extraordinary persistence of study displayed in the first two volumes,
in which he shows encyclopedically the delicate shades of variety of
nearly all Japanese artists acknowledged great, from Kanaoka down to
Kuniyoshi, also specimens of Chinese masters inserted at intervals.
When I say that his artistic study was thorough even in the modern
sense, I mean he always went straight to Nature and reality to fulfil
what the pictures of old masters failed to tell him. _Kyosai Gwaden_
tells, as an early adventure in Nature study, how he hid in a cupboard
a human head which he picked up from a swollen river and horrified
the family with his attempt to sketch it in his ninth year; when fire
broke out and swept away even his own house, he became an object of
condemnation, as he acted as if it were the affair of somebody else,
and was seen serenely sketching the sudden clamour of the fire scene.
The books contain somewhere a page or two of unusually amusing sketches
of his students at work on different living objects, from a frog and
turtle to cocks and fishes; Kyosai’s love of fun in exaggeration
(indeed exaggeration is one of the traits conspicuous even in his most
serious work) again is seen in the sketches, when he made a monkey
play at gymnastics and pull the hair of the earnest student with the
brush. I often ask myself the question of the real merit of realism
in our Japanese art, and further the question how much Kyosai gained
from his realistic accuracy; I wonder what artistic meaning there is,
for instance, when people, even acknowledged critics, speak with much
admiration of the anatomical exactness of those skeletons fantastically
dancing to the ghost’s music in that famous Jigoku-dayu picture. Let
me ask again what the picture would lose, supposing, for instance, the
most whimsical dancers around the courtesan’s gorgeous robe had two or
three joints of bone missing; is not Kyosai’s realistic minuteness,
which the artist was perhaps proud of displaying, in truth, rather a
small subordinate part in his pictures? He was already in the present
age, many years before his death, when many a weak artistic mind of
Japan only received, from the Western art, confusion and reasoning, but
not strength and passion. Now let me ask you: was it Kyosai’s artistic
greatness to accept the Western science of art?
[Sidenote: THE REALISTIC MINUTENESS]
He was never original in the absolute understanding as Sesshu, Korin,
in a lesser degree Harunobu and Hokusai were; it might be that he
was born too late in the age, or is it more true to say that his
astonishing knowledge of the old Japanese art acted to hold him back
from striking out an original line? Education often makes one a coward.
When I say that he was himself the sum total of all Japanese art, I do
not mean to undervalue him, but rather to do justice to his versatility
and the swing of his power. And it was his personality, unique and
undefinable, that made his borrowing such an impression as we feel it
in fact in his work. After all, he has to be judged, in my opinion, as
an artist of technique.
I do not know what picture of his the Victoria and Albert Museum and
the British Museum have, except a few reproductions in books, which
impressed me as poor examples. It is not too much to say that Professor
Conder’s Kyosai book is the first and may be the last; there is no more
fit man than he, who as Kyosai’s student knew him personally during the
last eight years of his life. The book contains some good specimens
which belong to that period; but what I most wish to see, are the
pictures he produced in his earlier age. He is one of the artists who
will gain much from selection; who will ever publish a book of twenty
or thirty best pieces of his life’s production?
VII
THE LAST MASTER OF THE UKIYOYE ART
Yoshitoshi Tsukioka, as Kuniyoshi’s home student of high talent in his
younger days, it is said, had a key to the storehouse entrusted to
his care, where Kuniyoshi treasured foreign colour-prints of saints
or devils strayed from a Dutch ship, Heaven’s gift most rare in those
days, which made him pause a little and think about a fresh turn for
his work. When we know that vulgarity always attracts us first and
most, provided it is new to us, we cannot blame Yoshitoshi much when
he reproduced in his work, indeed, stealing a march on his master,
an immediate response to the Western art, whose secret he thought he
could solve through varnishing. Doubtless it was no small discovery
for Yoshitoshi. And the general public were equally simple when
“Kwaidai Hyaku Senso,” his first attempt after the new departure, quite
impressive as he thought, was well received by them; when he went too
far in this foreign imitation through his little knowledge, as in his
“Battle at Uyeno,” he varnished the whole picture. We have another
instance that time is, after all, the best judge, as we know that
those pictures of Yoshitoshi’s early days, when he had not yet found
his own art, are most peacefully buried under the blessed oblivion and
heavy dusts to-day. You cannot make an art only by wisdom and prayer,
and it is better to commit youthful sin when one must, like Yoshitoshi,
with his period of foreign imitation, since his later work would become
intensified, chastened, and better balanced by his repentance.
