PEACH-BLOSSOM
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
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.
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.
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 versâ; 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.
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.
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
It is not easy to describe the fascination of a Japanese garden. Chiefly it is due to studied neglect of geometrical design. The toy summer-houses dotted here and there, the miniature lakes, and the tiny bridges crossing miniature streams, give an air of indescribable quaintness. Yet, in spite of the smallness of the dimensions, the first impression is one of vastness. “Who discovers that nothingness is law—such a one hath wisdom,” says the old Buddhist text. That is the wisdom the Japanese gardener seeks, for he also is an artist. There is no one point on which the eye fastens, and the absence of any striking feature creates a sense of immensity. It is a broad scheme, just as broad as a picture by Velasquez would be, and of infinite detail. It is only accidentally that one discovers the illusion—the triumph of art over space. I saw a dog walk over one of the tiny bridges, and it seemed of enormous height, so that I was staggered at its bulk in proportion to the garden; yet it was but an animal of ordinary size.
AN IRIS GARDEN
A Japanese gardener spends his whole life in studying his trade, and just as earnestly and just as comprehensively as a doctor would study medicine. I was once struck by seeing a little man sitting on a box outside a silk-store on a bald plot of ground. For three consecutive days I saw this little man sitting on the same little box, for ever smiling and knocking out the ash from his miniature pipe. All day long he sat there, never moving, never talking—he seemed to be doing nothing but smoking and dreaming. On the third day I pointed this little man out to the merchant who owned the store, and asked what the little man was doing and why he sat there. “He’s thinking,” said the merchant. “Yes; but why must he think on that bald plot of ground? What is he going to do?” I asked, perplexed. The merchant gazed at me in astonishment, mingled with pity. “Don’t you know,” he said, “he is one of our greatest landscape gardeners, and for three days he has been thinking out a garden for me?—If you care to come here in a few days,” he added, “I will show you the drawings for that garden all completed.” I came in a few days, and I was shown the most exquisite set of drawings it has ever been my good fortune to behold. What a garden it would be! There were full-grown trees, stepping-stones, miniature bridges, ponds of goldfish—all presenting an appearance of vastness, yet in reality occupying an area the size of a small room. And not only was the garden itself planned out and designed, but it was also arranged to form a pattern in relation to the trees and the houses and the surrounding hills. This little old man, without stirring from his box or making a single note, had in those three days created this garden in his mind’s eye, and on returning home had sketched out the final arrangement. The merchant told me that his garden would be completed in a few weeks, with full-grown trees flourishing in it, and everything planted—all but one stone, which in all probability would be there in a few weeks, while, on the other hand, it might not be placed there for years. On inquiring as to the reason of this strange delay I was told that that one particular stone, though insignificant and unnoticeable in our eyes, occupies a very prominent position, and that upon the proper placing and quality of it the beauty and perfection of a Japanese garden almost entirely depend. Sometimes hundreds and even thousands of dollars are paid for a large stone that happens to be rightly proportioned and of the correct texture of ruggedness to occupy a certain position in a Japanese garden.
To see the cherry-blossoms of Yoshino, the plum-trees in full bloom at Sugata, the wistaria at Uyeno, or the iris at Horikiri, the people will travel scores of miles. Then, there is the spacious embankment of the Sumidagawa, at the part known as Mukojima, celebrated for its avenue of cherry-trees. Before the Restoration it was the favourite promenade for the daimio and their retainers, and very picturesque it must have been to see the stately nobles in their gorgeous robes, saluting one another with all the grave ceremonial in which the courtiers delighted. The costumes have vanished; but the ancient residences, with their private waterway approaches to the river, remain; and the avenue is still the fashionable promenade.
