wish to
feel the real old Japanese humanity and love that our ancient masters
inspired into their work. To be sure, none of the things exhibited
there, small or large, good or poor, are so-called exhibition pictures,
which are often a game of artistic charlatans. In real Japanese art
you should not look for variety of subjects; but when you find an
astonishing richness of execution, certainly it is the time when your
eyes begin to open toward another sort of asceticism in art. How glad I
am that our Japanese art, at least in the olden time, never degenerated
into a mechanical art!
What a pity Sesson’s “Travellers at a Temple Gate,” this remarkable
little thing, has been mended in two or three spots. If you wish to
see the real power and distinction of great Sesshu, you might compare
his “Daruma” in the exhibition with the other “Daruma” pictures by
Soami and Takuchu also in the exhibition: the point I should like to
bring out is that Sesshu’s “Daruma” is an artistic attempt to proclaim
the spiritual intensity which shines within from the true strength of
consciousness and real economy of force, while the others are rather a
superficial demonstration.
There is no other Japanese school so interesting, even from the one
point of style in expressive decoration, as the Koyetsu-korin school,
the much-admired branch of Japanese art in the West. Although I was
glad to see a good specimen of Sotatsu in “Descent of the Thunder God
on the Palace of Fujiwara” in the exhibition, I hardly think that such
a figure painting (a really good work in its own way) shows Sotatsu’s
best art; while my memory of the Sotatsu exhibition at Uyeno of Tokyo
a few years ago is still fresh, I am pleased to connect Sotatsu with
the flower-screens and little _Kakemono_ for the tea-rooms, now with
a pair of rabbits nibbling grasses, then with a little bunch of wild
chrysanthemums. You will see what an admirer I am of this school, since
I have dwelt at some length on Koyetsu and Kenzan in this little book
of Japanese art. I regret that I have to beg for some more time before
I make myself able to write on great Korin; I am sure that Hoitsu, one
of the most distinguished decadents of the early nineteenth century,
and the acknowledged successor of the Koyetsu-korin school, would give
us a highly interesting subject to discuss. Oh, those days at Bunkwa
and Bunsei (1804-1830)! Dear, rotten, foolish, romantic old Tokugawa
civilisation and art!
Two articles on Harunobu and Hokusai are still to be written for the
Ukiyoye school; I know, I believe, that without those two artists the
school would never be complete. I am happy to think that I have Gaho
Hashimoto in the present book as the last great master of the Kano
school; but I cannot help thinking about Hogai Kano, Gaho’s spiritual
brother, who passed away almost in starvation.
Indeed, Hogai’s whole life of sixty years was a life of hardship
and hunger; when he reached manhood, the whole country of Japan
began to be disturbed under the name of the Grand Restoration. In
those days, the safety of one’s life was not assured; how then could
art claim the general protection? All the artists threw away their
drawing-brushes. Hogai tried to get his living by selling baskets and
brooms; his wife, it is said, helped him by weaving at night; their
lives were hard almost without comparison. Following the advice of a
certain Mr. Fujishima, Hogai drew pictures and gave them to a dealer
at Hikage Cho, Tokyo, to be sold. After three long years, he found
that only one picture had been sold, and so he gave the rest of them,
more than fifty, to Mr. Fujishima, who, by turns, gave them away
to his friends. And those pictures which were given freely by Mr.
Fujishima are now their owners’ greatest treasures. Thus is the irony
of life exemplified. It was thought by Hogai a piece of good fortune
when he was engaged by Professor Fenellosa for twelve yen a month;
this American critic’s eye discerned Hogai’s unusual ability. It is
almost unbelievable to-day that such a small sum should have been
acceptable; but it may have been the usual payment in those days, and
the Professor’s friendship was more to Hogai than money. He received
fifteen yen afterward when he was engaged by the Educational Department
of the Government in 1884; how sad he could not support himself by
art alone. And alas, he was no more when the general appreciation of
his great art began to be told. Quite many specimens of Hogai’s work
are treasured in the Boston Museum at present. How changed are the
conditions now from Hogai’s day! But are these fortunately changed
conditions really helpful for the creation of true art?
To look at some of the modern work is too trying, mainly from the fact
that it lacks, to use the word of Zen Buddhism, the meaning of silence;
it seems to me that some modern artists work only to tax people’s
minds. In Nature we find peacefulness and silence; we derive from it
a feeling of comfort and restfulness; and again from it we receive
vigour and life. I think so great art should be. Many modern artists
cannot place themselves in unison with their art; in one word, they do
not know how to follow the law or _michi_, that Mother Nature gladly
evolves. It is such a delight to examine the works of Hogai, as each
picture is a very part of his own true self; the only difference is
the difference that he wished to evoke in interest; his desire was
always so clear in the relation between himself and his work, and
accidentally he succeeded as if by magic in establishing the same
relationship for us, the onlookers. It goes without saying that the
pictures of such an artist are richer than they appear; while he used
only Chinese ink in his pictures, our imagination is pleased to see
them with the addition of colour, and even voice.