[Sidenote: THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE]
To speak most strictly, Kuniyoshi should be called the last master
of the Ukiyoye school, this interesting branch of Japanese art
interpreting the love and romance of the populace, peculiarly developed
through the general hatred of the aristocratic people; but I have
reason to call Yoshitoshi Tsukioka the very last master of that school,
in the same sense that we call Danjuro or Kikugoro the last actors,
not less by the fact of the age, already heterogeneous, naturally
weakened for holding up the old Japanese purity, against which he
struggled hard to find an artistic compromise, than by his own gift.
I have often thought that, if he had been born earlier, he might have
proved himself another Hokusai, or, better still, if the time were
still earlier, when love and sensuality were the same word in peace and
prosperity, he would not have been much below Utamaro. If he failed, as
indeed he failed, now, looking back from to-day, it was the failure of
his age. Although it may sound paradoxical, I am pleased to say that
his failure was his success, because I see his undaunted versatility
glorified through his failure; he helps, more than any other artist,
the historian of Japanese art to study the age psychologically—in fact,
he serves him more than Hokusai or Utamaro. He is an interesting study,
as I said before, as the last master, indeed, as much so as Moronobu
Hishikawa as the recognised first master. I say Yoshitoshi failed, but
I do not mean that he was a so-called failure in his lifetime; on the
contrary, he was one of the most popular artists of modern Japan—at
least, in the age of his maturity; what I should like to say is that
the artistic success of one age does never mean the success of another
age, and Yoshitoshi’s success is, let me say, the success of failure
when we now look back upon it. I can distinctly remember even to-day
my great disappointment, now almost twenty-five years ago, as a most
ardent admirer of Yoshitoshi, when, appearing before the publisher’s
house as early as seven o’clock the morning after I had read the
announcement of his new picture of a dancer, I was told that the entire
set of copies was exhausted; his popularity was something great in my
boyhood’s days. It was in 1875 that he first took the public by storm
with his three sheets of pictures called “Ichi Harano,” an historical
thing which showed Yasumasa, a court noble, playing a bamboo flute
under the moonlight, perfectly unconscious of a highwayman, Hakama
Dare by name, following him, stepping softly upon the autumn grasses,
ready to stab the noble with his sword. The popularity of this picture
was heightened by the fact that Danjuro, the greatest tragedian of
the modern Japanese stage, wanted to reproduce the pictorial effect
in a play, and have Shinsuke Kawatake write up one special scene to
do honour to Yoshitoshi, under the title “Ichi Harano, by Yoshitoshi,
Powerful with his Brush.” It was a great honour indeed, such as no
artist to-day could expect to receive. We have many occasions, on the
other hand, when Yoshitoshi served the actors and his bosom friends,
Danjuro and Kikugoro, to popularise their art. Since the day of the
First Toyokuni, it had been the custom for the artists of this popular
school to work together with the stage artists.