But it is the iris gardens at Horikiri seen by night that have left an impression which will never fade from my mind. We visited the gardens frequently; but it is one particular visit that I remember above all the others. Leaving the Hotel Metropole late in the afternoon, the ricksha men took us at a rattling pace through the city. After an hour’s run we found ourselves far away from the river in the midst of uninviting rice-fields, with a glimpse of the gardens in the distance—a blue and white oasis in a waste of green. If one visits the gardens in the afternoon the changes that the flowers undergo are marvellous. In the full warm rays of the sun, the great petals, turning back towards their stems, are rich and glowing in every shade. Then, as evening comes on and the sunlight fades, the deeper purple blooms lose their richness and grow shadowy, while the white ones take on an icy purity that seems unearthly in its transparency, and they shine as with an internal light. Still a little later, and with the last rays of daylight, all the darker flowers have disappeared, and where a short time ago stood a proud bed of royal colour one can see only the ghastly heads of the pure white petals looming like phantom flowers in the purple night.
A SUNNY GARDEN
The effect of the picture was heightened by the atmospheric colouring. As the silver evening gradually changed to purple night—a purple only seen in Japan—the festoons of lanterns which illuminated the summer-houses became of one colour with the landscape, and then, as the night darkened to a deeper purple, the lights changed to bright orange. It would be impossible to put such colours on canvas: the only way to represent them would be by precious stones. We dined in one of the summer-houses off dainty plates served us by little musmés while seated on the white mats. The blooms of the iris appeared softly luminous, emitting a ghostly light. It is this spiritual beauty which makes the flowers such a favourite in temple gardens, and inspires the Japanese to poetry. On the edge of a tiny lake, approached by a winding walk, through an avenue of bamboo trellis-work, was a small shed with a quaint roof. In the shed the model of a junk was placed. Near it were ink and small strips of paper. The junk was designed to receive poems on the beauty of the iris and of the garden.
Nothing disturbs in a Japanese landscape. It is the harmonic combination of untouched naturalness and high artistic cultivation. The tea-houses owe much of their charm to the absence of paint. The benches, lintels, the posts, are uncoloured, except by age. The white mats and the paper screens act as a foil to the bright flashes of the musmés—waiting-girls—who move noiselessly through the rooms like gigantic butterflies flitting to and fro. The iris blooms are a rich mass of colour of blue and white, and the gardener has exhausted his art in pruning all the unnecessary growths without leaving a trace of his handiwork. The ride back was delightful. Tokio at night is seen at its best; the river is then more fascinating. Huge junks, with a solitary light at the masthead, glide by—fantastic shadows in the purple haze. The tea-houses, with their festoons of lanterns and orange interiors, in which one caught glimpses of singing girls in their brilliant dresses, gleamed like golden patches in the cool purple. The bridges sparkled with lights; the shops were bright with colour; and all through the city, to enjoy the coolness of the night air, groups of citizens were seated in the streets chattering as gaily and as light-heartedly as only the Japs can.
IRIS GARDEN
FLOWER ARRANGEMENT
One of the chief characteristics of the Japanese, which especially distinguishes them from Europeans, is their intense fondness for flowers—not the fondness which many English people affect, but an instinctive love of the beautiful, and a poetical appreciation of symbolism. The Japanese nature is artistic in essence, and in no more delightful manner is the art of the people expressed than in the cultivation of flowers. Flowers to them are a source of infinite and unending joy, of which the chief pleasure lies in their proper placing and arrangement. Every common Japanese workman, every fan-worker or metal-worker, has some little flower carefully placed beside him at his work; he loves and prunes and cares for it.
If you dine out with a friend you will be seated, not on the right-hand side of the past-middle-age lady of the house, but near some beautiful flower. The “honoured interior” would never have the presumption to seat you next herself. You are her guest, and must be made happy by being placed in the near neighbourhood of the principal and most beautiful object in the room, which is invariably the arrangement of flowers. And a vase of flowers in a Japanese house is at once a picture and a poem, being always in perfect harmony with the surroundings. The art of arranging flowers is an exact science, in the study of which seven years of constant hard work finds a man but fairly proficient. In fact, to create a really fine arrangement is just as difficult as to paint an equally fine picture. Every leaf and every flower has to be drawn and practically modelled into form, while even so simple a thing as the bending of a twig requires much care and knowledge. To become a master in the art of flower-arrangement a man must study for at least fourteen years, devoting the remainder of his life to perfecting and improving it.
