THE LEMON BRIDGE
THE LEMON BRIDGE
Then, again, let us say a Japanese artist is painting a typical Japanese river-scene, such a one as inspired many of Mr. Whistler’s graceful Thames etchings—a quaintly formed bridge under whose dim archway a glimpse of shipping and masses of detail can be seen in the distance. To a Japanese artist the chief charm and interest of such a scene would lie in that little view beneath the bridge, and he would begin by drawing in, line for line, every little mast and funnel just as he sees it, or rather as he remembers it. The picture slowly expands as it reaches the margin, ending in the bridge, which forms, as it were, a frame through which to view the dainty richness of detail of the busy scene beyond. If you were to arrest this picture at any moment during its career you would find that it formed a perfect whole, every line balancing the other; whereas, according to our methods, if we were to draw the bridge first, timidly suggesting the distance and leaving the detail and all the fine lines to be put in afterwards, as so many artists do, the picture until it was completed would appear spotty and uneven. And even when finished there would be no balance, for we neither understand nor realise the importance of that quality without which no work of art can be perfect.
The Japanese methods of drawing and painting are entirely opposed to our Western methods, and in order to give a slight insight into the works of the Japanese painters I must describe these methods as minutely and as clearly as is possible. To begin with, the size of an ordinary picture is two feet by four and a half long, and as a rule three times as much space is left at the top as at the bottom of the picture. The brushes consist of a series of round ones; they are flat-ended and vary greatly in breadth, being named after the character of work they are fitted for. Straw brushes are sometimes used for coarse work. The silk that they paint upon is prepared in the following manner. First the edges of the wooden frame are pasted and the silk is rolled loosely over, great care being taken to keep the grain of the silk level. The surface of the silk is prepared with alum and size, the proportion of which is about an egg-spoonful of alum to a small tea-cupful of size. The size is boiled and strained and diluted with water, and the alum is added over the fire; it is again strained, and is then ready for use. Finally, it is put on to the surface while hot with a large brush. It is usual to put on two coats, and a contrivance in the shape of a cross piece of wood at the back of the frame is used for straining the silk more tightly after the first coat of size. The colours that the Japanese use are mixed and prepared in the following manner. Whitening, which is the basis of most colours, is pounded with a pestle and mortar into a very fine powder; then a little size which has been boiled and strained is poured in, and the whole is beaten up and worked into a ball. This ball is thrown over and over again into the mortar until it is well beaten. A little water is poured over the lump, which is then heated over a fire until it breaks and spreads. In this state, after cooling a little, it is well worked up, with perhaps the addition of water, until a white pulpy putty is produced; the artist is very careful all the time to avoid grit. Other colours are principally prepared from powders, which are beaten up in little porcelain cups with small pestles, and are mixed with a little size and water into saucers, stirred all the while with the finger and heated over the fire until dry, or nearly so. When required for use they must be worked up again with the finger and water, and it is a good plan when first mixing the colours to paste paper over the saucers, leaving a small hole for the insertion of the brush. Gamboge and a vegetable red resembling crimson lake are both used without size. The latter is prepared from a woollen material which is torn up into shreds and put into a saucer; then it is mixed with boiling water and afterwards strained through paper. It is drawn off in small quantities into several saucers and carefully dried over the fire. There is a colour which is much used called Taisha, which is like burnt sienna; then there is Tan, a sort of orange, and Shi, a vermilion red. The red is prepared in two different ways, first by being mixed cold in a cup with a pestle, a little size, and water. In this preparation the colour separates into a deep red and orange, the latter floating on the top. The orange is afterwards saved and used instead of Tan—Tan, not being permanent, turns black and disappears; it is used sometimes to shade ladies’ faces, but fades very much. In using this preparation of orange and red, the brush must be first dipped in yellow and then the tip of it in the red, so as to take up both portions of the mixture.