[Sidenote: THE CARVER AND PRINTER]
Yoshitoshi brought out the series of three called “Snow, Moon, and
Flower,” two of them commemorating Danjuro in his well-known rôle
of Kuyemon Kezuri, and one Kikugoro in Seigen, whose holy life of
priesthood was disturbed by love beyond hope. Although I hesitate to
say they are the best specimens—yes, they are in their own way—they
have few companions in the long Ukiyoye annals as theatrical posters,
for which exaggeration should not be much blamed. The striking point
of emphasis in design, hitting well the artistic work, make them
worthy. I have them right before me while writing this brief note on
Yoshitoshi. I recall what I heard about the Kezuri picture; it is said
that the artist spent fully three days to draw this “hundred-days
wig,” to use the theatrical phrase. What an astonishing wig that rôle
had to wear. And what painstaking execution of the artist; and again
what wonderful dexterity of the Japanese carver and printer. At the
time when these pictures were produced it is not too much to say that
the arts of carving and printing had reached the highest possible
point—that is to say, they had already begun to fall. I am pleased to
attach a special value to them as the past pieces which well combined
those three arts. By the way, the name of the carver of those pictures
is Wadayu. Now, returning to Yoshitoshi and his actors-friends. The
former was always regarded by the latter as an artistic adviser whose
words were observed as law; Yoshitoshi was the first person Danjuro
used to look up when in trouble with the matter of theatrical design
in dress. I have often heard how the artist helped Kikugoro. This
eminent actor once had a great problem how to appear as Shini Gami,
or the Spirit of Death, in the play called _Kaga Zobi_, and asked
Yoshitoshi for a suggestion; and it is said that a rough sketch he drew
at once enlightened Kikugoro’s bewildered mind, and, as a result,
he immortalised the rôle. It was the age when realism, of course, in
more vague, doubtful meaning than the present usage, had completely
conquered the stage, the old idealistic stage art having fallen off
the pedestal. Certainly Danjuro, the first of all to be absorbed in
that realism which prevailed here twenty or twenty-five years ago,
did never serve the stage art for advancement, but, on the contrary,
it was the realism, if anything, that cheapened, trivialised, and
vulgarised the time-honoured Japanese art; but it seemed that there
was nobody to see that point of wisdom. It is ridiculous to know how
Danjuro insisted, as Tomonori, in the play of _Sembon Sakura_, that
the blood upon his armour should be painted as real as possible, and
troubled the great artistic brush of Yoshitoshi on each occasion
during the whole run of the play; but how serious the actor was in his
thought and determination! Again that realism was the main cause why
Yoshitoshi’s art failed to compete with the earlier Ukiyoye artists
like Shunsho, Utamaro, and even Hokusai; it was an art borrowed from
the West doubtless, when I observe how Yoshitoshi, unlike the earlier
artists, was delighted to use the straight, forceful lines as the
modern Western illustrators; the picture called “Daimatsuro” is a fit
example in which he carried out that tendency or mannerism with most
versatility. I daresay that his pictures, whether of historical heroes
or professional beauties, which were least affected by the so-called
realism or Western perspectives and observed carefully the old Ukiyoye
canons, limiting themselves in the most artistic shyness, would be only
prized as adorning his name as the last master; for the ninety per
cent. we have no grief for their hastening into blessed dusts. I have
in my collection the three-sheet picture called “Imayo Genji,” showing
the view of Chigoga Fuchi at Yenoshima, with the romantic posture of
four naked fisherwomen, which is dated very early in Yoshitoshi’s
artistic life, no doubt being the work of the time when he was still
a home student at Kuniyoshi’s studio or workshop; you can see the
artist’s allegiance to his teacher in those somewhat stooping woman
figures; there is no mistake to say that Yoshitoshi, at least in this
picture, had studied Hiroshige and Hokusai to advantage for the general
effect of rocks and fantastic waves.
[Sidenote: “IMAYO GENJI"]
Although it is clear that it is not a specimen of his developed art,
I have in mind to say that it will endure, perhaps as one of the best
Ukiyoye pictures of all ages, through its youthful loyalty to the
traditional old art and the painstaking composition for which the best
work is always marked. How artistically troubled, even lost, are his
later works, though once they were popular and even admired!