A WISTARIA GARDEN
There are scores of different arrangements that one must learn, and volumes upon volumes of designs, showing all the most delicate and subtle forms of placing which a master, in order to create perfect balance, must have at his fingers’ ends. These ancient designs are so perfect that it is almost impossible to change them or to insert any original work into them. Here and there, indeed, some great master will make a slight variation in the arrangement of a particular flower, and in a very short time that variation is trumpeted throughout the country and known in all art sections. To a Westerner this seems incredible. He affirms that if he jumbles a bunch of flowers together in a vase he can create a different effect every time. Very probably, and he can also strew roses and cut flowers all over his dining-table if he likes; but he will still be creating nothing more than a jumble. If he were to think out the arrangement of his table from an artistic point of view as a bit of decoration, he would find it impossible to produce such a wealth of inartistic variety. “But,” argues the uninitiated Westerner, “these roses strewn carelessly over our tables, and bunches of flowers stuck loosely into vases, are far more natural than the single stiff bough of blossom of Japanese decoration. Flowers grow in Nature carelessly and wildly, and therefore they must be arranged to look like that.” Now, it is always difficult to answer these people, for the dining-table of the West begins by being utterly hopeless in decoration and in colour. One cannot possibly compare this meaningless attire, this independent mass of colour forming no pattern, and probably placed upon the table by a servant without care or thought, and with an utter disregard to form and order,—one cannot compare such decoration with the beautiful, scientifically-thought-out flower arrangements of Japan. All that one can say is that one is art and the other is not. Nature grabbed at in this crude Western fashion and stuck into a vase is no longer Nature.
Consummate naturalness is brought about only by consummate art, and is not the result of accident. If a bough of blossom growing in the midst of other trees is taken from Nature and placed in a vase, however beautiful it might originally have been, it must necessarily appear awkward and out of place. One of the chief characteristics of Japanese flower arrangement is its resemblance to the flowers in a state of nature. A bough or a tree in a Japanese room looks exactly like a real bit of Nature lifted bodily out of the sunshine and its own particular surroundings, and placed there. Nature appears to be almost commonplace as compared with the work of a great Japanese master in the art of flower arrangement, and almost less natural. A master, after having received a clear impression of the way a certain bough appears in the midst of its background of Nature, is capable of taking that single bough and of twisting it into broad beautiful lines, one picking up with the other in such a way as to convey the same impression to you as it did when growing in its own sunny garden.
FLOWER-PLACING
“But why are there so few flowers in this Japanese method of flower decoration?” complains the Westerner. “Why only one branch of blossom in a pot?—why only one?” Because you can see that one and enjoy it, provided that you have the capacity to see at all, which the majority of people have not. One beautiful bough or one beautiful picture should be ample food for enjoyment to last an artist for one whole day. If there were twenty beautiful boughs, or twenty beautiful pictures, you would look from one to the other and would necessarily become confused. You would leave that room feeling thoroughly unhappy, and with the same sort of headache that one gets after spending an afternoon in a picture-gallery. To enjoy one of these pictures or flowers, and to concentrate one’s thoughts upon it alone, you would have to frame it between your hands, cutting it off and isolating it from the rest.
This the Japanese do for you. They know that you cannot appreciate more than one beautiful object at a time, and they see that that one object is perfectly placed in relation to its surroundings, so as to give rest and enjoyment to the eye. Almost every one in Japan, either young or old, is capable of appreciating a fine arrangement of flowers, and nearly every Japanese woman can practise the art.