Another way of preparing Shi is to heat a saucer until the finger can hardly bear the touch, and then pour in some size and put the powdered pigment in it while still on the fire. When it has dried it is taken off and mixed with the finger very hot, a little water being added gradually, until it is of a thickish consistency. Shi thus mixed is of a deep red without any orange precipitate, and is used for upper washes, for, having a great deal of orange in it, it would be too black if used for undertones. In mixing indigo blue from a cake, the saucer is put over the fire to dry, and a little size is added. It is then rubbed with the finger, and water is gradually added. Taisha, when in a cake, is also prepared in this way. Taisha is used for the face and hair. The hair is shaded off with Indian ink, and the muscles of the face are washed in with Taisha having no white but a little black mixed with it; the feet and hands are handled in the same way. Then the face is washed over again with the same colour, only a little lighter. Broad masses of shading are introduced, and the nose, mouth, and edge of the cheek are generally left to be shaded in. It is considered better to use a number of light tones than one dark tone, and the washes on the face are repeated two or three times. The hair also is washed over with a large brush and rather dark ink; the eyebrows are put in in a single wash; also the corners of the eyes and mouth, which are flicked in and then washed off again. The lips are put in with vermilion and shaded off with another brush. A mixture of red, white, and Indian ink forming a dull purple is used for the pupils of the eyes, and the same mixture with a greater proportion of red, and consequently a little lighter, is used for going over the outline, and the ends of some of the lines are washed off with another brush. The same purple colour, but lighter still, is used as a backing to the outline in order to soften the edges, and a few touches of purple are painted in under the eyes and ears. The lips are touched with carmine, and the teeth and eyeballs with a little white. The under-lip and corners of the eyes are touched with lines or dots of light Indian ink, and the top eyelids and tops of lower eyelids are outlined with thin lines. The outline of the pupil is very fine; but the dot of the eye is made very black; the nostrils are painted in in light ink, shaded off afterwards and outlined in black. The hair round the mouth is put in in very light ink with a finely pointed brush.
BEARING A BURDEN
There are many ways of painting the hair. Sometimes a fine brush is used with single parallel lines, and sometimes it is washed in with a broad brush with light ink below and darker above. In old silk pictures great depth used to be obtained by painting the hair on the back of the silk as well as on the front. For painting leaves a mixture of indigo and gamboge is generally used with a full brush, the tip of the brush being dipped in indigo. By this method, the dark colour on the tip of the brush being after a time exhausted, the lighter green appears, and thus a natural variety of gradation is given to the colour of the leaves. Trees and rocks, etc., are often scrubbed in with a rather dry brush worked sideways and forming broken lines.
Another method of drawing a figure is to outline in charcoal, after which the face with its markings is outlined with a kind of Indian ink. Then with the same Indian ink, but with broader lines and a large brush, the drapery is boldly swept in with lines that should break in parts and form a drag. This drag must come naturally by pressing the brush firmly on the silk or paper; any attempt to force it would end in failure. The hair should then be worked in with a large spread brush, care being taken to give the hairs a radial tendency and not let them cross confusedly. Sometimes this hair is painted with a fine brush and with single lines. For the background two large brushes are used, one fitted with light ink and the other with plain water to shade off the black. The face and the breast are treated in the same way. The outlines of the drapery are sometimes washed in with a lighter tone to project over the edge and soften them. The face is washed with a mixture of red and ink, leaving only the eyes. The work is finished by using a small brush and very black ink for the markings of the mouth, centre of the eyes, under the eyelids, nostrils, and ear-rings.
Japanese artists study a great deal from life, and in order to draw a figure full of spirit and action they will often work in this way. Beginning with a very full brush, they sketch in the general swing of the figure with a few well-chosen broad black lines—as, for instance, when drawing the legs of a horse or a lobster they will put them in with one broad wash. Then they strain thin Japanese paper over this spirited sketch, and begin to elaborate on it with finer work, until in the end they produce a picture that has high finish, but possessing all the action and spirit of a first impression.
THE END OF THE DAY AND THE END OF THE FESTIVAL
The Japanese system of studying Nature in detail, but not with a view to creating a picture, is perhaps especially noticeable in their drawings of women. It would be considered coarse and vulgar in the extreme to paint a woman in the glaring light of a studio, copying every feature and wrinkle, line for line, as you would copy a man. Kiyosai explains that it is impossible to create a beautiful face by drawing direct from life, especially in line. The only way in which it can be achieved is by suggesting a natural beauty on paper, and by imitating a conventional type away from nature. The Japanese have a conventional type of beauty just as we have, and just as the Greeks had years ago—an ideal that has been evolved from the aggregate of myriads of beautiful women,—and this ideal of theirs must be a woman possessing small lips, with eyelids scarcely showing, and eyebrows far above the eyes. The forehead must be narrow at the top and widening towards the base, looking altogether very like a pyramid with its top cut off; the nose should be aquiline, and the whole woman must appear to be the personification of softness and delicacy. The conventional type of a Japanese man has always the legs and arms placed in impossible positions to denote strength, and the muscles are greatly exaggerated.
