determinedly started at the National Gallery, where he was forcibly
attracted by Rembrandt and Velasquez, must have been happily developed,
when the same _Graphic_ critic spoke of his “sensitive and searching
eyes,” and (printing Hara’s intelligent rendering of Rembrandt’s
“Jewish Merchant” on the page) said that it proved the painter was at
the root of the matter, and declared that the critic had rarely seen
better or more intelligent copy, and again to prove that Hara was not
merely a copyist or imitator, he also reproduced on the same page his
original work called “The Old Seamstress.” And I am doubly pleased to
find that the same English critic mentioned him somewhere as a “keen
and acute critic, but generous withal”; I was so glad to have Hara as
my friend for the rare striking power of his critical enlightenment
(Oh, where is another sane artist like himself?), even when he failed
to make a strong impression on me with his art. It was his immediate
question on his return home how to apply the technique of oil painting
he learned in London to Japanese subjects; if he failed in his art, as
he always believed and I often thought he did, it was from the reason,
I dare think, that he had indeed too clear a view of self-appraisal
or self-criticism under whose menace he always took the attitude of
an outsider towards his own work. How often I wished he were wholly
without that critical power, always hard to please, altogether too
fastidious! His artistic ambition and aim were so absolute and most
highly puritanic; as a result, he was ever so restless and sad with
his art, and often even despised himself. He had a great enemy, that
was no other but his own self; he was more often conquered by it than
conquering it. I have never seen in my life a more sad artist with the
brush, facing a canvas, than this Busho Hara. Besides, his poor health,
which had been failing in the last few years, only worked to make his
critical displeasure sharper and more peculiar; and he utterly lost the
passion and foolishness of his younger days. How often we promised,
when we parted after a long chat, which usually began with Yoshio
Markino, dear friend of his and mine in London, and as a rule ended
with reminiscences of our English life, that we would hereafter return
to our younger age, if possible to our boys’ days, and even commit the
innocent youthful sins and be happy; but when we met together again,
we were the same unhappy mortals, Hara with a brush, I with a pen. He
always looked comforted by my words when I told him my own tragedy
and difficulties to write poetry; both of us exclaimed at once with
the same breath and longed for life’s perfect freedom. How he wished
to cut away from himself and bid a final farewell to many portrait
commissions, and become a lone pilgrim on Nature’s great highway with
only his brush and oil; that was his dream.
[Sidenote: AT THE HOSPITAL]
Let me repeat again that he was sad with his brush only to make his art
still sadder; when he was most happy, it was the time when he left his
own studio to forget his unwilling brush and send his love imaginations
under the new foliage of spring trees and make them ride on the freedom
of the summer air. How he planned for future work while contemplating
great Nature; he was a dreamer in the true sense. And dream was to him
more real as he thought it almost practicable. I do not mix any sarcasm
in my words when I say that he was a greater artist when he did not
paint; he rose to his full dignity only when out of his studio; and it
was most unfortunate that I found him always ill when he was out of it.
But I will say that I never saw one like himself so well composed, even
satisfied, on a sick bed; that might have been from the reason that
his being absorbed in Nature, his thought and contemplation on her,
did not give an opportunity for bodily illness to use its despotism.
He gave me in truth even such an impression that he was glad to be
ill so he could lay himself right before the thought of great Nature.
Once in the spring of 1911 I called on him at the hospital, when
he successfully underwent a surgeon’s knife (he was suffering from
typhlitia); although he was quite weak then, he was most ambitious and
happy to talk on the beauty of Nature; and he said: “I almost wonder
why I did not become ill and lay me down on this particular bed of this
hospital before, and (pointing to the blue sky through the window with
his pale-skinned slender hand that was unmistakably an artist’s) see
how the eastern sky changes from dusk to milky grey, again from that
grey to rosy light. How often I wished you, particularly you, might
be here with me all awakening in this room, perhaps at halfpast three
o’clock; that is the time exactly when the colours of the sky will
begin to evolve. Thank God all the other people are sleeping then. At
such a moment I feel as if all Nature belonged to me alone in the whole
world, and I alone held her secrets and her beauty; I am thankful for
my illness, as it has made me thus restful in mind and allowed me to
carefully observe Nature, and build my many future plans. I can promise
you that I will whistle my adieu to the commissioned work, all of it,
when I grow stronger again, and become a real artist, the real artist
even to satisfy you. Oh, how I could paint the mysterious changes of
the sky which I have been studying for the last week!”