So many minute descriptions have already been written of the methods of the masters of flower decoration that there is little else to say on that point. However, since decoration by flowers has so much to do with the art of the country, and is so closely connected with the character of the people, I feel that I must give a slight description of some of the marvellous creations in purple irises, lilies, and pines that the greatest master in Tokio once arranged for me at my hotel. He arrived early one morning, and in great good-humour, evidently feeling that, I being an artist, his work would be appreciated and understood. He carried with him his flowers, tenderly wrapped in a damp cloth under one arm, and his vases under another. One of his most promising pupils, a girl of nineteen, accompanied him, acting almost as a servant and evidently worshipping him as her master. He began at once to show us a decoration of lilies and reeds. With the utmost rapidity he took out a bunch of slim reeds, pulled them to different lengths, the large ones at the back, the small ones in front, and caressed the whole into a wooden prong looking like a clothes-peg, and arranged it in a kind of vase made out of a circular section of bamboo. An immense amount of care was taken with the handling of these reeds, the master drawing back now and then in a stooping position with his hands on his knees and his eyes bolting out to view his handiwork critically. Next he took some lilies with their leaves, and arranged them in a metal stand composed of a number of divisions looking like cartridge-cases cut off. Every leaf was twisted and bent and cut to improve its form. The half-open lilies were made to look as though they were growing, and were a great favourite with this master because of the scope for beautiful curves and lines that they allowed. Time after time he would take out a leaf or a flower, putting another in its place, thereby showing that he had absolute command over his subject, and a fixed picture in his mind that he was determined to produce at any cost. The ultimate result of the decoration was perfect naturalness. I never saw lilies growing on the hillside look more natural than they did here; yet each had been twisted and bent into a set design laid down by the artist. Both reeds and lilies were placed in a wooden tray partially lacquered, the unlacquered portion representing old worm-eaten wood; pebbles were placed in the bottom of the tray, and the whole was flooded with water. Then he began his decoration of irises. He took a bundle of iris leaves, cut and trimmed them, washing and drying each leaf separately, and sticking them together in groups of twos and threes. With his finger and thumb he gently pressed each one down the centre, rendering it as pliable as wire. The leaves were cut to a point at the base and placed in a metal stand with consecutive circles. Then an iris bud, with the purple just bursting, was placed in position and caressed into bloom. The whole was syringed with water and carefully placed in a corner of the room.
WISTARIA
I have described these few flower arrangements in detail in order to show the exactitude of the work and the immense amount of care taken by professors in flower arrangement. On this particular occasion I had invited some friends to enjoy the professor’s masterpieces with me, and he had just completed a most exquisite production, by far the best and finest he had achieved that day. It was an arrangement of pine with one great jutting bough, perfectly balanced—in fact, a veritable work of art. The professor was a true artist; he loved his work, and it was all the world to him.
For once he was content, and had just leant back to view his work through half-closed eyes when in a flash an Oxford straw hat was clapped down right on top of it. It was the husband of one of my friends just returned from a walk, full of spirits and boisterously happy. It was a cruel thing to do; but he did not realise the horror of his act. He saw a bough sticking right out of a pot, and it seemed to him a suitable place to hang his hat on: so he hung it there—that was all. The little assistant gave one frightened look at her master, and began to pack up the utensils at once; the professor drew himself up in a very dignified way, bowed profoundly, and left the hotel. I never saw him again, and I knew that I never should—for he went away crushed.
THE GEISHA
With all their practical gifts—which, as one of themselves has remarked, will enable them to beat the world with the tips of their fingers—and all the power of assimilating and adapting to their own purposes the best that other nations have to offer them,—the Japanese are essentially and beyond all a nation of artists. It is not only in the work-shop and the studio, but also in the simplest act and detail of daily life, that this sense of the decorative oozes unconsciously forth, and most of all, and most unconsciously, in the Japanese woman—the geisha.