In the old masters of Japan great importance is attached to flesh markings, more especially in pictures of men. In a sketch of a fat man trying to lift a heavy weight, the action would be suggested in a few swift lines with no shading, but just two small horizontal lines at the back of the neck. Those two little flesh markings portray the fat man to perfection, admirably suggesting both the strain of the action and the bulk of the man. But in talking of the art of Japan and the methods of the Japanese painter, I feel that I cannot do better than describe a day that I once spent with that greatest of all living artists, Kiyosai, at the house of Captain Brinkley. This gentleman invited Kiyosai to come to his house one morning, and I was asked to watch and follow the whole process of his work, and as far as possible to learn from him his theories about painting. It was a splendid chance for me as a painter, especially as Captain Brinkley, who has resided in Japan for many years, and is a Japanese scholar of high attainment, acted as interpreter between Kiyosai and myself.
Kiyosai, I may say, is known all over Japan. From the highest noble to the lowest ragged child in the streets, all know the artist and love his work, for the pictures of a popular painter get abroad in Japan much as they get abroad here—Kiyosai’s pictures and sketches being reproduced and published in the Japanese papers just as they would be published in Western magazines. When any drawing by Kiyosai appears a rush is made for the paper. These drawings of his are really superb work, and I could not help feeling how great a privilege it was to come into contact with such a man.
IN FRONT OF THE STALL
I arrived at my host’s quite early in the morning, for I was to have a whole day with my Japanese fellow-worker. I was introduced at once to an old man, grave and very dignified in bearing, and I found it difficult at first to realise that this was the painter of whom I had heard so much. He was sitting on the floor smoking, while his assistant was busy stretching silk and preparing colours. As a rule, to see a Japanese smoke is to get at once a clue to the nature of the people. But Kiyosai was peculiar even in this. He was one of the few men who would take only one draw from his pipe; in the most dignified manner possible he would take that one whiff and then knock out the contents of his pipe, repeating the process as long as he continued to smoke. He had the most remarkable hands, too, ever seen, with long and slim thumbs—more sensitive, artistic, capable hands, from the chiromancer’s point of view, could hardly be. He was enthusiastic, but prodigiously dignified, and used his hands just a little, yet in the most impressive way. He never rose from his sitting posture, and every time I said anything that was at all complimentary he received it with charming ceremony, by bowing to the very ground.
No sooner was I introduced than his face seemed to light up, his eyes became intensely brilliant, and his conversation not less so. He was enthusiastic in his desire to learn about English painters and English art generally, and eager to tell me his own views of art, and all he felt about it. To my pleased confusion, he seemed to regard me with an interest equalling mine for him. He put many questions about English art, and told me much that was interesting about his own. He spoke of the effect made on him by some English pictures. “I have seen a number of English and European pictures,” he said; “but they all appear to me very much alike. I hear that in England and all over Europe they say the Japanese pictures look to them all alike. Why is this?” The explanation was not immediately forthcoming, for at first sight it seemed so extraordinary that to this man English pictures looked all alike. But immediately the truth forced itself upon me, as it will force itself upon the reader. European pictures are all wonderfully alike. It struck me that when, not long before, I was on a “hanging committee,” and had passing before me several thousand pictures, it was only here and there that my attention was arrested by the individuality of some of the work. For the most part they were the same pigments, the same high lights, and the same deep shadows; and mentally seeing this procession of pictures pass before me, I could not avoid seeing how grievously alike European pictures were. I had in some sort, indeed, felt this before, and was delighted on having the impression “fixed,” so to speak, by the Japanese master.
I saw a number of Japanese pictures, and I certainly found them far more individual than our work is. We say these Japanese works are insipid, out of perspective, and all pretty much the same. Here is a painter of Japan who brings a similar charge against our much more complex pictures—this, surely, is a new and a valuable lesson, full of suggestion for the thoughtful painter!
THE STALL BY THE BRIDGE
Kiyosai next began to discuss drawing, and, as he was speaking to an Englishman, English drawing in particular. “I hear that when artists in England are painting,” he said, “if they are painting a bird, they stand that bird up in their back garden, or in their studio, and begin to paint it at once, then and there, never quite deciding what they are going to paint, never thinking of the particular pose and action of the bird that is to be represented on the canvas. Now, suppose that bird suddenly moves one leg up—what does the English artist do then?” He could not understand how an English painter could paint with the model before him. I naturally told him that they copied what they saw; that they got over the difficulty as best they could. “I do not quite understand that,” he said. “In my own practice I look at the bird; I want to paint him as he is. He has got a pose. Good! Then he suddenly puts down his head, and there is another pose. The bare fact of the bird being there in an altered pose would compel me to alter my idea; and so on, until at last I could paint nothing at all.” I asked him what, then, was his method. “I watch my bird,” he replied, “and the particular pose I wish to copy before I attempt to represent it. I observe that very closely until he moves and the attitude is altered. Then I go away and record as much of that particular pose as I can remember. Perhaps I may be able to put down only three or four lines; but directly I have lost the impression I stop. Then I go back again and study that bird until it takes the same position as before. And then I again try and retain as much as I can of it. In this way I began by spending a whole day in a garden watching a bird and its particular attitude, and in the end I have remembered the pose so well, by continually trying to represent it, that I am able to repeat it entirely from my impression—but not from the bird. It is a hindrance to have the model before me when I have a mental note of the pose. What I do is a painting from memory, and it is a true impression. I have filled hundreds of sketch-books,” he continued, “of different sorts of birds and fish and other things, and have at last got a facility, and have trained my memory to such an extent, that by observing the rapid action of a bird I can nearly always retain and produce it. By a lifelong training I have made my memory so keen that I think I may say I can reproduce anything I have once seen.”
