ART IN PRACTICAL LIFE
Throughout this book I have talked of Japan purely from the artistic
standpoint. I have talked principally of the living art of the country
and of its exquisite productions, and I firmly believe that it is
because the Japs are a people of imagination that they will at no
distant date forge ahead of other nations (who are depending solely upon
their muscle) and become a dominating power.
At the same time, it must be clearly understood that the artistic is not
the only quality in which the Japs excel. Take them from any side, and
it will be found that they have achieved remarkable success. Yet the
average Westerner, on returning from a visit to Japan, has always the
same superficial observation to make on the Japanese people. He has
spent a few weeks in the Land of the Rising Sun; he has seen the dainty
tea-houses, the miniature bridges, the paper walls and umbrellas, their
works of art modelled in lead--everything suggesting the dainty and the
exquisite (and therefore, in his opinion, the flimsy); and he tells you
that the people over there are all dear little Noah's Ark folk living in
tissue-paper houses, very charming as dolls, but useless as men. "These
people," he says, "have no physique; they would be incapable of building
battleships, for example." For this critic one can entertain only the
faintest possible feeling of tender pity. Is he not aware that these
Noah's Ark folk are actually building battleships, that they have
already a fine army superbly equipped with the finest of swords and
guns, and that they have the power to handle these weapons far better
than we can handle ours? Every soldier in the Japanese army understands
the mechanism of his rifle, and can at any moment pull it to pieces and
put it together again, even substituting a missing portion if necessary.
Could the same be said of our beloved Tommy? The Japanese officers are
no less capable than the privates, and I would guarantee that if by some
mischance the sword of a Japanese officer, being badly tempered, should
become bent, that officer would be capable of retempering his blade--one
of the most difficult and delicate tasks imaginable.
[Illustration: THE TEA-HOUSE OF THE SLENDER TREE]
But how a certain class of equally ignorant and inconsistent Westerners
cried out when it was known to the world that Japan had actually begun
to use our rifles and to build battleships! They will lose individuality
and degenerate, they are adopting Western methods, and it will kill
their art, they complained. How foolish this is! The Japanese have
merely changed their tools--exchanged the bow and arrow for the
sword; they are just as artistic and just as intelligent as in the
bow-and-arrow days; and they have proved themselves to be equal to, if
not better than, any other soldiers in the world.
Japan is not being Westernised in the smallest degree: she is merely
picking our brains. And how quickly the Japs will adopt a Western idea,
and improve upon it! The making of matches, and the underselling us in
all our common printed cotton and woollen Manchester goods, have not
spoilt their faculty for executing that exquisite Eugene dyeing for
which the Japanese are famous all the world over; the making of bolts
and bars and battleships has not prevented the metal-workers from
producing exquisite work in bronze, so delicate as to resemble the
finest lace. The manufacture of our vulgar modern monstrosities has been
taken up by these people, and they can offer them to us at a cheaper
rate and of a better quality than we can produce ourselves, freight
included. Japan can produce European work better than the Europeans
themselves; but that work has not influenced their art one whit--they
hate it; whereas Japanese art has permeated and influenced the whole of
the West.
All these qualities seem to point one way--Japan must eventually become
a ruling power. For one thing, the struggle for life does not exist
there as in other countries. The food is simple, and men live easily.
Then, again, the Japanese are not over-anxious. They do not waste their
energies. Women do not fret because they are looking old; on the
contrary, it is their ambition to become old, for then they are more
respected.
[Illustration: BLOSSOM OF THE GLEN]
My first experience in Japan, I being a practical person and of a
practical turn of mind, was rather a surprise. I had just arrived at the
hotel in Tokio, and, observing from my window that there was a promise
of a sunset, I caught up my paint-box, anxious to secure the fleeting
effect, and rushed downstairs full-tilt, in my haste almost capsizing an
old lady with a monkey on her shoulder standing at the foot of the
stairs. Not moving from her position, she said, "Young man, I should
like to talk to you." "Delighted, I am sure," I answered hurriedly: my
haste to be off, I am afraid, was too apparent just then. Not at all
daunted, the lady called after me some directions for finding her in her
room that night after dinner, where she would tell me some things that
would interest me, and walked slowly up the stairs without once looking
round, her monkey on her shoulder. Curiously interested, despite myself,
in this strange old lady and her monkey, I did visit her that evening,
and was somewhat startled by her greeting of me. "I knew I was going to
meet you in Japan to-night. I know all about you. You are going to paint
a series of pictures. You are going to exhibit them, and you will make a
great success. Some day you will paint children--you are fond of
children. All this I knew in America before ever I came here. I saw it
all as in a dream." Paralysed, I could only utter the formal words,
"Oh, really!" "Ah, you're sceptical! But you are sympathetic too, and
after I have talked to you for two or three hours you will see that I am
right," quoth my strange new friend, while at the prospect of two or
three hours' conversation I experienced a distinctly sinking feeling.