[Sidenote: THE FAINT ECHO OF OKYO]
Although he was, as I said above, most popular in the prime of his
life (by the way he died in his fifty-fourth year in June of 1892),
he had many years of poverty and discouragement when he complained
of the fact that he was born rather too late; his hardship, not only
spiritual, but material, soon followed after the happy period of
student life with Kuniyoshi, when his artistic ambition forced on
him independence. It was the time most inartistic, if there was ever
such a time in any country, when the new Meiji Government had hardly
settled itself on the sad ruins of the Tokugawa feudalism, under which
all prosperity and peace, even art and humanity, were buried, and the
people in general even thought the safety of their lives was beyond
reach, now with the so-called Civil War of Meiji Tenth, and then with
that or this. How could the artists get the people’s support under such
a condition of the times; indeed, Yoshitoshi fought bitterly for his
bare existence then. It was the time when he was extremely hard-up that
his home-students, Toshikage and Toshiharu, bravely served him in the
capacity of cook or for any other work; we cannot blame him that he
tried, with such pictures as the series called “Accident of the Lord
Ii,” to amuse and impress the people’s minds, which grew, in spite of
themselves, to love battle and blood. And the best result he received
from such work, happy to say for his art, was the realisation of
failure. But he was quite proud, I understand, when he published it,
and even expected a great sale. And when he could not sell it at all,
it is said, he determined that he would run away alone from Tokyo for
good, leaving his students behind. Although there is no record of its
sale to-day, I am sure that it did not sell well, or, in another way
of saying, it sold well enough to save him from the shame of running
away. Doubtless the people demanded pictures of such a nature, perhaps
to illustrate the time’s happening, as it was the time before the
existence of any graphic or illustrated paper, and to fill that demand
Yoshitoshi brought out a hundred pictures of battles and historical
heroes, more or less in bloody scenes, which are mostly forgotten. It
was in 1885 that he fairly well found his own art (good or bad) with
the historical picture, “Kiyomori’s Illness”; the chief character, the
Lord Kiyomori, suffered from fever and dream, as we have it in legend,
as a destiny brought from his endless brutality and covetousness;
the fact that Yoshitoshi’s mind was much engaged in the study of the
Shijoha school at that time will be seen, particularly in this picture,
of which the background is filled with the faint echo of great Okyo in
the drawing of the Emma, or Judge of Hades, the green demon, and other
things of awful demonstration. “Inaka Genji,” a picture to commemorate
the occasion of Ransen’s changing his name to Tanehiko, and “Ukaino
Kansaku,” a picture of the spirit of a dead fisherman being saved by
the holy prayer of the priest Nichiren, are the work of about the same
time. When Yoshitoshi began to publish his series of one hundred pieces
under the name of “Tsuki Hyakushi,” or “One Hundred Views of the Moon,”
his popularity almost reached high-water mark; I can recollect with
the greatest pleasure how delighted I was to be given a few of these
moon pictures as a souvenir from Tokyo when I was attending a country
grammar school, and I can assure you that my artistic taste and love,
which already began to grow, expressed a ready response to value.
Among the pictures, I was strongly attracted by one thing, which was
the picture of a crying lady alone in a boat, with a _biwa_ instrument
upon her knees; from admiration I pasted the picture on a screen, which
remained as it was during these twenty years, unspoiled, spotless,
and perfect, and I had the happy occasion to see it with renewed eyes
lately when I returned to my country home. I felt exactly the same
impression, as good as at the first sight of twenty years ago. Although
the series carry the title of moon, nearly all of the pictures have
no moon at all; it was the artistic merit of the artist to suggest
that they were all views of the moonlight. We can point out many
shortcomings in his work as a pure Ukiyoye artist; but, after all,
I think that nobody will deny his rare and versatile talent. If only
he had been born at the better and proper time! And if we must blame
his degeneration, I think it is quite safe to say that the general
public has to share equally in the criticism. He was an interesting
personality, full of stories and anecdotes, which the English people
would be glad to hear about when they are well acquainted with his
work; but I will keep them for some other occasion, because I wish at
present to introduce him simply through his work. Let it suffice to say
that he was humane and lovable, having a great faith in his own class
of people—that is, the plain street-dwellers; when I say he was, too,
the artist or artizan of Tokyo or Yedo, like Utamaro, Hokusai, and
Kuniyoshi, I mean that he was gallant and chivalrous, always a friend
of the lowly, and a hater of sham.
[Sidenote: THE HATER OF SHAM]
He was born in 1839, to use the Japanese name of the era, the Tenth
of Tempo, at Shiba of Yedo, present Tokyo. When a little boy, he was
adopted by the family of Tsukioka; his own name was Yonejiro. Like
other Japanese artists, he had quite many _gago_ or _noms de plume_; to
give a few of them, Ikkasai, Sokatei, Shiyei, and others. Although he
did not change his dwelling-place as Hokusai did, he moved often from
one house to another; it was at Miyanaga Cho of Hongo where he married
Taiko. He bought a house at Suga Cho, Asakusa, in 1885; but his
sensitive mind was disturbed when he was told by a fortune-teller that
the direction of his house was unlucky, and was again obliged to move
to Hama Cho of Nihonbashi, when he was taken ill with brain disease.
