PLACING
In Japan there is no such thing as accident. A scene which in its beauty
and perfect placing appears to the visitor to be the result of Nature in
an unusually generous mood, has in reality been the object of infinite
care and thought and anxious deliberation to these little Japanese
artists, the landscape gardeners. That temple which seems to place
itself so remarkably well in relation to the big lines of Nature, its
background, has been carefully built and thought out from that
standpoint alone. The great trees by the side of the temple, with their
graceful jutting boughs that form the principal feature of the picture,
have not grown like that, for all their apparent naturalness; they have
been nursed and grafted and forced into shape with the utmost care
imaginable.
The sense of perfect placing, which is the sense of balance, is the true
secret of the Japanese art, by which they attain perfection. All
Orientals are more or less possessed of this intuitive sense of balance,
and the Japanese carry it into the most minute details of daily life.
If you enter a Japanese room you will always find that the bough of
blossom is placed in relation to the kakemono and other furniture to
form a picture. And the special note of Japanese house decoration is
this bough of blossom, with which I was immensely struck. Now, this is
an altogether artistic thing. At one party at which I was present I saw
a piece of blossom-bough put right out at a curious angle from a
beautiful blue jar. Turning to my neighbour, a young Japanese friend who
could talk English perfectly well, I said, "How beautiful that
is!--although, of course, its quaint curious form is merely accident."
"No--no accident at all," he replied. "Do you know, it has been a matter
of great care, this placing of the plant in the room in relation to
other objects?"--I was afterwards informed that in many a household in
Japan the children are trained in the method of placing a branch or a
piece of blossom, and they have books with diagrams illustrating the
proper way of disposing flowers in a pot.
[Illustration: THE RED CURTAIN]
The outsides as well as the insides of their houses are decorated in the
harmonious principle, even to the painting of signs in the street. They
are most particular about placing their richly coloured sign duly in
relation to its surroundings. In the same way--whether the subject may
be done in a string of lanterns or what not--whatever is done is done
harmoniously, and in no case is decoration the result of accident. The
sum of it all is that every shop in an ordinary street is a perfect
picture. At first you are amazed at the beauty of everything. "How in
the world is it," you ask yourself, "that by a series of apparent
accidents everything appears beautiful?" You cannot imagine until you
know that even the "common man" has acquired the scientific placing of
his things, and that the feeling permeates all classes. Perhaps,
however, one of the most curious experiences I had of the native
artistic instinct of Japan occurred in this way I had got a number of
fanholders and was busying myself one afternoon in arranging them upon
the walls. My little Japanese servant boy was in the room, and as I went
on with my work I caught an expression on his face from time to time
which showed that he was not over-pleased with my performance. After a
while, as this dissatisfied expression seemed to deepen, I asked him
what the matter was. Then he frankly confessed that he did not like the
way in which I was arranging my fanholders. "Why did you not tell me so
at once?" I asked. "You are an artist from England," he replied, "and it
was not for me to speak." However, I persuaded him to arrange the
fanholders himself after his own taste, and I must say that I received a
remarkable lesson. The task took him about two hours, placing,
arranging, adjusting; and when he had finished the result was simply
beautiful. That wall was a perfect picture; every fanholder seemed to be
exactly in its right place, and it looked as if the alteration of a
single one would affect and disintegrate the whole scheme. I accepted
the lesson with due humility, and remained more than ever convinced that
the Japanese are what they have justly claimed to be, an essentially
artistic people instinct with living art.
It is, in point of fact, almost impossible to exaggerate the importance
attached to the placing of an object by every Japanese, and it would be
no exaggeration to say that if a common coolie were given an addressed
envelope to stamp he would take great pains to place that little
coloured patch in relation to the name and address in order to form a
decorative pattern. Can you imagine a tradesman and his family, wife and
children, running across the Strand to watch the placing of a saucepan
in their window? Yet this is no unusual occurrence in Japan. You will
often see a family collected on the opposite side of the road watching
their father place a signboard in front of his shop. It might be a
grocer's shop, and all--even to the mite strapped to the back of its
sister--are eagerly watching the moving about of this board, and are
interested to see that it should place itself well in relation to the
broad masses around, such as the tea-box, etc.
[Illustration: FLOWER OF THE TEA]
Now, people who think so much of the details of balance must necessarily
approach art in a very different manner from that in which we approach
it. Would a tradesman in England hesitate before placing his stamps on a
bill? The tradesman in Japan does. Imagine an artist spending three days
in anxious thought as to where he should place his signature on his
picture! And yet this is what Kiyosai, the greatest of modern painters,
actually did before he affixed his red stamp to the hasty sketch of a
crow. I have known little Japanese painters to ponder for hours, and
sometimes weeks, over the placing of this little vermilion stamp so that
it shall form perfect balance, and in all probability the picture itself
has only taken a few minutes. Suppose, for instance, a painter has
contrived to produce a rapid sketch of a flying crow, or perhaps a fish.