The subjects which are treated in the present volume are various, but I
dare say that all the artists whose art I have treated here will well
agree in the point of their expression of the Japanese spirit of art,
which always aims at poetry and atmosphere, but not mere style and
purpose.
Y. N.
LONDON,
_May 13, 1914_.
THE SPIRIT OF
JAPANESE ART
I
KOYETSU
When I left home toward a certain Doctor’s who had promised to show me
his collection of chirography and art, the unusual summer wind which
had raged since midnight did not seem to calm down; the rain-laden
clouds now gathered, and then parted for the torrent of sunlight to
dash down. I was most cordially received by him, as I was expected;
in coming under threat of the weather I had my own reasons. I always
thought that summer was worse than spring for examining (more difficult
to approve than deny) the objects of art, on account of our inability
for concentrating our minds; the heat that calls all the _shoji_ doors
to open wide confuses the hearts of bronze Buddhas or Sesshu’s “Daruma”
or Kobo’s chirography or whatever they be, whichever way they have to
turn, in the rush of light from every side; I thanked the bad weather
to-day which, I am sure, I should have cursed some other day. The
Doctor’s house had an almost winter-sad aspect with the _shoji_, even
the rain-doors all shut, the soft darkness assembling at the very place
it should, where the saints or goddesses revealed themselves; hanging
after hanging was unrolled and rolled before me in quick succession.
“Doctor, tell me quick whose writing is that?” I loudly shouted when
I came to one little bit of Japanese writing. “That is Koyetsu’s,” he
replied. “Why, is it? It seems it is worth more than all the others put
together; Doctor, I will not ask you for any more hangings to-day,”
I said. And a moment later, I looked at him and exclaimed in my
determined voice:
“What will you say if I take it away and keep it indefinitely?”
“I say nothing at all, but am pleased to see how you will enjoy it,”
the Doctor replied.
[Sidenote: YEARNING OF POETICAL SOUL]
The evening had already passed when I returned home with that hanging
of Koyetsu’s chirography under my arm. “Put all the gaslights out!
Do you hear me? All the gaslights out! And light all the candles
you have!” I cried. The little hanging was properly hanged at the
“tokonoma” when the candles were lighted, whose world-old soft flame
(wasn’t it singing the old song of world-wearied heart?) allured my
mind back, perhaps, to Koyetsu’s age of four hundred years ago—to
imagine myself to be a waif of greyness like a famous tea-master, Rikiu
or Enshu or, again, Koyetsu, burying me in a little Abode of Fancy with
a boiling tea-kettle; through that smoke of candles hurrying like our
ephemeral lives, the characters of Koyetsu’s writing loomed with the
haunting charm of a ghost. They say:
“Where’s cherry-blossom?
The trace of the garden’s spring breeze is seen no more.
I will point, if I am asked,
To my fancy snow upon the ground.”
“What a yearning of poetical soul!” I exclaimed.
It is your imagination to make rise out of fall, day out of darkness,
and Life out of Death; not to see the fact of scattering petals is your
virtue, and to create your own special sensation with the impulse of
art is your poet’s dignity; what a blessing if you can tell a lie to
yourself; better still, not to draw a distinct line between the things
our plebeian minds call truth and untruth, and live like a wreath shell
with the cover shut in the air of your own creation. Praised be the
touch of your newly awakened soul which can turn the fallen petals to
the beauty of snow; there is nothing that will deny the yearning of
your poetic soul. It is not superstition to say that the poet’s life
is worthier than any other life. Some time ago the word loneliness
impressed me as almost divine as Rikiu pledged himself in it; I
wished, through its invocation, to create a picture, as the ancient
ditty has it, of a “lone cottage standing by the autumn wave, under
the fading light of eve.” But I am thankful for Koyetsu to-day. How to
reach my own poetry seems clearly defined in my thought; it will be by
the twilight road of imagination born out of reality and the senses—the
road of idealism baptised by the pain of death.
[Sidenote: ABODE OF VACANCY]
What remains of Koyetsu’s life is slight, as his day was not feminine
and prosaic, like to-day, with love of gossip and biography-writing;
he, with the friends of his day, Sambiakuin Konoye, Shokado, both of
them eminent chirographers of all time of Japan, Jozan the scholar,
Enshu the tea-master, and many others, realised the age of artistic
heroism which is often weakened by the vulgarity of thought that aims
at the Future and Fame. The utter rejection of them would be the prayer
itself to strengthen the appreciation of art into a living thing.
