# The Art of Japan/Volume 1

The Art of Japan
Brinkley
Vol. I
The Art of Japan
by
Captain F Brinkley
of Tokyo Japan
Vol I
Pictorial Art
Illustrated
Published by J B Millet Company Boston Mass U S A
Copyright, 1901,
By J. B. Millet Company.
From an old painting on wood, Under the eaves of the Kasuga Temple at Kyoto.
The Art of Japan.
Pictorial Art.
apan’s victorious war with the neighbouring Empire in 1894–5 A Geisha (from line drawing by Hokusai). showed the world that she was something more than a kind of pretty toy country, where the trivial tourist might enjoy the sight of people using paper pocket-handkerchiefs, feeding themselves with two sticks instead of a knife and fork, and living in houses without windows; and where the dilettante might find art treasures as charming as they were novel. Up to the eve of that war, the average European or American bestowed upon her no more attention than he accorded to some new phenomenon in the world of physics. A sentiment of curiosity, perhaps academical, perhaps ethnographical, but certainly languid, was awakened in his breast by the intelligence that an Oriental nation had undertaken not merely to discard its Oriental garments, but also to prove that they had always been a misfit. He watched the result much as he would have watched the experiments of a horticulturist seeking to make peonies blow on a briar stem. In the field of art, however, his estimate of her capacities was different. He could not hide from himself that the revival of decorative art in Europe had been stimulated and guided by the study of first-class Japanese work, and that types of the highest æsthetic quality were to ​ Warrior (from line drawing by Hokusai). be found among Japanese chefs d’œuvre. But what, after all, was Japanese art? Must it be regarded as simply decorative, or might it also be considered representative? That question pressed importunately for an answer. People were unwilling to admit that a new star of the first magnitude had really risen on the horizon. They found something slight, something trivial, in Japanese pictures; a lack of emotion-inspiring motive; an absence of massiveness and breadth of treatment. It could easily be detected that the range of the painter’s fancy was limited by a logical canon; that he forbade himself to transfer to his canvas any scene too extensive to be revealed by a single glance of the eye; that, in short, just as Japanese poetry never rose to the dignity of an ode but stopped short at a couplet, so Japanese pictures, instead of telling a complete story, merely suggested an incident. But that they displayed extraordinary directness of method and strength of line; that the artist knew exactly what he wanted to draw and drew it with unerring fidelity and force; that the very outlines of the picture were in themselves a picture, and that the whole was pervaded by an atmosphere of tenderness and grace indicating a refined conception of everything beautiful in nature,—these were facts that forced themselves upon the attention of every close observer. What, then, was the fundamental difference between this art and the art of the Occident? It seems a little strange that the question should have remained unanswered for any length of time, inasmuch as a visit to a Japanese dwelling should have immediately suggested the reply. A Japanese picture is not painted simply for the sake of representative effect: it is part of a decorative scheme. There is no such thing in Japan, there never could have been any such thing, as a picture gallery—a place whither people repair to look at pictures merely for the sake of pictures. The painter, so far as concerned the ultimate uses of his work, ranked with the joiner, the plasterer, and the paper-hanger. His object was to beautify some part of the domestic interior. He had three fields for the exercise of his genius: first, screens—from the broad-faced tsuitate that stood in the vestibule, with its boldly limned design such as a passing glance could appreciate, to the little two-leaved ​biyobu that formed an elbow of glowing tints and delicate fancies to embrace the pillow of the lady of the household;—second, the panels of the sliding doors that separated rooms, or gave access to cup-boards and quaintly contrived nooks; and, third, the alcove recess, where a hanging picture Warrior with spear (from line drawing by Hokusai). occupied the background with a censer supported on a stand in the middle distance and a flower vase and an okimono balancing each other in the foreground. Screens and door-panels, whatever their position or uses, do not rise above the rank of articles of furniture: the designs applied to them must be purely decorative. But a picture hanging in an alcove seems at first sight to occupy a higher place and to offer a worthier opportunity for the display of representative art. In the Japanese system, however, the alcove picture