Such, then, is Kiyosai’s method of work. It is purely natural, and one that has obtained for generations, and that is the Japanese whole theory of art. Captain Brinkley told me a story, the outcome of that conversation. Kiyosai came one day to work at a screen which Captain Brinkley was very anxious for him to complete; but he could not finish it at the time, do what he would. He said nothing; but it came out that he had a fresh impression in his mind, and he could not go on with the old impression until he had worked off the new one—something he had seen on his way up to the house.
The painters always live with fish, and birds, and animals of different sorts. They have fish in bottles and in ponds in their gardens. I went to many studios in Japan, and I found each one with its ponds and fish in the little garden surrounding the studio, and birds as well. They always study nature, and I believe that is the keynote of their art.
The technique of Kiyosai’s work was most fascinating. I had come away from England with all sorts of theories concerning the technical part of an artist’s work, and when I got to Japan I found there was absolutely nothing that was not known to this man. His method of work, too, interested me exceedingly. To begin with, the assistant brought his stretcher of silk—a lovely piece of silk stretched across a wooden frame—and placed it in front of him. Then, taking a long burnt twig, he thought for a few minutes, looking all the while at his silk—thought out his picture, indeed, before he put a single touch on his canvas. How different is this from the man who so often, with us, puts on a lot of hasty touches in the hope that they will suggest the picture! When this artist saw his picture complete in his mind, he began with the little burnt twig to trace a few sure lines. I never saw such facility in my life. A few swift strokes indicated the outline on the silk of two black crows; then he took up his brush and began at once with the Indian ink, with full powerful colour; and in about seven minutes he had completed a picture, superbly drawn and full of character—a complete impression of two black crows, very nearly life-size, resting on the branch of a tree.
Kiyosai never amid any circumstances repeats himself: every picture he paints is different, while for his work he asks but a small price. After he had done his crows he painted a coloured picture, beginning with Indian ink. First he tried all his colours, which were ready prepared in different little blue pots and placed around him. These little shallow pots or saucers had each its own liquid, which the assistant had prepared to a certain extent beforehand. They contained flesh tint, drapery colour, tones for hair, gold ornaments, and so forth. These colours had evidently been used before, as they were in their saucers, merely requiring dilution before immediate use. The saucers were arranged chiefly on his right, with a great vessel of water, of which he used a great deal. All his utensils were scrupulously clean. When he began there was no fishing for tones as on the average palette. No accident! All was sure—a scientific certainty from beginning to the end. The picture was the portrait of a woman. It displayed enormous facility and great knowledge, and his treatment of the drapery was remarkable; but altogether it pleased me less. No attempt was there at what is called broken colour. A black dress would be one beautiful tone of black, and flesh one clean tone of flesh, shadows growing out of the mass and forming a part of the whole. As this work was a very simple impression, he finished the coloured picture in a few minutes. But on the whole, in one sense, it was less satisfactory. It appeared as if he had studied his subject less, for it was a little conventional. He was less happy in it; but, of course, he did not admit this to himself.
ARCHERS
He did four pictures, and each of them took from about seven to ten minutes, these constituting the finest lesson in water-colour painting I ever received in my life. Here is his idea of finish: once the impression of the detail and the finish of the object is recorded you can do nothing better; so far as the painter’s impression of finish goes, so far must the rendering go, and no farther. Artistically he had become exhausted by doing these four pictures—in invention, I mean. You see, the man was heart and soul in the work. He lives, poor fellow, on almost nothing. He is a very independent man, refusing to work for money, and declining to paint for the market.