Koyetsu made his profession in his younger days the connoisseurship of
swords as well as their whetting; it was for that service, I believe,
that Iyeyasu, the great feudal Prince of Yedo, gave him a piece of
land, then a mere waste, at Taka ga Mine of the lonely suburb of Kyoto,
by the Tanba highway, where he retired, with a few writing brushes and
a tea-kettle, to build his Taikyo An, or Abode of Vacancy, giving his
æsthetic fancy full swing to fill the “vacancy” of abode and life. He
warned his son and family, when he bade them farewell, it is said, that
they should never step into Yedo of the powerful lords and princes,
because the worldly desire was not the way of ennobling a life which
was worth living. We might call it “seihin”, or proud poverty that
Koyetsu most prized, as it never allures one from the chasteness of
simplicity which is the real foundation of art. There is reason to
believe that he must have been quite a collector of works of art, rich
and rare, in his earlier life; but it is said that he most freely gave
them away when he left his city home for his lonely retirement; indeed
he was entering into the sanctuary of priests. What needed he there
but prayer and silence? There is nothing more petty, even vulgar, in
the grey world of art and poetry, than to have a too close attachment
to life and physical luxuries; if our Orientalism may not tell you
anything much, I think it will teach you at least to soar out of your
trivialism.
[Sidenote: THE STYLE CALLED “GYOSHO”]
Koyetsu’s must have been a remarkable personality, remarkable
because of its lucidity distilled and crystallised—to use a plebeian
expression, by his own philosophy, whose touch breathed on the spot
a real art into anything from a porcelain bowl to the design on a
lacquer box; I see his transcendental mien like a cloud (that cloud
is not necessarily high in the sky all the time) in his works that
remain to-day, more from the reason that they carry, all of them,
the solitary grace of amateurishness in the highest sense. To return
to the unprofessional independence itself was his great triumph;
his artistic fervour was from his priesthood. I know that he was a
master in porcelain-making, picture-drawing, and also in lacquer-box
designing (what a beautiful work of art is the writing box of raised
lacquer called Sano Funahashi, to-day owned by the Imperial Museum of
Tokyo); but it seems that he often betrayed that his first and last
love was in his calligraphy. Once he was asked by Sambiakuin Konoye,
a high nobleman of the Kyoto Court, the question who was the best
penman of the day; it is said he replied, after a slight hesitation:
“Well, then, the second best would be you, my Lord; and Shokado would
be the third best.” The somewhat disappointed calligraphist of high
rank in the court pressed Koyetsu: “Speak out, who is the first! There
is nothing of ‘Well, then,’ about it.” Koyetsu replied: “This humble
self is that first.” The remarkable part is that in his calligraphy
Koyetsu never showed any streak of worldly vulgarity. Its illusive
charm is that of a rivulet sliding through the autumnal flowers; when
we call it impressive, that impressiveness is that of the sudden fall
of the moon. To return to this hanging of his (thousand thanks to the
Doctor) to which I look up to-day as a servant to his master, with
all devotion. The sure proof of its being no mean art, I venture to
say, is seen in its impressing me as the singular work of accident,
like the blow of the wind or the sigh of the rain; it seems the writer
(great Koyetsu) was never conscious, when he wrote it, of the paper on
which he wrote, of the bamboo brush which he grasped. It is true that
we cannot play our criticism against it; it is not our concern to ask
how it was written, but only to look at and admire it. The characters
are in the style called “gyosho,” or current hand, to distinguish from
the “kaisho,” or square hand; and there is one more style under the
name of “sosho,” or grass hand, that is an abbreviated cursive hand.
As this was written in “gyo” style, it did not depend on elaborate
patience but on the first stroke of fancy. I have no hesitation to say
that, when it is said that the arts of the calligrapher and the painter
are closely allied, the art of the calligrapher would be by just so
much related with our art of living; the question is what course among
the three styles we shall choose—the square formalism of “kaisho” or
the “sosho”-like romanticism? It does no justice to call “gyosho” a
middle road; when you know that your idealism is always born from the
conventionalism of reality of “kaisho”-like materialism, it is not
wrong to say that Koyetsu wisely selected a line of “gyosho”-like
accentuation—not so fantastic as a “sosho” calligraph—with the
tea-kettle and a few writing brushes, to make one best day before he
fell into the final rest.