Again I saw him in his sick-bed at his little home one afternoon; we
grew, as a matter of course, quite enthusiastic and passionate as our
talk was on art and artists; it was the foundation of his theory,
when he expanded on it, not to put any difference between the arts of
the East and the West; he seemed to agree with me on that day when I
compared even recklessly Turner with our Sesshu. Although he entered
into his art through the technique, I observed that he was speedily
turning to a Spiritualist; I often thought that he was a true Japanese
artist even of the Japanese school, while he adopted the Western
method. (It was the _Graphic_ critic who said that he was “perhaps the
ablest Japanese painter in our method who has visited our shores.”)
He and I saw that time the famous large screen by Goshun belonging
to the Imperial Household called “Shosho no Yau,” or “The Night Rain
at Shosho”; as our minds were still absorbed in its soft mellow
atmosphere and grey flashes of sweeping rain, we often repeated our
great admiration for that Goshun. “It’s not merely an art, but Nature
herself,” he exclaimed. The afternoon of the summer day was slowly
falling; the yellow sunbeams, like an elf or fairy, were playing
almost fantastically with the garden leaves; Hara was looking on them
absent-mindedly, and when he awoke from his dream, he said: “Suppose
you cut off a few of those leaves, even one leaf, with that particular
sunlight on them; they are indeed a great art. Who can paint them as
exactly they are? To prove it is a real art, when the artist is great
and true, a large canvas and big subject are not necessary at all;
one single leaf would be enough for his subject. I recall my first
impression of Turner’s work; I thought then that even one inch square
of any picture of his in the National Gallery would be sufficient to
prove his great art. I always vindicated his mastery of technique to
the others who had the reverse opinion; what made Turner was never his
technique. To talk about technique. I believe that even I have a better
technique than is shown in most of the pictures drawn by Rossetti; but
there is only one Rossetti in the world.” On my way home after leaving
him, I could not help wondering if he were not turning to a pessimist:
I was afraid that he was in his heart of hearts denying his own ability
and art.
[Sidenote: TURNER’S GREAT ART]
One day last September, when my soul felt the usual sadness with the
first touch of autumn, I received a note from Hara saying that his
stomach had been lately troubled, and he wished I would call on him as
he wanted to be brightened by my presence. I could not go then to see
him on account of one thing and another; and when I was told by one of
his friends and mine that Hara’s illness was said to be cancer, even in
its acute form, and that he was eagerly expecting my call, I hurried at
once to his house. He was very pale and thin. As I was begged by Mrs.
Hara at the door not to let him talk too much, as it was the doctor’s
command, I even acted as if I hated conversation on that day; it was
Hara (bless his sympathetic gentle soul) who, on the contrary, wished
to make me happy and interested by his talk. He talked as usual on
various arts and artists; when he slowly entered into his own domestic
affairs, he said: “I have decided to sell all my works of the last ten
years, good or bad, among my rich friends, and raise a sufficient fund
to provide for my old mother and wife; to have no child is at least a
comfort at this moment. I think I call myself fortunate since such a
scheme appears to be quite practicable; but if I could have even one
picture which I could proudly leave for posterity—that might be too
great an ambition for an artist of my class. Will you laugh at me when
I say how I wish to live five years more, if not five years, two years
at least, if not two years, even one year? It might be better, after
all, for me to die with hope than to live and fail.” With a sudden
thought he changed the subject; he thought, doubtless, he had no right
to make me unnecessarily sad, and resumed the talk on Hokusai and
Utamaro where he had left off a little while before. “I wish that you
will see Utamaro’s picture in my friend’s possession; it is, needless
to say, the picture of a courtesan. How that lovely woman sits! (Here
Hara changed his attitude and imitated the woman in the picture.) Oh,
these charming bare feet! That is where Utamaro put his best art; I
cannot forget the feeling that I felt with the most attractive naked
heels of the picture.”
[Sidenote: HARA GONE TO HIS REST]
I gave him many instances of doctors’ mistakes to encourage him, before
I left his house. I called on him two weeks or ten days later; but I
was not admitted to his presence, as the doctor had already forbade any
outside communication. At my third call I was told that he was growing
still worse; it was on October 29 that I made my fourth call, and I
found at once that the house had been somewhat upset. Alas, my friend
Busho Hara had gone already to his eternal rest! I rushed up to the
upstairs room where the cold body of the artist was lying; he could not
see or hear his friend. I cried. I was told by one of Hara’s friends,
who saw his last moment, how sorry he was that he did not see me when
his final end approached, and that he had begged him to tell me that he
was wrong in what he told me before about art. Now, what did he mean by
that? I already suspected, as I said before, that he was growing to
deny his own art; now I should like to understand by that final special
message to me that he wished to wholly deny all the human art of the
world against great Nature before his death. When he grew weaker and
weaker, I think that he found it more easy to dream of Nature; whether
conscious or unconscious, he must have been in the most happy state,
at least for his last days, as he was going to join himself with her.