That fleeting impression was so strong that he was able to produce it at
once without any hesitation; but however vivid and lifelike the picture
might be, if the balance were destroyed by the ugly placing of this one
little spot of vermilion, from the Japanese standpoint the picture would
be utterly worthless. And the proper placing of a thing is really most
important. Even the most ignorant and uneducated in matters of art are
influenced on seeing a perfect bit of placing. To live with some
beautiful thing, a flower or a bough well placed, to watch its delicious
curves or the tender buds of a purple iris just bursting, must give joy,
and it does, although one may be quite unconscious of its gentle power.
The Japanese understand these subtleties as do no other nation. If they
are entertaining a guest, their one aim and object is to make him
perfectly and deliriously happy; they strive to divine his inmost
thoughts and desires; it is their ambition to satisfy them to the best
of their ability.
[Illustration: A STREET IN KIOTO]
A friend of mine, an American, once gave me a description of a week he
had spent with a very ancient Japanese gentleman in a little country
village; it was a week of intense interest and happiness to him, one
which, when he grows to be as old as his host was then, will still
remain in his memory with a lingering sweetness as something good to be
remembered, something purer and quite apart from the regular routine of
his past life. He was a student, a naturalist; and the purity of this
Japanese household, the seclusion and dainty decoration of his study,
the freedom of it all, and the kindly attention and sympathy that was
proffered to him by every member of the family combined to make the
quiet recluse feel, for once in his life, almost boisterously happy.
Towards the end of his visit he tried to look back and discover what it
was that had brought about this unwonted feeling of joy in him, little
realising that all this time these dear people had been scheming and
planning for no other object than to give him pleasure. It was not until
the last day of his stay, however, that it all unfolded itself clearly
before his eyes, and that he learnt the reason why he had been so happy.
On this last morning he had chanced to rise early--at daybreak, in
fact--and as he passed the room that he had been using as a general
sitting-room, he saw through the partially-opened sliding doors a sight
which caught his breath with amazement, and made tears spring to his
eyes. There was his host, the dear ancient Japanese gentleman, kneeling
before a bough of pink blossom, which he was struggling to arrange in a
fine blue china pot. The naturalist stood and watched him for nearly an
hour, as he clipped a bough here, and bent a twig there, leaning back on
his heels now and then to view his handiwork through half-closed eyes.
He must see that the blossom placed itself well from the decorative
standpoint in relation to the kakemono that hung close by; he must also
see that the curves of the bough were correct; and the care taken by
this old gentleman in the bending of the bough was a lesson to my
friend. It became clear to him that every morning his aged host must
have risen at daybreak to perform this little act of kindness. Like a
flash he remembered that each day there had been some dainty new
arrangement of flowers placed in his room for him to enjoy. He had not
given it much thought, for it looked more or less like an accident,
flowers that had formed themselves naturally into that shape; yet, all
unconsciously, this little bit of perfect placing had influenced his
work and had gone far towards making the visit so joyous to him. He did
not understand placing; but it interested him and gave him an intense
amount of pleasure, in the same way that superbly fine work always does
even to the most uneducated.
The proper placing of objects is not only an exact science, but also it
forms almost a religion with the Japanese. When you just arrive in Japan
you are at once impressed with the perfect placing of everything about
you. You find yourself surrounded by a series of beautiful pictures;
every street that you see on your journey from the station to the hotel
is a picture; every shop front, the combination of the many streets, the
town in relation to the mountains round about it--everything you chance
to look at forms a picture. In fact, the whole of Japan is one perfect
bit of placing.
[Illustration: HEAVY-LADEN]
"Nature has favoured this place," says the globe-trotter. "I never found
when I lived in Surrey that great trees placed themselves against
hill-sides so as to form perfect pictures. I never saw the lines of a
bush pick up those of a fence with one broad sweep. Nature never behaved
like that in Dorking." Of course Nature didn't; nor does she in Japan.
There the whole country, every square inch of it, is thought out and
handled by great artists. There is no accident in the beautiful curves
of the trees that the globe-trotter so justly admires: these trees have
been trained and shaped and forced to form a certain decorative pattern,
and the result is--perfection. We in the West labour under the delusion
that if Nature were to be allowed to have her own sweet way, she would
always be beautiful. But the Japanese have gone much further than this:
they realise that Nature does not always do the right thing; they know
that occasionally trees will grow up to form ugly lines; and they know
exactly how to adapt and help her. She is to them like some beautiful
musical instrument, finer than any ever made by human hands, but still
an instrument, with harmonies to be coaxed out. And the Japanese play on
Nature, not only in a concentrated way as with a kakemono or a flower in
a room, but also in the biggest possible form, on landscapes; dragging
in mountains, colossal trees, rushing cataracts--nothing is too much or
too great an undertaking for these masters of decoration. Any ordinary
little baby boy that is born in Japan has almost a greater decorative
sense than the finest painter here in the West.