II
KENZAN
I used to pass by Zenyoji, a little Buddhist temple by the eastern
side of Uyeno Hill (whose trees, almost a thousand years old, in the
shape of a dragon, perhaps created by a Kano artist, have been ruined
by the smoke that never departs from the railroad terminus), where I
knew, from the calligraphic sign carved on a stone by the temple gate,
that Kenzan Ogata, the famous artist on paper or porcelain, and younger
brother of the great Korin, was buried in the graveyard within; but if
I did not step in, as in fact I did not step in, although I passed by
countless times, as I lived then in the neighbourhood of the temple
in classical Negishi—classical in association with the nightingale
and that wonderful pine-tree called Ogyo no Matsu (here also lived
Hoitsu, the famous decadent of the early nineteenth century)—that was
because I had little interest in any grave, even in Kenzan’s. And the
temple looked so dusty, smoky, and altogether dirty. How sorry I felt
in thinking that Kenzan’s artistic soul must be suffering from the
snoring, growling, and hissing of the engines day and night. Alas, he
could not foresee the future of a few hundred years when he died. But
I welcomed the news when the sudden removal of the grave was reported
as a result, a fortunate result indeed, of the expansion of the railway
track; this time, to be sure, I thought, his grey-loving, solitary
soul would be pleased to find a far better sleeping-place, as he was
to be moved to the large old garden of the Kokka Club (a well-known
artist club), with a deep pond where many gold fish peep underneath the
umbrella-like lotus leaves in early summer, and in later autumn the
_hagi_ or two-coloured lespedezas (Kenzan’s beloved subject) would lean
upon the water to admire their own images; and it is a matter thrice
satisfactory to think that this new place is also in Negishi (which
somehow recalls Hampstead, though there is no natural resemblance
between them).
* * * * *
I was invited to attend the memorial exhibition of Kenzan’s work to
commemorate the removal of his grave the other day. With the greatest
anticipation I went there with two friends of mine, a fellow poet
and an artist, both of them great admirers of Kenzan Ogata. When we
entered the ground, we found at once that the Buddhist ceremony, that
is the Sutra-reading called Kuya Nembutsu, around the newly dug grave
by the lotus pond under the trees, was well started already; some ten
or eleven priests, in fact the devoted members of the club, but in
long black robes, were seen through the foliage from the distance,
hopping around like the vagarious spirits of a moment (this fantastic
ceremony, Kuya Nembutsu) while reciting the holy book; the voice of the
recitation most musically broke the silence. We did not approach the
grave, but went straight into the exhibition rooms, because we knew
that the best prayer we could offer to Kenzan was to see and rightly
appreciate his works of art. We all of us were unable to speak a word
at the beginning, as our tongues (our heads too) lost their powers
against his peculiarly distinguished art, which is the oldest and
again the newest. When our minds became better composed, we sat in a
corner of the room where the hangings of his flowers or trees, and the
tea-bowls or incense-cases with his favourite designs, had been well
arranged; we felt inclined to talk, even discuss his art.
[Sidenote: THE OLDEST AND THE NEWEST]
“What a pleasing egotism,” I ventured to say, “in that picture of
lilies or this picture of fishes; the lilies and fishes are not an
accessory as in many other Japanese pictures, but the lilies and fishes
themselves in their full meaning. Again What a delightful egotism!”
“You might call flowers feminine,” my artist-friend interrupted me.
“But I should like to know where is a thing more truly egotistic than
the flowers.”
“That egotism in the picture,” I proceeded, “might be a real result
from the great reverence and intense love of Kenzan for his subjects;
we can see that his mind, when he painted them, was never troubled with
any other thing or thought. You know that such only occurs to a truly
gifted artist. After all, the greatness of Kenzan is his sincerity.
And it goes without saying that the pictures on tea-bowls we see here
are not things which were made to some one’s order. We become at once
sincere and silent in their presence; to say that his art was spiritual
is another way to express it—by that I mean that we are given all
opportunities to imagine what the pictures themselves may not contain.
Our imagination grows deeper and clearer through the virtue or magic of
his work; and again his work appears thrice simplified and therefore
more vital. The art really simple and vital is never to be troubled
with any rhetoric or accessories of unessentials; before you make such
a picture, you must have, to begin with, your own soul simplified and
vital in the true sense. Kenzan had that indeed.”
[Sidenote: EXPRESSION OF PERSONALITY]
“To call Kenzan’s work merely beautiful,” my friend-poet said,
evidently in the same mind with myself, “whether it be the picture on
paper or China-bowls, does no justice; what he truly aimed at was the
artistic expression,—and he was most successful when he was most true.
To him, as with the other great artists of East or West, the beauties
only occurred—and Kenzan’s beauties occurred when his simple art was
most decorative; in his decorativeness he found his own artistic
emotion. It was his greatness that he made a perfect union of emotion
and intellect in his work; to say shortly, he was the expression of
personality.”
“What a personality was Kenzan’s! Again what a personality!” I
exclaimed. I proceeded, as I wished to take up the talk where my friend
poet had left off, “It is his personality by whose virtue even a
little weed or insignificant spray of a willow-tree turns to a real
art; he had that personality, because he had such a love and sympathy.