was primarily an alcove ornament. It had to take its place in a decorative scheme; had to harmonise with, not to eclipse, its surroundings; to accompany the, not to stand apart from them. The European or American hangs his pictures with regard simply to the wall space at his disposal and the direction of his lights. The picture is the sole object of his consideration; everything is sacrificed to it. He builds a special gallery for the exhibition of these treasures, if he is so fortunate as to possess a sufficient number, and he takes care that nothing in the gallery shall clash with its prime purpose, the display of the paintings. But a Japanese never shows more than one picture, or one set of pictures, at a time. If he has a large collection, he keeps them in his fire-proof storeroom, and gives to each in turn a temporary place in the alcove recess. Hanging there, a picture must satisfy the same canon as the objects associated with it: the eye must find equal pleasure in regarding it from every part of the room. Thus it is at once radically differentiated from the picture of Occidental art, the picture which must be seen from one special point of view ​and with light coming from one fixed direction. Thus, also, linear perspective and cast shadows are necessarily excluded. Vanishing points, horizon lines, and such things mean that only one aspect of a picture is delightful; every other, painful. The Japanese artist understood these things thoroughly. It has been said of him reproachfully that he remained perpetually ignorant of perspective, and that he never discovered the theory of shadows. Certainly it is true that his knowledge of linear perspective continued to be very imperfect until modern times; but it is also true that he always had a full understanding of aerial perspective; and if we could induce ourselves to imagine for a moment that the presence of cast shadows escaped the observation of one so deeply versed in every other detail of nature’s portraiture, the delusion would at once be dispelled by examining his representations of fishes, where each scale is accompanied by its due shadow, and of foliage, where leaves and branches occupy their proper places in an accurate scheme of light and shade. But the fact is that he never allowed his artistic fancy to obscure the logic of his purpose. His prime function was to ornament a flat surface, and he recognised that scenes demanding the realistic effects produced by relief and differences of plane are entirely discordant with such a function. He considered that his picture, whether it represented landscape, seascape, figures, flowers, birds, or what not, was intended to produce not an illusion but a harmony. Very seldom did he make the mistake of pasting what we of the Occident call “pictures” upon walls, screens, doors, or ceilings. Aerial perspective and foreshortening were permissible, and he used them with admirable skill: linear perspective and cast shadows he carefully eschewed. It is easy to conceive that a tendency to what the West calls “suggestion” would be developed by such conditions. A temple would be represented by the torii that spans its avenue of approach; a town, by two or three roof-ridges emerging from mist; a tree, by one bough; a river, by a sinuous stroke; the sea, by the curves of a few wave-crests. Some have said of Japanese art that it is essentially impressionist. That is true, with the limitation that the impressions produced are those of facts, not of fancies, of realities, not of ideas. Appreciation depends on education. Occidentals have learned to esteem painting for the sake of its beauty independently of its environment; the Japanese esteems it for its beauty in subordination to its environment. As to which is the greater effort of art, need there be any discussion? The purpose of the artist in each case is radically different. When he steps out of the comparatively narrow limits imposed by decorative canons; when, by the aid of cast shadows, perspective, and a delicate graduation of “values,” he shows us not merely an exquisite scene from nature but also the poetical aspects that it presents to his own refined imagination, are we not in the presence of one of the greatest achievements of genius, one of the noblest results of intellectual development? Still we must recognise the merits of the decorative system also; above all such a system as the Japanese elaborated by centuries upon centuries of subtle effort. The “picture” obliges us to isolate ourselves from our surroundings; to ​gaze through an open window without any consciousness of the room in which we are standing. The decorative painting invites us to view it as part of a whole, and to value it in proportion as it enhances its environment. Japanese art may be said to end where European art begins—that is to say, European art subsequent to the sixteenth century.
Throwing the net (Hokusai).