As I said before, he died in June of 1892. The students he left behind
include many artists already dead; to give the best known, Keishu
Takeuchi; Keichu Yamada and Toshihide Migita are the names of artists
still active to-day.
VIII
BUSHO HARA[A]
[A] See the Appendix
Often I tried to write about Busho Hara the artist (I use the term in
the most eclectic Japanese conception, because his art served more
frequently to make his personality distinguished through its failure
rather than through its success); that my attempt turned to nothing
was perhaps because my mind, solitary and sad like that of Hara, did
not like to betray the secret of the recluse whose silence was his
salutation. Besides, my heart and soul and all were too much filled
with this Busho Hara from the fact of his recent unexpected death—(by
the way, he was in his forty-seventh year, that interesting age for an
artist, as it would be the beginning of a new page, good or bad); and
I am, in one word, perfectly confused on the subject. When I wish to
think of his art alone, and even to measure it, if possible, through
the most dangerous, always foolish way of comparison with others, I
find always, in spite of myself, that my mind, even before it has
fairly started on his art, is already carried away by the dear, sweet,
precious memory of his rare personality. “Above all, he was rarest
as friend,” my mind always whispers to me every two minutes from the
confusion of my thought, this and that, and again that and this, on
him. To say that I think of him too much and for too many things would
be well-nigh the same as to say that I am unfitted to tell about him
intelligibly. I confess that I had a little difference with him on the
subject of his own art here and there, while I was absorbed in his
conversation or criticism (I always believed and said—did he dislike me
when I said that?—he was a better and greater critic than artist), now
by the cozy fire of a winter evening, then with the trees and grasses
languid with summer’s heat; he was the first and last man to whom I
went when I felt particularly ambitious and particularly tired, and I
dare say that he was pleased to see me. My own delight to have him as
my friend was in truth doubled, when I thought that his personality
and art, remarkable as they are honest, true, and sympathetic, were
almost unknown at home except in a little narrow community; as I said
before, he was a recluse. In England, many readers of Mr. Markino’s
book, _A Japanese Artist in London_, will remember Hara’s name, as it
is frequently repeated in the book; and a certain well-known English
critic had an occasion once or twice to mention his name and kindly
comment on his work in the _Graphic_. That was in 1906, when he was
about to leave London after a few years’ stay there. “Shall I go to
England again for a change or to take a few pictures of mine?” he often
exclaimed. England was his dream, as she is mine. How unfalteringly our
talk ran; every time the subject was England and her art.
[Sidenote: HIS DREAM OF ENGLAND]
“Now is it settled, let us suppose,” Hara would say in the course of
talk, slightly twisting his sensitive mouth, holding up straight back
his well-poised head (what a philosopher’s eyes he had, gentle and
clear), “that we shall go to England some time soon in the future.
Yes, we shall go there even if we are not begged by Japan to leave
the country. The most serious question is, however, where we shall
sleep and dine. I have had enough experience of a common English
boarding-house; I am haunted even to-day by the ghosts of Yorkshire
pudding and cold ham. And suppose that a daughter or a son of that
boarding-house might sing aloud a popular song every Saturday evening;
I should like to know if there is anything more sad than that. Still,
suppose that one next to you at table will ask you every evening how
your work might sell; certainly that will be the moment when you think
you will leave England at once for good. But it is England’s greatness
that she has art appreciators as well as buyers. Oh, where is the true
art appreciator in Japan, even while we admit that we have the buyers?
I will take a few pictures with me when I go to England next, and show
them to the right sort of people; really, truly, only London of all
the cities of the world has the right sort of people in any line of
profession. Besides, I should like to examine the English art again and
let the people there listen to my opinion; I was not enough prepared
for such a work when I went there last.”
[Sidenote: THE ENEMY IN HIS OWN SELF]