Indeed the main question of the artist is in his love and sympathy; the
external technique is altogether secondary. When you commune with the
inner meaning, that is the beginning and also the ending. We see here
the picture of a cherry-tree covered by the red blossoms, which might
happen to be criticised as a bad drawing; but since it does appear as
nothing but a cherry-tree, proud and lovely, I think that Kenzan’s
artistic desire was fully answered. He was an artist, not merely either
an illustrator or a designer. He was a true artist, therefore his work
is ever so new like the moon and flowers; and again old, like the
flowers and moon.”
“If the so-called post-impressionists could see Kenzan’s work!” my
friend-artist suddenly ventured to exclaim, “I am sure that Vincent Van
Gogh would be glad to have this six-leafed screen of poppy-flowers.”
“Really the picture is the soul of the flowers,” I said, “but not the
external flowers. It is mystic as the flowers are mystic. And imagine
Kenzan’s attitude when he drew that screen! I believe that he had the
same reverence as when he stood in the religion of mysticism to paint
a goddess; indeed his work was prayer and soul’s consolation. Though
the subject was flowers, I have no hesitation to call the picture
religious. I almost feel like lighting a candle and burning incense
before this screen of poppies.”
[Sidenote: THE BAPTISM OF POVERTY]
As with other gifted artists, we see Kenzan’s real life behind his
work. Some critic ably said that true art was an episode of life; I
can imagine that, when his artistic fancy moved and his work was done,
he must have thrown it aside into the waves of time, off-hand, most
unceremoniously, and forgotten all about it. We can truly say of his
works that they never owed one thing to money or payment for their
existence—and that is the greatest praise we can give to any work of
art. His material life might be said to have been quite fortunate
in that he was invited to Yedo (present Tokyo) by the Prince of the
Kanyeiji Temple of Uyeno, under whose patronage his art was pleased to
take its own free independent course; but his greatness is that when
the Prince passed away and he was left to poverty, he never trembled
and shrank under its cold cruel baptism; indeed that baptism made his
personality far nobler, like the white flame from which the whiteness
is taken out, and consequently his art was a thing created, as we say
here, by the mind out of the world and dust. The works which to-day
remain and are admired by us are mostly the work he executed after he
reached his seventieth year. We have many reasons to be thankful for
the fact that he left Kyoto, the old city of court nobles and ladies,
somewhat effeminate, and the side of his brother Korin, whose great
influence would have certainly made him a little Korin at the best;
we see no distinction whatever in the work which he gave the world
under Korin’s guidance. His art made a great stride after he appeared
in the Yedo of the warriors and manliness and touched a different
atmosphere from that of his former life; I will point, when you ask
me for the proof, to the now-famous six-fold screen with the picture
of plum-blossom, or the hanging also of the plum-blossom owned by the
Imperial Museum. Oh, what a noble plum-blossom, which reminds us of a
samurai’s heart, simple and brave!
III
UTAMARO
I feel I scent, in facing Utamaro’s ladies, whether with no
soul or myriad souls (certainly ladies, be they courtesans or
_geishas_, who never bartered their own beauty and songs away), the
rich-soft passionate odour of rare old roses; when I say I hear the
silken-delicate summer breezes winging in the picture, I mean that the
Japanese sensuousness (is it the scent or pang of a lilac or thorn?)
makes my senses shiver at the last moment when it finally turns to
spirituality. It was our Japanese civilisation of soul, at least
in olden time under Tokugawa’s regime, not to distinguish between
sensuousness and spirituality, or to see at once the spiritual in the
sensuous; I once wrote down as follows, upon the woman drawn by lines,
or, more true to say, by the absence of lines, in snake-like litheness
of attitude, I might say more subtle than Rossetti’s Lillith, with such
eyes only opened to see love:
“Too common to say she is the beauty of line,
However, the line old, spiritualised into odour,
(The odour soared into an everlasting ghost from life and death),
As a gossamer, the handiwork of a dream,
’Tis left free as it flaps:
The lady of Utamaro’s art is the beauty of zephyr flow.
I say again, the line with the breath of love,
Enwrapping my heart to be a happy prey:
Sensuous? To some so she may appear,
But her sensuousness divinised into the word of love.”
[Sidenote: THE LADY OF UTAMARO’S ART]
Although I can enjoy and even criticise Hiroshige or Hokusai at any
time and in any place, let me tell you that I cannot do so with
Utamaro, because I must be first in the rightest mood (who says bodies
have no mood?) as when I see the living woman; to properly appreciate
his work of art I must have the fullness of my physical strength so
that my criticism is disarmed. (Criticism? Why, that is the art for
people imperfect in health, thin and tired.) I feel, let me confess,
almost physical pain—is it rather a joy?—through all my adoration in
seeing Utamaro’s women, just as when with the most beautiful women
whose beauty first wounds us; I do not think it vulgarity to say that I
feel blushing with them, because the true spiritualism would please to
be parenthesised by bodily emphasis. It is your admiration that makes
you bold; again your admiration of Utamaro’s pictures that makes them
a real part of yourself, therefore your vital question of body and
soul; and you shall never be able to think of them separately from
your personal love. When I say that we have our own life and art in his
work, I mean that all Japanese woman-beauty, love, passion, sorrow and
joy, in one word, all dreams now appear, then disappear, by the most
wonderful lines of his art.