But with the next few words she uttered, the sinking feeling vanished,
to be superseded by one of deep interest. For some years, she told me,
she had been constantly communing in the spirit with her husband and
Lord Byron--rival spirits. Her husband was jealous of the poet and of
her correspondence with him, and she showed me a series of letters
dictated by that great man in the dark--all sorts of beautiful letters
on all subjects, ranging from tennis to theology. I sat there I know not
how long listening to this wonderful woman; and also--it may seem
foolish--I felt strangely comforted and encouraged to hear her say so
convincingly that I was to make a success, for at that period I had
never painted a picture, and the whole thing was, as it were, an
experiment. It was many weeks before I could forget that old lady and
her monkey. All through my travels the memory of that monkey's
eyes--beady, blinking, never changing--followed me, and stimulated me.
With Tokio and Yokohama I was disappointed. I had the privilege of
attending the Mikado's garden party; but the pleasure of the really
beautiful grounds and the cherry-blossom was spoilt by the Western dress
of the guests and of high personages--a hideous substitute for the
Japs' own graceful garments. Yokohama I found especially unsympathetic.
The bulk of the Europeans I met there seemed to be spending half their
time in abusing Japan and everything Japanese. Strange that a colony of
such unrefined, uneducated people should presume to criticise these
artists! Tokio, with its formal dinners and conventionalities, was much
the same; and with epithets such as "Crank" and "Madman" hurled after
me, I fled to Kioto, there to lose myself in endless and undreamt-of
joys.
In Japan there are flowers blooming all the year round: the country is a
veritable paradise of flowers. When a certain flower is at its height,
whether it be the wistaria, the chrysanthemum, or the azalea, that is a
signal for a national holiday, and, dropping business and all such minor
considerations, the whole of Japan turns out and streams through the
parks and through the country to picnic in the sunshine, under the
flowers. I arrived in Japan in the spring, and the country was pink with
blossom. Infected with the delightful fever for blossom-dreaming, I
drifted aimlessly along with the crowds, drifting only too rapidly into
their own restful atmosphere, and accustoming myself to the delicious
theory that life is long with plenty of time for everything. And as I
sat in the sun among these light-hearted people, watching mountains of
pink blossom under a clear blue sky, it did seem ridiculous to think of
work and worry.
Those first few weeks in Japan come back to me as something to be
remembered. To my untravelled mind everything seemed so novel, so
quaint, so unexpected. Things were large when I expected them to be
small, and _vice versa_; the houses were made of paper; the women were
anxious to make themselves look old. I was fascinated by the pyramids of
children gazing in at sweet-stuff shops with their brown, golden,
serious faces contrasting so oddly with their gaily-coloured dresses
painted to look like butterflies. Every child I saw I felt that I must
either pat or give it something. I was surprised to see fowls with tails
so long that they had to be wound up into brown-paper parcels; the dogs
that mewed like cats; miniature trees hundreds of years old. I was
surprised when I dined out to find the room decorated with beautiful
ladies in lieu of flowers, a delightful substitute. To be taken to the
basement and handed a net with which I was to catch my own carp was also
rather a surprise; but when I was expected to eat it as it lay quivering
on my plate, I was more than surprised--I was roused. Material for
pictures surrounded me at every step. I wanted to make pictures of every
pole and signboard that I came across; and the result of this glut of
subjects was that I never painted a stroke. Night in Japan fascinated me
almost more than anything--the festoons of lanterns crossing from one
street to another, yellow-toned with black and vermilion lettering; the
gaily-dressed little people passing by on their wooden clogs or in
rickshas with swinging paper lanterns drawn by bronze-faced coolies.
I shall never forget my first rainy day in Japan. I went out in the wet
and stood there, hatless but perfectly happy, watching the innocent
shops light up one by one, and the forest of yellow oil-paper umbrellas
with the light shining through looking like circles of gold, ever moving
and changing in the purple tones of the street.
One of the first things I did on arriving in Japan was to hire a
servant, and this little man soon became my adviser in artistic as well
as in mundane matters. He took a keen interest in my work, and spent the
greater part of his spare time in hunting up subjects for me--monograms,
suggestions for picture-frames, and what not--he, like every Jap, was an
artist. He never said that he liked anything that I ever painted (he was
far too truthful for that); but it was quite obvious that he did not,
for he could draw infinitely better himself. But he helped me a great
deal.
