EMBROIDERIES AND CURIOS
Their range of stitches, their ingenious methods and combinations, and
the variety of effects attained with the needle and a few strands of
colored silk, easily place the Japanese first among all embroiderers.
Although China taught them to embroider, they far surpass the Chinese in
design, color, and artistic qualities, while they attain a minute and
mechanical exactness equal to the soulless, expressionless precision of
the best Chinese work. They can simulate the hair and fur of animals,
the plumage of birds, the hard scales of fishes and dragons, the bloom
on fruit, the dew on flowers, the muscles of bodies, tiny faces and
hands, the patterned folds of drapery, the clear reflection of lacquer,
the glaze of porcelains, and the patina of bronzes in a way impossible
to any but the Japanese hand and needle. Sometimes they cover the whole
groundwork with couched designs in a heavy knotted silk, and this
peculiar embroidery has the name of _kindan nuitsuké_. With floss silk,
with twisted silks, with French knots, and with gold and silver thread,
couched down with different colored silks, with silk threads couched,
and with concealed couchings, a needle-worker attains every color effect
of the painter; nor does the embroiderer disdain to use the brush, or
to powder and spatter his designs with gold, nor to encroach upon the
plastic art by his wonderful modelling of raised surfaces, rivalling the
sculptor with his counterfeit faces. His invention and ingenuity are
inexhaustible, and the modern craftsmen preserve all the skill of their
ancestors.
The oldest existing piece of Japanese needle-work is the mandalla of a
nun, kept at Tayema temple in Yamato, which is certainly of the eighth
century, although legend ascribes it to the divine Kwannon. Pieces of
equal antiquity, doubtless, are in the sealed godowns of Nara temples,
but very little is known of them. The latest triumphs of the art, pieces
showing the limit of the needle’s possibilities, are the ornamental
panels and makemono executed for the Tokio palace, and other work by
the same artists exhibited at Paris in 1889. This exhibition work was
executed under imperial command at Nishimura’s, the largest silk-shop
in Kioto, a place to which every visitor is piloted forthwith. Solid
brown walls, black curtained doors, and the crest of three hexagons are
all that one sees from without; but the crest is repeated at door-ways
across the street and around corners, until one realizes what a village
of crape-weavers and painters, velvet-weavers and embroiderers, is
set in the heart of Kioto by this one firm. The master of the three
hexagons has taken innumerable medals, gold, silver, and bronze, at home
and abroad, and, in response to every invitation to make a national
exhibit, Government commands are sent him at Kioto. The blank outer
walls and common entrance, the bare rooms with two or three accountants
sitting before low desks, do not indicate the treasures of godown and
show-room that lie beyond. In an inner room, with an exquisite ceiling
of interlaced pine shavings, curtains, kakemono, screens, and fukusa
are heaped high, while others are continually brought in by the small
porters. In spite of the reputation and the artistic possibilities of
the establishment, it sends out much cheap, tasteless, and inferior work
to meet the demands of foreign trade, and of the tourists who desire the
so-called Japanese things they are used to seeing at home.
For the old embroideries, those splendid relics of the national
life with its showy and picturesque customs, the buyer must seek the
second-hand clothes-shops, the pawn-shops of the land. In the Awata
district lives the great dealer who gathers in old kimonos, obis,
fukusas, kesas, temple hangings, brocades, and embroideries from the
godowns of nobles, commoners, priests, actors, saints, and sinners, to
whom ready money is a necessity. Geishas and actors, with the extravagant
habits of their kind, are often forced to part with their wardrobes,
and the second-hand shops are half filled with beautiful and purely
Japanese things which they have sacrificed. When I first beheld “my
uncle” of Awata, his was a dark, ill-smelling, old clo’ shop, with two
bushy-headed, poorly-dressed attendants. Gilbert and Sullivan unwittingly
made his fortune, and the old dealer could not at first understand why
the foreign buyers, hitherto indifferent, should suddenly crowd his dingy
rooms, empty his godowns, and keep his men busy collecting a new stock.
Three years after my first visit there was a large, new building with
high-heaped shelves, replacing the dirty old house and its questionable
bales tied up in blue cotton, and horribly suggestive of smallpox,
cholera, and other contagions. Prices had trebled and were advancing
steadily, with far less embarrassment of choice in the stock than
formerly.
The gorgeous kimonos of actors and geishas offered at such shops far
outnumber those richly-wrought gowns worn by women of rank at holiday
times and at the palace, and most of the showy and gorgeously-decorative
gowns displayed in western drawing-rooms have questionable histories.
Even the stores of No dance costumes have been drawn upon, and choice old
brocades are rarer now than good old embroideries. The priest’s kesa,
or cloak, a symbolic patchwork of many pieces, and the squares and bits
from temple tables, for a long time offered exquisite bits of meshed
gold-thread and colors, and on the back of such pieces one often found
poems, sacred verses, and fervent vows, written by the pious ones who had
made offerings of them to the temples.