I will lay me down whenever I want to beautifully admire Utamaro and
spend half an hour with his lady (“To-day I am with her in silence
of twilight eve, and am afraid she may vanish into the mist”), in
the room darkened by the candle-light (it is the candle-light that
darkens rather than lights); every book or picture of Western origin
(perhaps except a few reprints from Rossetti or Whistler, which would
not break the atmosphere altogether) should be put aside. How can you
place together in the same room Utamaro’s women, for instance, with
Millet’s pictures or Carpenter’s “Towards Democracy"? The atmosphere I
want to create should be most impersonal, not touched or scarred by the
sharpness of modern individualism or personality, but eternally soft
and grey; under the soft grey atmosphere you would expect to see the
sudden swift emotion of love, pain, or joy of life, that may come any
moment or may not come at all. I always think that the impersonality or
the personality born out of the depth of impersonality was regarded in
older Japan as the highest, most virtuous art and life; now not talking
about life, but the art—Utamaro’s art, the chronicle or history of the
idealised harem or divan. How charming to talk with Utamaro on love and
beauty in the grey soft atmosphere particularly fitting to receive him
in, or to be received by him in. I would surely venture to say to him
on such a rare occasion: “You had no academy or any hall of mediocrity
in your own days to send your pictures to; that was fortunate, as you
appealed directly to the people eventually more artistic and always
just. I know that you too were once imprisoned under the accusation
of obscenity; there was the criticism also in your day which saw the
moral and the lesson, but not the beauty and the picture. When you say
how sorry you were to part with your picture when it was done, I fully
understand your artistic heart, because the picture was too much of
yourself; perhaps you confessed your own love and passion too nakedly.
I know that you must have been feeling uneasy or even afraid to be
observed or criticised too closely.”
[Sidenote: THE ACCUSATION OF OBSCURITY]
As a certain critic remarked, the real beauty flies away like an
angel whenever an intellect rushes in and begins to speak itself; the
intellect, if it has anything to do, certainly likes to show up itself
too much, with no consideration for the general harmony that would soon
be wounded by it. Utamaro’s art, let me dare say, is as I once wrote:
“She is an art (let me call her so)
Hung, as a web, in the air of perfume,
Soft yet vivid, she sways in music:
(But what sadness in her saturation of life!)
Her music lives in intensity of a moment and then dies;
To her, suggestion is her life.
She is the moth-light playing on reality’s dusk,
Soon to die as a savage prey of the moment;
She is a creation of surprise (let me say so),
Dancing gold on the wire of impulse.”
Some one might say that Utamaro’s ladies are brainless, but is it not,
as I said before, that the sacrifice of individuality or personality
makes them join at once with the great ghosts of universal beauty and
love? They are beautiful, because all the ghosts and spirits of all
the ages and humanity of Japan speak themselves through them; it is
perfectly right of him not to give any particular name to the pictures,
because they are not the reflection of only one woman, but of a hundred
and thousand women; besides, Utamaro must have been loving a little
secrecy and mystification to play with the public’s curiosity.
[Sidenote: THE UKIYOYE WOMAN]
We have his art; that is quite enough. What do I care about his life,
what he used to wear and eat, how long he slept and how many hours
he worked every day; in fact, what is known as his life is extremely
slight. It is said that he was a sort of hanger-on to Juzaburo Tsutaya,
the well-known publisher of his day, at the house within a stone’s
throw of Daimon or Great Gate of Yoshiwara, the Nightless City of
hired beauties and lanterns, where, the story says, Utamaro had his
nightly revel of youthful days as a fatal slave to female enchantment;
while we do not know whether he revelled there or not, we know that
as Yoshiwara of those times was the rendezvous of beauty, good looks,
and song, not all physical, but quite spiritual, we can believe that
he must have wandered there for his artistic development. Indeed there
was his great art beautifully achieved when he suddenly entered into
idealism or dream where sensuousness and spirituality find themselves
to be blood brothers or sisters. In the long history of Japanese art we
see the most interesting turn in the appearance of a new personality,
that is the Ukiyoye woman; and who was the artist who perfected them
to the art of arts? He was Utamaro. You may abuse and criticise, if
you will, their unnaturally narrow squint eyes and egg-shaped smooth
face; but from the mask his woman wears I am deliciously impressed
with the strange yet familiar, old but new, artistic personality. The
times change, and we are becoming more intellectual, as a consequence,
physically ugly; is it too sweeping or one-sided to say that? I have,
however, many reasons for my wishing to see more influence of Utamaro’s
art.