The raison d’être of the geisha is to be decorative. She delights in her own delightsomeness; she wants frankly to be as charming as nature and art will allow; she wants to be beautiful; and she honestly and assuredly wants me and you and the stranger artists to think her beautiful. She wants to please you, and she openly sets about pleasing, taking you into her confidence (so to speak) as to her methods. She does it with the simple joy and sincerity of a child dressing up. There is no mock shyness, no fan put up, no screen drawn, no pathetic struggle to deceive you into belief in the reality of an all-too-artificial peach-bloom; there is nothing of the British scheme—no powder-puff hidden in a pocket-handkerchief, no little ivory box with a looking-glass in the lid, no rouge-tablet concealed in a muff to be supplied surreptitiously at some propitious moment. The Japanese woman has the courage to look upon her face purely as so much surface for decoration, a canvas upon which to paint a picture; and she decorates it as one might decorate a bit of bare wall. The white is simple vegetable white; the red is pure vermilion toning with her kimono. The white makes no effort to blend with the natural tone of her neck: it announces itself in a clear-cut, knife-edge pattern above the folds of the kimono.
BUTTERFLIES
I remember a little story that I once heard (it was told me by the designer of the waterworks in Tokio)—only a trifling incident; but it struck me as being thoroughly typical of the naïve, almost childish simplicity of the Japanese woman. It was on the day that the waterworks were completed, and the high officials and their wives were being escorted over the works in trucks, in order that they might see and admire this great engineering feat, of which my friend, the architect, was very justly proud. There were two trucks—one for the men and one for their wives. The truck containing the men was wheeled up under a shaft where the light came down from above, and enabled the officials to look up and admire this great work. The men looked up and were duly impressed, and altogether the experiment passed off successfully. Then the idea was that they should move aside so as to allow the women also to enjoy the spectacle. No sooner was the truck-load of women drawn up beneath the shaft than their faces lit up with pleased surprise, and every woman whipped out a looking-glass and a rouge-pot and began to decorate her face. Not one of them looked up, or even attempted to take the slightest notice of the waterworks: all they knew was that it afforded them just sufficient light by which to decorate themselves, and they promptly made use of it.
The geisha is the educated woman of Japan. She is the entertainer, the hostess; she is highly educated, and has a great appreciation of art; she is also proficient in the art of conversation. The geisha begins her career at a very early age. When only two or three years old she is taught to sing and dance and talk, and above all to be able to listen sympathetically, which is the greatest art of all. The career of this tiny mite is carved out thus early because her mother foresees that she has the qualities that will develop, and the little butterfly child, so gay and so brilliant, will become a still more gorgeous butterfly woman. Nothing can be too brilliant for the geisha; she is the life and soul of Japan, the merry sparkling side of Japanese life; she must be always gay, always laughing and always young, even to the end of her life. But for the girl who is to become the ordinary domesticated wife it is different. Starting life as a bright, light-hearted little child, she becomes sadder and sadder in colour and in spirits with every passing year. Directly she becomes a wife her one ambition is to become old—in fact, it is almost a craze with her. She shows it in every possible way—in the way she ties her obi, the fashion in which she dresses her hair; everything that suggests the advance of the sere and yellow leaf she will eagerly adopt. When her husband gives a party he calls in the geisha; she herself, poor dear, sits upstairs on a mat and is not allowed to be seen. She is called the “honoured interior,” and is far too precious and refined to figure in public life. But, mind you, this little married lady, the “honoured interior,” does not ignore her personal appearance altogether: she too will never miss an opportunity to whip out the rouge-pot and mirror that always form part of every Japanese woman’s attire in order to decorate her face. And although to our eyes she appears a nonentity as compared with the geisha, her position is in reality a very happy one and greatly to be envied. What if the geisha entertain her husband’s guests? Hers is the greater privilege of attending upon him when he returns, tired out from the festivities; she is as a rare jewel set in the background of her home, and the “honoured interior” is perfectly content.