[Illustration: FUKUSA]
The stores of fukusas seemed inexhaustible a few years ago, and I can
remember days of delight in that ill-smelling old corner of Awata, when
one out of every five fukusa was a treasure, while now there are hardly
five good ones in a hundred of those needle pictures. The finest work
was lavished on these squares of satin or crape, which former etiquette
demanded to have laid over the boxes containing gifts or notes, both
box and fukusa to be duly admired and returned to the sender. These
ceremonial cloths were part of the trousseau of every bride of high
degree, and old families possess them by scores. The nicest etiquette
ordered the choice of the fukusa, and the season, the gift, the giver,
and the receiver were considered in selecting the particular wrapping.
The greatest artists have made designs for them, and a few celebrated
ones, bearing Hokusai’s signature, are owned by European collectors. The
crests of the feudal families become familiar to one from their constant
repetition on fukusas. Numberless Japanese legends, and symbols as well,
constantly reappear, and no two are ever exactly alike in design or
execution, however often one may see the same subject treated. Equally
popular are all the symbols of long life—the pine, the plum, the bamboo;
the tortoise with the fringed shell that lives for a thousand years; the
peach that took a thousand years to ripen; the stork, the old man and
woman under the pine-tree hailing the rising sun—and all, when wrapping a
gift, equally convey a delicately expressed wish for length of days. The
fierce old saints and disciples, who with their dragons and tigers live
on old Satsuma surfaces, keep company with the sages who rode through
the air on storks, tortoises, or carp, or stand unrolling sacred scrolls
beneath bamboo groves. And the Seven Household Gods of Luck, the blessed
Shichi Fukujin, are on the fukusa as well. There smile Daikoku, the god
of riches, upon his rice-bags, hammer and purse in hand; Ebisu, the god
of plenty, with his little red fish; Jurojin, the serene old god of
longevity, with his mitred cap, white beard, staff, and deer; high-browed
Fukurokujin, lord of popularity and wisdom; Hotei, spirit of goodness and
kindness, sack on back, fan in hand, and children climbing and tumbling
over him; black-faced Bishamon, god of war and force, holding his lance
and miniature pagoda; and Benten Sama, goddess of grace and beauty,
playing the lute.
_Takara Buné_, the good-luck ship, the New-year’s junk, with dragon beak
and silken sail, bearing rich gifts from the unknown land, is another
favorite subject. To sleep with takara buné’s image under one’s wooden
pillow on New-year’s night insures good-luck and good dreams for the rest
of the year. Quite as significant are the _takara mono_, the ancient and
classic good-luck symbols, which are the hat, hammer, key, straw coat,
bag or purse, sacred gem or pearl, the scrolls, the clove, the _shippo_,
or seven precious things, and the weights. These emblems, introduced
everywhere, fill flower-circles, or the spaces and groundwork of
geometrical designs, and are always received with favor. The shojo, who
have drunk saké until their hair has turned red, the rats and the radish,
the cock on the temple drum, poems in superb lettering, all ornament
the fukusa, and there the mysterious _manji_, or hook-cross, and the
_mitsu tomoyé_, or three commas curved within a circle, are continually
reproduced.
This manji is the Svastika, or Buddhist cross of India, which appears
in the frescos of the Pyramids and the Catacombs, in Greek art, in
Etruscan tombs, in the embroideries and missals of mediæval Europe, in
the Scandinavian design known as Thor’s hammer, in old English heraldry,
in the Chinese symbol called the “tablet of honor,” and on innumerable
temple ornaments.
[Illustration]
Five of the old daimio families had the manji as their crest, and it came
to Japan from China and India, along with the Buddhist religion. On old
armor, flags, and war fans it is constantly found, and it is the sign of
life, of the four elements, of eternity; the portent of good-luck, the
talisman of safety from evil spirits, and an amulet against threats or
harm from any of the four quarters; while the word “manji” is derived
from the Chinese word “mantse,” meaning ten thousand.
[Illustration]
The mitsu tomoyé is another universal symbol of innumerable meanings.
It occurs on the crests of eight daimio families; on temple drums,
lanterns, the ends of tiles, and on Daikoku’s mallet. It is variously
said to represent falling snow, leaping flames, dashing water, and
clouds; the thongs of a warrior’s glove, uncurling fern-fronds, the
down of seed pods; the three great elements, fire, air, and water, the
origin of matter, the great principles of nature, an oriental trinity.
On house-tiles and ridge-poles it invokes protection from the three
evils—fire, thieves, and flood, and everywhere these two mysterious
symbols confront one.
Kioto abounds in curio-shops, ranging from the half-mile long row on
either side of the Manjiuji to the splendid accumulations and choice
art collections of Ikeda, Hayashi, Kiukioda, Takada, and the bazaar at
the foot of Maruyama. At Ikeda’s, which is really an art museum filled
with precious things, the processes of damascening and lacquering may be
watched. It has been proven of late that, when patrons will pay a price
to warrant the endless labor and care, as good lacquer may be made to-day
as formerly. Connoisseurs admit that they are often deceived, and that
they are able to tell the quality only, and not the age, of any really
choice piece. The new is as indestructible as the old, if carefully made.