IV
HIROSHIGE
The Sumida River’s blue began to calm down, like that of an old
Japanese colour-print, into the blue, I should say, of silence which
had not been mixed with another colour to make life; that blue, it
might be said, did not exist so much in the river as in my very mind,
which has lately grown, following a certain Mr. Hopper, to cry,
"Hiro—Hiro—Hiroshige the Great!” The time was late afternoon of one day
in last April; the little boat which carried a few souls like mine,
who, greatly troubled by the modern life, were eager to gain the true
sense of perspective towards Nature, glided down as it finished the
regular course of the “Cherry-blossom viewing at Mukojima.” And my mind
entered slowly into a picture of my own creation—nay, Hiroshige’s.
“Look at the view from here. (I was thinking of Hiroshige’s Sumidagawa
Hanasakari among his Yedo pictures.) It may be too late now to agree
with Wilde when he said that Nature imitates Art,” I said to my friend.
He saw at once my meaning, though not clearly, and expanded on how
artistically the human mind has been advancing lately; and I endorsed
him with the fact that I have come to see, for some long time, the
Japanese scenery through Hiroshige’s eye. My friend exclaimed: “Is
it not the same thing, when you think Nature imitates Art, that your
mind itself imitates the Art first?” It is not written in any book
how much Hiroshige was appreciated in his day; but I believe I am not
wrong to say that he is now reaching the height of popularity in both
the East and the West, of popularity in the real sense, and you will
easily understand me when I say that he is the artist of the future in
the same sense that I disbelieve in the birth register of Turner and
Whistler. He is, in truth, greatly in advance, even if I fancy he is
an artist of the present day, your contemporary and mine; I always go
to him to find where Nature is pleased to put her own emphasis. Every
picture of his I see seems to be a new one always; and the last is
ever so surprising as to leave my mind incapable for the time being of
apprehension of his other pictures. One picture of his is enough; there
is the proof of his artistic greatness.
[Sidenote: NATURE IN HER EMPHASIS]
We did not know until recently what meant the words realism and
idealism (should we thank the Western critics?) except this: “The
artist, whatever he be, idealist or realist or what not, is good when
he is true to his art. I mean that technique or method of expression
is secondary; even the seeming realistic picture of Oriental art is,
when it is splendid, always subjective.” I have many reasons to call
Hiroshige an idealist or subjective artist, now playing an arbitrary
art of criticism after the Western fashion, as I only see his artistic
wisdom, but nothing else in his being true to Nature; that wisdom, I
admit, helped his art to a great measure, but what I admire in him
is the indefinable quality which, as I have no better word, I will
call atmosphere or pictorial personality. It seems that he learned
the secret from Chinese landscape art how to avoid femininity and
confusion; the difference between his art and that of the Chinese
artist is that where the one drew a _bonseki_, or tray-landscape,
with sand from memory, the latter made a mirage in the sky. When
Hiroshige fails he reminds me of Emerson’s words of suggestion to look
at Nature upside down through your legs; his success, as that of the
Chinese artist, is poetry. And our Oriental poetry is no other kind
but subjectivity. I have right here before me the picture called “Awa
no Naruto,” which is more often credited to be the work of the second
Hiroshige; now let me, for once and all, settle the question that there
were many Hiroshiges. It is my opinion there was only one Hiroshige;
I say this because in old Japan (a hundred times more artistic than
present Japan) the individual personality was not recognised, and
when an artist adopted the name of Hiroshige by merit and general
consent, it meant that he grew at once incarnated with it; what use is
there to talk about its second or third? I prefer to regard Hiroshige
as the title of artistic merit since it has ceased in fact to be
an individuality; indeed, where is the other artist, East or West,
whose life-story is so little known as Hiroshige’s? And I see so many
pictures which, while bearing his signature, I cannot call his work,
because I see them so much below the Hiroshige merit—for instance,
the whole upright series of Tokaido and Yedo, and so many pictures of
the “Noted Places in the Provinces of Japan"—because they are merely
prose, and even as prose they often fail. But to return to this “Awa
no Naruto,” a piece of poem in picture, where the whirlpools of the
strait, large and small, now rising and then falling in perfect rhythm,
are drawn suggestively but none the less distinctly. I see in it not
only the natural phenomenon of the Awa Strait, but also the symbolism
of life’s rise and fall, success and defeat; I was thinking for some
time that I shall write a poem on it, although I could not realise it
yet.