I never saw such a dead face so calm, so sorrowless, like Hara’s; it
reminded me of a certain Greek mask which I saw somewhere; indeed, he
had a Greek soul in the true meaning.
We six or seven friends of his kept a _tsuya_, or wake, before his
coffin, as is the custom, on the night of the 29th; the night rapidly
advanced when the reminiscences of this passed great artist were told
to keep us from falling asleep. One man was speaking of the story of
Hara’s friendship with Danjuro Ichikawa, the great tragedian of the old
_kabuki_ school of the modern Japanese stage. Once he played the rôle
of Benkei in “Adaka ga Seki,” which he wished Hara to draw; it was a
most unusual treat on the actor’s part to give the artist one whole
box at the Kabuki Theatre during fifteen days only for that purpose,
where he appeared every day not to draw, but to look at the acting. But
Hara very quickly sketched him one day at the moment when he thought
that the actor was prolonging his acting at a certain place to make him
easy to sketch; in fact, Danjuro made his acting in some parts stand
still for fifteen minutes. Strangely enough, the other actors who were
playing with him did not know that, while Hara rightly read the actor’s
intention and thought. Danjuro said afterwards that Mr. Hara understood
him through the power of his being a great artist. Did he draw the
picture and finish it? That is the next question. He did not, as was
often the case with Hara; he wrote the actor bluntly he was sorry that
this spirit was gone, making it impossible to advance. The one who told
the story exclaimed: “I never saw an artist like Hara so slow to paint,
or who found it so difficult to paint.”
[Sidenote: SITTING AT THE SHOP FRONT]
Among us there was a well-known frame manufacturer, Yataya by name,
who, it is said, was Hara’s very first friend in Tokyo, where he came
thirty years before from his native Okayama; he spoke next on his dear
friend: “He made his call on me at my store in Ginza almost every
night; he never came up into the room, but sat always at the shop
front. And there he gazed most thoughtfully on the passing crowd of
the street with his fixed eyes; he made himself quite an unattractive
figure especially for the shop front. ‘Who is that sinister-looking
fellow?’ I was often asked. I am sure that he must have been there
studying the people; his interest in anything was extremely intent. He
was a great student.”
While I am now writing upon Hara, I feel I see that he is sitting at a
certain shop front, perhaps of Hades. Is he not studying the action of
the dead souls clamorous as in their living days?
IX
THE UKIYOYE ART IN ORIGINAL
I often think the general impression that the best Ukiyoye art
reveals itself in colour-print has to be corrected in some special
cases, because the Ukiyoye art in original _kakemono_, though not so
well appreciated in the West, is also a thing beautiful; and I feel
proud to say that I have often seen those special cases in Japan. On
such occasions I always say that I am impressed as if the art were
laughing and cursing fantastically over the present age, whose prosaic
regularity completely misses the old fascination of romanticism
which Japan of two or three hundred years ago perfected by her own
temperament. Whenever I see it (mind you, it should be the best Ukiyoye
art in original) at my friend’s house by accident, or in the exhibition
hall, my heart and soul seem to be turning to a winged thing fanned by
its magic; and when my consciousness returns, I find myself narcotised
in incense, before the temple of art where sensuality is consecrated
through beauty.