[Illustration: A FAMILY GROUP]
So did the policemen--and the policeman in Japan is a perfect treasure.
They are all gentlemen of family and are very small men, much below the
average in height; but they have nearly all learned the art of
scientific wrestling, and exercise an absolute and tyrannical power over
the people. Luckily for me, I never made the hopeless blunder of
attempting to tip them. Altogether I found the policeman the most
delightful person in the world. When I was painting a shop, if a
passer-by chanced to look in at a window, he would see at a glance
exactly what I wanted; and I would find that that figure would remain
there, looking in at the shop, as still as a statue, until I had
finished my painting; the policeman meanwhile strutting up and down the
street, delighted to be of help to an artist, looking everywhere but
at my work, and directing the entire traffic down another street.
Suddenly there is a fire--there is invariably a fire when one arrives in
a foreign country, I notice. Immediately the policemen begin to plant
little bamboo sticks round the burning building with twine fixed from
one stick to another. This is to act as a barrier to keep the people
off. After a time a crowd gathers, and in the swaying of the people
their chests sometimes touch the string and bow it; but the thought of
breaking through that twine never occurs to them. The bold little
firemen inside the enclosure trying to scare away the god of fire by
bright clothing, and literally sitting on the flames in their
light-coloured coats, form a scene never to be forgotten. They seem to
bear charmed lives as they dash among the flames, putting the fire out
with their hands, and in a very short time too. It reminds one of the
performance of the fire-eating gentlemen at the Aquarium.
The power of the policemen over the people in Japan is extraordinary.
Even the Westerners obey them. At the treaty ports they often have to
deal with English sailors, and, although they try their utmost to smooth
things over, they often have to run men in. It is entertaining to see a
great blundering sailor, just like a bull, plunging to right and left,
while the little policeman, always courteous and polite, constantly
gives way, stepping on one side until the time comes when the sailor,
puffed and worn out, gives a terrific lunge; the policeman gives him a
slight impetus, and the sailor sprawls in an ungainly attitude on the
ground. He is then led off triumphantly by a small piece of string
attached to his belt behind.
[Illustration: THE VENICE OF JAPAN]
It was not until I arrived in Osaka, the Venice of Japan, that I gave up
dreaming and seriously began to work. Here was scope indeed! Osaka is
the city of furnaces, factories, and commerce,--the centre of the modern
spirit of feverish activity in manufacturing and commercial enterprise.
Western ugliness has invaded certain quarters; yet the artistic feeling
predominates. The Ajikawa is still the Ajikawa of the olden time, and on
the eastern side of the city is the Kizugawa, into which--thanks to the
shallowness of the bar--no steamer ever intrudes, while the city itself
is intersected by a vast network of canals and waterways, all teeming
with junks and barges, and crossed by graceful wooden bridges which lend
themselves admirably to line. The Kizugawa fascinates the painter. Away
from the bustle of the factories and the shrieking of the whistles, the
great junks from northern Hakodate or the sunny Loochos lie sleepily
silent. They are the Leviathans of their kind. Intermingling with them
are innumerable barges and fishing-boats, stretching far up the river,
their masts and cordage seeming one vast spider's web. Not a single
vessel is painted--from the huge sea-going junk to the narrow-prowed
barge. Near the water-line the wood has taken a silvery tone; but above,
it looks in the sunlight like light gold. And the cargoes of rice in
straw bales, piled high over the bulwarks, are also golden. A
steam-launch has in tow half a dozen barges, which, with their unpainted
woodwork, rice bales, and straw-coloured connecting cable, appear
against the dark water as a knotted golden thread. In the endless
perspective of junks the golden tone predominates; but it is relieved by
the colouring of the buildings on the river banks. There is no monotony,
for no two houses are similar either in tint or in design; and there is
no stiffness of line. The builders are all artists, to whose instincts
repetition would do violence. The quaint roofs, although formed in
straight lines, seem to rise and fall in gentle undulations. There is
nothing abrupt or rugged; nothing jars. And the colours are as varied as
the roofs. In the upper reaches of the rivers the scenes never cease to
charm. Clusters of half a dozen boats forming a mass of decorative
woodwork, tea-houses with tiny gardens running down to the water's edge
and gaily-dressed geishas leaning over the trellised verandahs, light
bridges thrown in graceful outline against the purple horizon,--all
combine to complete a picture as broad as a study by Rembrandt, as
infinite in detail as a masterpiece by Hobbema.
THE GARDENS