[Sidenote: HIROSHIGE THE CHINESE POET]
I have my own meaning when I call Hiroshige the Chinese poet. Upon
my little desk here I see an old book of Chinese prosody; there is
a popular Chinese verse, Hichigon Zekku, or Four Lines with Seven
Words in Each, which is almost as rigid as the English sonnet; and the
theory of the sonnet can be applied to that Hichigon Zekku without any
modification. We generally attach an importance to the third line,
calling it the line “for change,” and the fourth is the conclusion; the
first line is, of course, the commencing of the subject, and the second
is “to receive and develop.” It seems that Hiroshige’s good pictures
very well pass this test of Hichigon Yekku qualification. Let me pick
out the pictures at random to prove my words. Here is the “Bright Sky
after Storm at Awazu,” one of the series called Eight Views of the
Lake Biwa; in it the white sails ready to hoist in the fair breeze
might be the “change” of the versification. That picture was commenced
and developed with the trees and rising hills by the lake, and the
conclusion is the sails now visible and then invisible far away. Now
take the picture of a rainstorm on the Tokaido. Two peasants under a
half-opened paper umbrella, and the _Kago_-bearers naked and hasty, are
the “third line” of the picture; the drenched bamboo dipping all one
way and the cottage roofs shivering under the threat of Nature would be
the first and second lines, while this picture-poem concludes itself
with the sound of the harsh oblique fall of rain upon the ground. You
will see that Hiroshige’s good pictures have always such a theory of
composition; and he gained it, I think, from the Chinese prosody. In
the East, more than in the West, art is allied to verse-making.
[Sidenote: THE FAREWELL VERSE]
When we consider the fact he was the artist of only fifty years ago, it
is strange why we cannot know more of his own life story, and how he
happened to leave the words that generally pass as a farewell verse as
follows:—
“I leave my brush at Azuma, and go on the journey to the Holy West to
view the famous scenery there.”
I cannot accept it innocently, and I even doubt its origin, as it is
more prosaic than poetical. It is only that he followed after a fashion
of his day if he left it, as the verse is poor and at best humorous.
But when it is taken by the English seriousness, the words have another
effect. Indeed, Hiroshige has had quite an evolution since he was
discovered in the West; he is, in truth, more an English or European
artist than a Japanese in the present understanding.
V
GAHO HASHIMOTO
[Sidenote: _KOKOROMOCHI_ IN PICTURE]
The art of Gaho (Hashimoto’s _nom-de-plume_, signifying the “Kingdom
Refined”) is not to discard form and detail, as is often the case
with the artists of the “Japanese school,” while they soar into the
grey-tinted vision of tone and atmosphere. His conventionalism—remember
that he started his artist’s life as a student of the Kano school,
whose absurd classicism, arresting the germ of development, invited
its own ruin—was not an enemy for him by any means. With the magic of
his own alchemy he turned it into a transcendental beauty, bearing the
dignity of artistic authority. I am sure he must have been glad to
have the conventionalism for his magic to work on afterward; and when
he left it, it seems to me, he looked back to it with a reminiscence
of sad longing. Conventionalism is not bad when it does not dazzle. To
make it suggestive is an achievement. To speak of Gaho’s individuality
in his pictures does no justice to him. His thought and conception
are the highest, and at the least different from many another artist
in the West. It is not his aim at all to express the light and colour
of his individuality. I believe that he even despised it. He had
the volumes of the Oriental philosophy in himself; and his idea, I
believe, was much influenced by the Zen sect Buddhism, whose finality
in teaching is to forget your ego. Gaho often talked on _Kokoromochi_
in picture, to use his favourite expression, which, I am sure, means
more than “spirit.” “Now what is it?” he was frequently asked. “Is
it in its nature subjective or objective? Or is it something like a
combination of the two?” He was never explanatory in speech in his
life. He thought, as a Zen priest, that silence was the best answer.
Let me explain his _Kokoromochi_ in picture by my understanding.
It is life or vital breath of the objective character, which is
painted by one who has no stain of eye or subjectivity. To lose your
subjectivity against the canvas, or, I will say, here in Japan, the
silk, is the first and last thing. And the perfect assimilation
with the object which you are going to paint would be the way of
emancipation. You have to understand that you are called out by a
divine voice only to be a medium, but nothing else. I am afraid that
the phrase, “Let Nature herself speak,” has been over-used. However,
it is peculiarly true in Gaho’s case. I think Gaho thought that to
flash the rays of his individuality in his picture was nothing but a
blasphemy against Nature. In that respect he is the humblest artist,
and at the same time his humility is his own pride. Indeed, it is only
through humility you are admitted to step into the inner shrine of
Nature. Art for Gaho was not the matter of a piece of silk and Chinese
ink, but a sacred thing. And to be an artist is a life’s greatest
triumph, and I am sure that Gaho was that.