It is not too much to say that Shunsho Katsukawa, who died in 1792
at the age of ninety-seven, gained more than any other artist from
the originals, through his masterly series of twelve pieces, “A
Woman’s Year,” owned by Count Matsura, a most subtle arrangement of
figures whose postures reach the final essence of grace perhaps from
the delicate command of artistic reserve, the decorative richness of
the pictures heightened by life’s gesticulation of beauty; whilst
the harmony of the pictorial quantity and quality is perfect. Behind
the pictures we read the mind of the artist with the critic’s gift
of appraising his own work. When we realise the somewhat exaggerated
hastiness of later artists, for example, artists like Toyokuni the
First, or Yeizan (the other artists being out of the question, of
course), Shunsho’s greatness will be at once clear. It may have been
his own thought to modify the women’s faces from the artless roundness
of the earlier artists to the rather emphatic oblong, from simplicity
to refinement, although I acknowledge it was Harunobu’s genius to make
the apparent want of effort in women’s round faces flow into the sad
rhythm of longing and passion, a symbol of the white, weary love; in
Harunobu we have a singular case of the distinction between simplesse
and simplicité. It was the old Japanese art to portray delicacy only
in the women’s hands and arms; but certainly it was the distinguished
art of Shunsho, with many other contemporary Ukiyoye artists, to make
the necks, especially the napes, the points of almost tantalising
grace; what a charm of abandon in those shoulders! And what a beautiful
elusiveness of the slightly inclined faces of the women! I am always
glad to see Shunsho’s famous picture, “Seven Beauties in a Bamboo
Forest,” owned by the Tokyo School of Art, in which the romantic group
of chignons leisurely promenade, one reading a love-letter, another
carrying a shamisen instrument, through the shade of a bamboo forest.
Not only in this picture, but in many other arrangements of women
and sentiment, Shunsho reminds me of the secret of Cho Densu of the
fifteenth century in his elaborate Rakan pictures, particularly in the
point that the figures, while keeping their own individual aloofness,
perfectly well fuse themselves in the alembic of the picture into a
composition most impressive. And you will soon find that when the
sense of monotony once subsides, your imagination grows to see their
spiritual variety.
[Sidenote: “BEAUTIES IN A BAMBOO FOREST"] [Sidenote: THE WITHDRAWAL
FROM SOCIETY]
It is rather difficult to see a best specimen of the originals of
Harunobu or even of Utamaro. I think there is some reason, however, to
say in the case of Utamaro that he did not leave many worthy pictures
in original, because he made the blocks, fortunately or unfortunately,
a castle to rise and fall with; while I see the fact on the one side
that, while he was not accepted in the polite society of his time,
he gained as a consequence much strength through his restriction of
artistic purpose. There was nothing more ridiculous for the Ukiyoye
artists of those days than to intrude their work of the so-called
“Floating World” into the aristocratic _tokonoma_, the sacred alcove
of honour for the art of a Tosa or a Kano, and to attempt to call
themselves Yamato Yeshi, whatever that means. What wisdom is there
to become neutral, like Yeishi or in some degree Koryusai, who never
created any distinct success either as Ukiyoye artist or as so-called
polite painter. I can easily read the undermeaning how they were even
insulted, by the cultured class, when they tried to satisfy their own
resentment by such an assumption of Yamato Yeshi (“the Yamato artist,”
Yamato being the classic name of Japan); I see more humiliation in it
than pride. The contempt displayed toward them, however, was not so
serious till the appearance of Moronobu, who created his own art out of
their sudden descent; his realism accentuated itself in the portrayal
of courtesans and street vagrants of old Yedo, for the popular
amusement, at the huge cost of being criticised as immoral. The artists
before his day, even those to-day roughly termed the Ukiyoye artists,
were the self-same followers. To begin with Matabei, after the Kano,
Tosa, and Sumiyoshi schools successively, their work was strengthened
or weakened according to the situation by the irresistibility of
plebeianism; it is clear that the final goal for their work was, of
course, the _tokonoma_ of the rich man and the nobles. And it seems
that they must have found quite an easy access into that scented daïs,
if I judge from the pictures of the “Floating World” (what an arbitrary
name that!) that remain to-day. They had, in truth, no necessity to
advertise themselves as Yamato Yeshi, like some artists of the later
age who were uneducated and therefore audacious; and in their great
vanity wished to separate themselves from their fellow-workers; while
their work has a certain softness—though it be not nobility—at least
not discordant with the grey undertone of the Japanese room, doubtless
they lack that strength distilled and crystallised into passionate
lucidity which we see in the best colour-prints. When I say that
Moronobu was the founder of Ukiyoye art, I mean more to call attention
to the fact that the Japanese block print was well started in its
development from his day, into which process the artists put all sorts
of spontaneity, at once cursing creed and tradition. As for the Ukiyoye
artists, I dare say their weakness in culture and imagination often
turned to force; they gained artistic confidence in their own power
from their complete withdrawal from polite society. Such was the case
with Utamaro and Hiroshige. I wonder what use there was to leave poor
work in the original like that of Toyokuni and Yeizan, whose works
often serve only to betray their petty ambition.