Nearly every artist in Japan has his own favourite stick of Indian ink, which he values as his very life. It is essential that this ink should be of the very finest quality, for they drink so much of it. In order to execute those fine lines ending in a broad sweep that is so characteristic of Japanese pictures, an artist must first fill his brush with Indian ink and then apply it to his lips until the tip becomes pointed. The ink is of course swallowed; but if it is of a good quality, to drink pints of it would not do a man the slightest harm. A practical proof of this can be found in the fact that Kiyosai, who is an old man, has been drinking Indian ink steadily with every picture he has painted all through his lifetime. He possesses a small piece of Indian ink which is hundreds of years old, and which all the money in the world could not buy. It is far too precious for broad washes, and is only used here and there for bright touches.
I noticed the tender way in which Kiyosai handled this one precious piece of Indian ink, and that led to a very interesting conversation on blacks, after which I realised that the variations and gradations to be procured with black alone were enormous. Kiyosai told me that when he was very young he was puzzled by the exceedingly rich quality of black in one of his master’s pictures. It was a deep, velvety, luminous black, and young Kiyosai struggled for weeks and weeks to match it, but in vain. He came to the conclusion that there must be some work going on at the back of the picture, and at last one night he became so desperate that, stealing into his master’s room while he lay asleep, he soaked off the picture which had been pasted on to a board, and looked at the back of it. One glance was enough, and little Kiyosai, with a throb of pleasure, hastily pasted the picture together again and stole away to experiment all that night on silk and on paper, “painting black both on the front and on the back.”
I inquired of Kiyosai if he had ever painted in oils, and he assured me that he had not; but a few days later Captain Brinkley showed me a little picture painted in lacquer by Kiyosai which, in my opinion, rivalled for brilliancy any oil picture that has ever been painted, or has still to be painted. The surface was as brilliant as glass; yet the picture had a depth which no ordinary oil pigment could hope to reach, while its deep luminous shadows would put to shame the finest of Van Eyck’s pictures.
An English friend of mine resident in Japan once told me a story of Kiyosai which struck me as being typical of that great master. A friend of his had prepared four magnificent sliding panels covered with the finest silk, and had given them to the painter with the request that he would execute some of his masterpieces on them for him. For eight or nine years Kiyosai had kept those panels, and they still remained bare; but great masters are always erratic, and the would-be purchaser never gave up hope. One day, however, he burst in upon my friend with the terrible intelligence that Kiyosai was dead drunk and had ruined his panels. “He’s smashing away at them on the floor, and he is simply crawling over them,” he said in a towering rage. My friend agreed to go round with him to Kiyosai’s house to try if possible to stop the outrage. When they arrived they found the master in a high state of fever, and looking more like a wild animal than a human being, with his tusk-like teeth and his poor pitted face, sweeping and hacking about all over the silken panels. As they entered, Kiyosai left the room, leaving behind him the panels scattered irregularly over the floor, but each one smothered with work. “Look here,” said my friend very generously: “it was I that introduced Kiyosai to you, and it was I that suggested his painting these doors; therefore it is only fair that I should relieve you of them and find you a new set, which I will willingly do.” But the owner of the panels, shrewdly guessing that my friend had not made this magnanimous offer without some good reason, changed his mind and said that he could on no account receive so costly a gift. He kept them, and wisely too, for these four panels are now universally considered as some of Kiyosai’s greatest masterpieces.
REFLECTIONS
Strange to say, Kiyosai, when painting his finest work, is nearly always drunk, and his weakness is often taken a mean advantage of by the people around him. I remember once attending a party given by a Legation person who had invited a dozen or so of Japan’s finest artists—among them the great Kiyosai, the master—to paint pictures on the floor for the edification of the assembled guests—a rather vulgar proceeding. Kiyosai resented this indignity with all the force of his passionate nature, but out of kindness allowed himself to be over-persuaded by his host. They made him drink and keep on drinking to build up his enthusiasm; but, boiling over with rage and indignation, he kept on putting off his time until the whole twelve artists had finished the sketches, although, fearing that the effect of the drink would wear off, the guests begged him to start at once. At last Kiyosai’s time came. The silk lay prepared on the floor, with the ink and brushes ready for him to begin. Mad with rage and hating his unsympathetic audience, Kiyosai stood, or rather knelt, before his silk, fiercely grasping the brush, holding it downwards with all his fingers round it and thumb turned outwards. He looked like a god as he knelt there, gripping his brush and staring at the silk—he was seeing his picture. He executed a flight of crows, a masterpiece—Kiyosai knew it was a masterpiece—and, proudly drawing himself up to his full height, quivering in every limb, he threw down his brush, skidded the silk along the floor towards the spectators, and, saying “That is Kiyosai,” left the house in disgust. The dignity of the little man cowed his spectators. Every one unconsciously felt the magnetism of the man, and realised that a master had been among them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.