This broad difference recognised, we pass on to note that the Japanese artist accepted every suggestion offered by nature within the limits of its adaptability. His observation was extraordinarily keen, perhaps because he never assisted it artificially. He knew nothing of animate models. It would have appeared quite irrational in his eyes to take a drawing of a danseuse from a posed girl, or to gather the idea of a bird in flight from a stuffed specimen with extended wings. “Objects at rest can never seem to be in motion,” would have been his thought, “however their limbs be disposed or their muscles stretched.” Therefore he painted moving objects according to his impression of the appearance they presented when in motion, and it was such a correct impression that his birds seemed to be flying out of the canvas, his dancers moving across the field of vision. In that feature ​of his art he found few equals and no superiors. The nude had no place in his répertoire of subjects. To persons that have seen men and women bathing together at thermal springs in Japan, or the wives and daughters of a rustic hamlet taking an al-fresco tub, or almost naked coolies toiling between the shafts of a jinrikisha, it may seem scarcely credible that exposure of any part of the person was always considered a gross solecism by refined Japanese. Such is the fact, however. What the labourer did because of his labour, the plebeian woman because of her vulgarity, the lady on account of her health, were acts, tolerated, not approved. The nude was seen, but never looked at. To hang a drawing of an undraped female in an alcove would have been judged as intolerable a violation of propriety as though a host should discard his clothes to receive a visitor. How much the Japanese lost, how much they gained, by excluding such subjects from their pictorial art, need not be discussed here. But reference may be made to the fact that the question is now actively agitating public opinion. Two or three painters, disciples of the Occidental School, have invited a conclusive decision by exhibiting pictures of the nude, and the nation hesitates whether to welcome or to taboo the innovation. It must be confessed that the challenge has been very rudely issued. The paintings upon which judgment is to be based have hitherto been entirely without the atmosphere of refinement and idealism which alone can veil the gross features of such representations. Were the circumstances ever so favourable, however, the writer of these notes believes that more than one generation must come and go before Japanese taste can be even partially reconciled to pictures of the nude. At all events there has been nothing of the kind as yet in the country’s art. It is an easily understood corollary that anatomical studies never occupied the artist’s attention. That defect in his education often forces itself painfully upon observation, especially in his delineation of hands and feet. Perhaps for the same reason he fails signally in his attempt to draw animals—horses, oxen, foxes, tigers, elephants, wolves, dogs, and so forth. Strange that the accuracy of his observation, conspicuous in other things, should be so markedly defective in this field. He can limn a fish, a bird, an insect, or even a fluffy little puppy-dog to perfection, but when he has to trace outlines that depend for their correctness on knowledge of the bony and muscular structures beneath, he errs perpetually. Directness of method and power of line are among his chief merits. As to the latter quality, its genesis may be attributed to the use of ideographic script. The training that every Japanese child receives from a tender age in tracing ideographs, educates a brush-using facility which has become in some degree hereditary. It may be laid down as axiomatic that an intimate relationship exists between Japanese caligraphy and Japanese painting, and that the Japanese eye detects in brush strokes an æsthetic beauty too subtle to appeal to men living outside the ideographic pale. Touch, as has been well said by a great connoisseur of Japanese pictorial art, is not by any means the most important quality in a picture, but it nevertheless contributes largely to the flavour and vitality of an ​artist’s work. When a Japanese speaks of “power of pen” (hitsu-riyoku), there presents itself to his mind a combination of delicate grace, infallible accuracy, and unostentatious verve which every intelligent observer is expected to recognise. He himself, if he has any pretensions to be a connoisseur, is familiar with sixteen different styles of touch for painting scenery, thirty-six for painting foliage, and nineteen for painting drapery, which constitute the classics of the brush, each having its own distinctive name and clearly established characteristics. To Western intelligence these facts suggest mannerism and formalism. Such analytical elaboration seems incongruous with the spirit of true art. Yet tricks of brush manipulation are not allowed to impair the expression of the pictorial motive in Japan. These peculiar strokes, when traced by the hand of a master, do not obtrude themselves at the expense of congruity. They may, of course, be exaggerated
Sawing the log (Hokusai).
so as to become startlingly obtrusive. Hokusai’s work often shows that fault. His use of the “swift-wave,” otherwise called the “holly-leaf,” style in drawing drapery sometimes degenerates into an impertinent mannerism, whereas outlines of the same class appear ​natural and appropriate when traced by the brush of Utanosuke or Shiutoku. But the point to which attention may be directed is not the merits or defects of such styles for pictorial purposes so much as the fact of their accurate differentiation and faithful employment by Japanese experts. We are thus carried into a field practically unexplored by European and American artists who associate with the best line drawing no qualities other than strength, delicacy, and directness.