[Sidenote: HEREDITY SUPERSTITION]
I have seen enough of the originals of this interesting Ukiyoye art,
beginning with Matabei and Katsushige; Naganobu Kano, the former’s
contemporary, is much admired in the series of twelve pictures,
“Merry-making under the Flowers,” with the illogical simplicity natural
to the first half of the seventeenth century. The fact that the name
“Floating World” did not mean much in those days can be seen in the
work of Rippo Nonoguchi or Gukei Sumiyoshi, whose classical respect
weakened the pictorial impression. Mr. Takamine, who is recognised as
the keenest collector of Ukiyoye art in Japan, has quite an extensive
collection of the works of Ando Kwaigetsudo (1688-1715), Anchi Choyodo,
Dohan Kwaigetsudo (early eighteenth century), Doshu Kwaigetsudo, Doshin
Kwaigetsudo, Nobuyuki Kameido, Rifu Tosendo, Katsunobu Baiyuken, and
Yeishun Baioken, all of them contemporaries of Doshu. Although their
merit is never so high, even when not questionable, we can imagine that
their work must have been quite popular, even in high quarters; among
them Dohan might be the cleverest, but as a Japanese critic says, his
colour-harmony is marred by ostentatious imprudence. I have seen the
best representation of Sukenobu Nishikawa in “Woman Hunting Fireflies,”
soft and delicate. The other artists I came to notice and even admire
are Choshun Miyakawa, Masanobu Okumura, Shigemasa Kitawo, and other
names. I think that the time should come when the original Ukiyoye
art, too, should be properly priced in the West; we are still sticking
to our hereditary superstition that no picture is good if we cannot
hang it in the _tokonoma_, where we burn incense and place the flowers
arranged to invoke the greyness of the air. But I wonder why we cannot
put an Utamaro lady here on the Japanese _tokonoma_.
X
WESTERN ART IN JAPAN
The Japanese works of Western art are sometimes beautiful; but I can
say positively that I have had no experience of being carried away by
them as by good old Japanese art. There is always something of effort
and even pretence which are decidedly modern productions. I will say
that it is at the best a borrowed art, not a thing inseparable from
us. I ask myself why those artists of the Western school must be loyal
to a pedantry of foreign origin as if they had the responsibility for
its existence. It would be a blessing if we could free ourselves in
some measure, through the virtue of Western art, from the world of
stagnation in feeling and thought. I have often declared that it was
the saviour of Oriental art, as the force of difference in element is
important for rejuvenation. But what use is it to get another pedantry
from the West in the place of the old one? I have thought more than
once that our importation of foreign art is a flat failure. It may be
that we must wait some one hundred years at least before we can make
it perfectly Japanised, just as we spent many years before thoroughly
digesting Chinese art; but we have not a few pessimists who can prove
that it is not altogether the same case. Although I have said that
the foreign pedantry greatly troubles the Japanese work of Western
art, I do not mean that it will create the same effect as upon Western
artists. I am told the following story:
[Sidenote: THE TAIHEIYO GAKWAI CLUB]
A year or two ago a certain Italian, who had doubtless a habit of
buying pictures (with little of real taste in art, as is usually the
case with a picture-buyer), went to see the art exhibition of the
Taiheiyo Gakwai Club held at Uyeno Park, and bought many pictures on
the spot, as he thought they were clever work of the Japanese school.
Alas, the artists meant them to be oil paintings of the Western type!
The Italian’s stupidity is inexcusable; but did they indeed appear to
him so different from his work at home? The saddest part is that they
are so alien to our Japanese feeling in general; consequently they have
little sympathy with the masses. It is far away yet for their work to
become an art of general possession; it can be said it is not good art
when it cannot at once enter into the heart. It is not right at all to
condemn only the Western art in Japan, as any other thing of foreign
origin is equally in the stage of mere trial. I often wonder about
the real meaning of the modern civilisation of Japan. Imitation is
imitation, not the real thing at all.
There are many drawbacks, as I look upon the material side, to the
Western art becoming popular; for instance, our Japanese house—frail,
wooden, with the light which rushes in from all sides—never gives it an
appropriate place to look its best. And the heaviness of its general
atmosphere does not harmonise with the simplicity that pervades the
Japanese household; it always appears out of place, like a chair before
the _tokonoma_, a holy dais. Besides, the artists cannot afford to
sell their pictures cheap, not because they are good work, but because
there are only a few orders for them. I believe we must undertake the
responsibility of making good artists; there is no wonder that there is
only poor work since our understanding of Western art is little, and we
hardly try to cultivate the Western taste. If we have no great art of
the Western school, as is a fact, one half the whole blame is on our
shoulders.
[Sidenote: PERCEPTION OF REALISM]