A pin-point or a hot coal leaves no mark, a year’s bath in sea-water no
trace, and amateur photographers have found it proof against the acids
and chemicals of developing fluids. Yet this substance, enduring as
crystal, is made by coat upon coat of an ill-smelling black varnish,
which, stirred in a tub with iron-filings, and set in the sun to thicken
and blacken, may be seen daily in the streets of any Japanese city. New
lacquer is so poisonous to many persons that the curious are content to
watch at a distance, while the workmen apply coat after coat, set the
article in a moistened box to dry slowly, and grinding and polishing
surface after surface, add those wonderful decorations that result in a
trifle light as air and precious as gold or gems.
The “incense-shop” is one of the choicest and most truly Japanese of
curio-shops. It looks, from the street, an every-day affair; but after
propitiating the attendants by a purchase of perfume, the inner wealth is
revealed in rooms filled with the choicest old wares. The salesmen tempt
the visitor with rare _koros_, or incense-burners, and, in an elementary
way, the master plays the daimio’s old game of the Twenty Perfumes. He
sprinkles on the hibachi’s glowing coals some little black morsels in the
shape of leaves, blossoms, or characters; scattering green particles,
brown particles, and grayish ones, and showing the ignorant alien how to
catch the ascending column of pale-blue smoke in the bent hand, close the
fingers upon it, and convey it to the nose. You cannot tell which odor
you prefer, nor remember which dried particle gave forth a particular
fragrance. The nose is bewildered by the commingled wreaths and mixed
cathedral odors, and the master chuckles delightedly.
There are certain curio-shops of an even more exalted kind, unknown to
tourists, and reserved to Japanese connoisseurs and to those few eminent
foreign residents who, in taste and appreciation, are Japanese. There,
little tea-jars, ancient tea-bowls, and ornaments for the ink-box delight
those to the manner born, and command great prices; and there one sees
the precious iron pots of Riobondo lifted from brocade bags, and ancient
pieces of wrought and inlaid bronze and iron, old helmets and swords,
such as are to be found nowhere else.
Tokio and Osaka rival the Kioto makers of the finer modern metal-work,
all three cities having been equal capitals and centres of wealth and
luxury in the feudal days, when the armorer was the warrior’s right-hand.
The descendants of the ancient metal-workers of Kioto still labor at the
old forges, and marvels of art, as well as of patient labor, come from
the various workshops of the town. Both old and new designs are employed
to beautify new combinations of metals, but at the present day the
metal-workers’ art expends itself on trifling things. Instead of adorning
armor and weapons and fashioning their exquisite ornaments, the artists’
taste and skill must be lavished on vases, placques, incense-burners,
hibachis, water-pots, and flower-stands, and the countless cheap trifles
and specimens of _bijouterie_ made for exportation. In the coloring,
cutting, and inlaying of bronze the Japanese are unrivalled; but for
the great metal-work of the empire the student of native art must visit
private collections and the treasures of the great curio-shops.
Feudal life invested swords and armor with their high estate, and
gave the armorer his rank. The fine temper of the old blades has long
challenged European admiration, and the sword-guards, the knife-handles,
and the minute ornaments of the hilt are beyond compare. Sentiment,
legend, and poetry glorify the sword, and the edict of 1871, which
forbade their use as weapons, increased their value as relics, and
brought thousands of them into the curio market. In rich and noble
families they have always been treasured, but collections of fine blades
are found in other countries as well, and the names of Muramasa and
Masamuné and the Miochin family, are as well known as that of Benvenuto
Cellini to connoisseurs of metal-work anywhere.
In the earlier uncommercial times little distinction was recognized
in the comparative value of metals. Their fitness for the purpose
required, and the effectiveness of their tints and tones for carrying
out ornamental designs, were what the artist considered. One metal was
as easily wrought by him as another. Iron was like clay in his competent
hands, and he moulded, cut, and hammered as he willed, using copper,
gold, silver, iron, tin, zinc, lead, and antimony simply as pigments, and
combining them as a painter would his colors. The well-known _shibuichi_,
or mixed copper and silver, and _shakudo_ or mixed iron, copper, and
gold, are only general names for the great range of tints and tones,
shading from tawniest-yellow to darkest-brown and a purple-black, and
from silver-white to the darkest steely-gray. Silver and gold were inlaid
with iron, the harder metal upon the softer, and solid lumps of gold,
silver, and lead are found encrusted in bronze in a way to defy all known
laws of the fusion of metals. While good and even marvellous work is
still done, the old spirit is gone, and the objects of to-day seem almost
unworthy the art lavished on them.
The magic mirror is still manufactured in Kioto, and although the tourist
is often assured that it does not exist, innumerable specimens prove that
the face of a common polished steel mirror, of good quality, will reflect
the same design as that raised in relief on its back. With small mirrors
ten inches in diameter, as with the largest, in their elaborate lacquered
cases, one may throw, with a ray of sunlight, a clear-cut image on wall
or ceiling. The pressure of the uneven surface at the back, the varying
density of the metal, and the effect of polishing, all combine to give
this curious attribute to these _kagami_, which are gradually giving
place to foreign glass and quicksilver.