All this beauty and perfection that meets one on every side is the
result of centuries and centuries of habit, until it has become
intuitive to the people. I can safely say there is no point in Japan
where an artist cannot stand still and frame between his hands a picture
that will be perfect in placing and design. In a Japanese garden, every
stepping-stone, every tree, every little miniature out-house, is thought
out as a bit of placing to form perfect balance. And it is thought out
not as an isolated bit of Nature, but in relation to everything around
that you can see, whether it is a temple, a large tree, or the side of a
hill; and whatever position you happen to be in, in that garden you will
always see a perfectly balanced picture. When you have been pottering
about in the towns for some weeks, you eventually become accustomed to
the idea that everything is thought out by these brilliant students in
order to form a picture, and you begin to feel proud of the knowledge
you have gleaned and to make practical use of it. You escort your
friends, who are a trifle fresher than yourself, about the towns,
pointing out to them that there is no accident in all the beauties that
they so much admire--the shops, the signboards, the placing of the
flower by the side of the workman--all this has been carefully thought
out from the decorative standpoint, to be beautiful. But then, when one
travels from the beaten track, away out in the country, even the
resident who is by way of being artistic, and has had the fact that the
Japanese are an artistic people driven into his stupid head by sheer
force, even this poor dear is swept off his feet when he finds that
Nature is still going on doing the same thing all these miles away from
the town. He has probably come to view the cherry-blossom, and he
discovers to his amazement that these huge hill-sides of blossom place
themselves perfectly one against the other--colossal trees with jutty
boughs frame themselves against the sides of the mountains to form a
picture. One huge sweep of blossom is thought out in relation to another
sweep that is deeper in tone; near by is a curiously-shaped bare patch
of earth which is designed to give value to the brighter colour; and so
it continues indefinitely.
The whole country is thought out in huge blotches to form a picture
perfect in harmony and in design. I once had a very interesting
experience of the felling of a tree in Japan, and here again placing
formed a very prominent part of the proceedings. Of course this was
placing of a nature very different from the artistic placing that I have
just described; but as a scientific bit of work it was simply wonderful!
It was an enormous tree by the side of a temple; there were two little
men sawing away at its base, little mites of men, half hidden by the
huge gaping crowd, chiefly composed of children, that stood watching the
performance, waiting for the tree to fall. A wall stood close by with an
opening cut in it, just large enough to allow the trunk to place itself;
and away in the distance strewn about at different angles were a series
of huge stone boulders, and these, I soon found out, were to split up
the boughs for firewood when the tree fell, thus saving labour. Imagine
the science of it--the calculation and the accuracy of their judgment!
The men went on sawing, every now and then pausing in their work to look
up at the sky with their backs against the wall. At last there came a
moment when the excitement was terrific: the trunk was nearly sawed
through, and the tree seemed prepared to fall anywhere and everywhere,
more particularly in my direction. Presently it began to give slightly,
and it was one of the prettiest and most wonderful things I have ever
seen in my life, the way that tree began to bend--gently, gracefully,
ever so gently, the trunk fitting itself into the wall, and the branches
dashing on to those great boulders that were waiting for them, splitting
them up into fragments. Those little mites of Japanese handling that
giant of a tree was a sight that I shall never forget. Where we would
have had twenty men with ropes and paraphernalia, they had nothing but
their big heads and their power to place a thing mathematically in the
right position to help them. And it all looked so graceful and so easy
that it would not have surprised me in the least to have seen one of
those little men come sailing down on the branches. But what struck me
the most forcibly was the great confidence of the people. They all stood
round, almost touching the tree, but quite sure of the success of this
venture; the fact that it was possible for the wood-cutter to fail
never occurring to them for an instant.
[Illustration: PEACH-BLOSSOM]
Placing takes a prominent part in everything that the Japanese
undertake; it shows itself not only in the arrangement of the landscape
and in artistic matters where there is scope for their decorative
powers, but also in small, out-of-the-way, inartistic things, as, for
instance, photography. I have seen in the Tokio shop-windows photographs
taken by native correspondents during the Chinese war, and it was quite
extraordinary how their sense of placing showed itself even in this. You
never by any chance see a photograph by a Japanese looking in the least
like a European. If they photograph a group of men they will be sure to
place that group near a great bough that juts across the picture; they
cannot help it--it seems to be in the blood of a Japanese to be
decorative. Their taste with regard to enjoyment is widely different
from ours: a little bit of Nature which would give them intense pleasure
would probably be ignored by us altogether. We want parks and stags and
moorlands, broad expanses of country and huge avenues, while the
Japanese will be content with one exquisite little harmony. They will
gaze for whole hours in rapture at a little branch of peach-blossom,
only a cluster, just a few inches of rose-red peach-blossom, with a slim
grey twig, placing itself against a background of hills that stretch
away in the distance indefinitely.
At the same time they love expanse of view as well. It is one of their
greatest joys to look from the top of a mountain downwards, but only
at certain times of the day. A Japanese, holiday-making, will sometimes
spend one whole day waiting for an effect that will perhaps last only a
few moments, or he will toil for hours up a mountain-side to enjoy the
exquisite pleasure of a fleeting colour harmony.
ART IN PRACTICAL LIFE