If again we pass from the caligraphic training of the hand to the hand itself, we are confronted by a fact which the most cursory observation confirms, namely, that nature has endowed the Japanese people with hands singularly supple and sensitive. Manual dexterity ought to characterise such a nation. If we find them wielding the artist’s brush with admirable strength and accuracy, we look also to find them revelling in microscopic elaboration of detail; if at one time they suggest a whole répertoire of facts by a few bold touches, at another they may be expected to lavish a whole mine of minutiæ upon the working out of a few facts. And so indeed it is. Side by side with sketches which astonish us by the suggestive wealth of half a dozen salient brush-strokes, we see pictures which almost eclipse the illuminated missals of mediæval times, so conscientious is their detail, so profuse their elaboration. What perplexes many students, too, is that the same brush dashes out at one moment a design of colossal boldness, and devotes itself, the next, to work of marvellous detail. Let us, by way of illustration, refer to Kanaoka and Hokusai, names very familiar to Western connoisseurs, the first because he is erroneously supposed to have laid the foundation of pictorial art in Japan, the second because, with equal error, he is imagined to stand at its pinnacle. If the average Japanese dilettante be asked to describe Kanaoka’s characteristics, he will reply, delicacy of touch, illimitable minutiæ of detail, and exquisite harmony of tints. Yet it is a fact established beyond query that the genuine works of Kanaoka show him to have been a master of noble vigour and place him incomparably above the illuminator of a missal, or the painter of a peacock’s tail. So, too, if the average American or European collector had to define Hokusai’s style, he would speak of bold outlines, of wonderfully realistic figures, and of a wealth of humorous conception. Yet there exist pictures by Hokusai which rank with the finest etching in the matter of minutiæ, and with the most delicate engraving in the matter of mechanical accuracy of line. It is scarcely possible to conceive that the laborious limner of such works can be identical with the daring artist of the Man-gwa (ten thousand sketches) or the poetical painter of the Hundred Views of Fujiyama. Some may say, perhaps, that the Japanese hand is a product of the ideograph; that the manipulation of the brush through long centuries has modified the shape of the fingers and caused a special adjustment of muscles. That is a question beyond the range of our discussion. It has concern for those that advocate the displacement of the ideographic script by the Roman alphabet, but we confine ourselves here to noticing the three
The Evil Demon of Mount Oye. From a painting by Gogyo.
​factors that belong to this context, factors which must be recognised by every one desiring to appreciate Japanese art, namely, a hand singularly supple and sensitive, a brush manipulated with skill and strength beyond any Occidental standard, and an hereditary perception of quality in touch with which only an ideographist can fully sympathise. Moonlight on the snow (Motonobu).
The brush (fude) itself is not an ideal contrivance for artistic purposes. It is a stiff-haired pencil which, in ordinary hands, presents a difficulty to be overcome rather than a helpful instrument. This comment may be appropriately extended to the general question of the Japanese artist’s materials. It is said that unless one has actually worked with those materials, the difficulty of manipulating them can not be realised. The rapidly absorptive quality of the paper, as prepared for use, necessitates damping of the whole surface in order to apply a wash and, of course, after the damping process has been repeated three or four times, the size of the paper perishes, or the preparation of the silk disappears, if silk is employed. Moreover, the colour first applied is assimilated so largely that unless it be opaque there is little possibility of working over it even when dry: it seems to swallow up all shades which are not very much darker than itself. Practically, therefore, one wash is the limit. On the dry paper, too, the work to be done must be done quickly and with sweeping, finished strokes: once the brush leaves the paper, there is a hard line without recourse. Correction is practically impossible, and the result of every brushful of colour must, therefore, be foreseen to a nicety. On the other hand, the paper and silk—especially the latter—of the Japanese artist repay these technical difficulties by the delicate softness that they impart to a colour, and, in the case of silk, exceptional effects are produced by applying the pigments at the back of the drawing so that they show through the material.
There is another feature of Japanese pictorial art which, though apparently little appreciated by Western connoisseurs, must really be regarded as fundamental. It is that ​the position of the painter with regard to his picture influences the whole character of his line work. Instead of standing upright before his easel so that the axis of his lines is either on the mahl-stick or at his shoulder, he kneels on the floor with his paper or silk beneath him so that the axis of his sweep is the lower part of the leg, and the whole body from the knee upwards becomes the arm with which the lines and curves are produced. Whether this mechanical difference constitutes an advantage or a disadvantage is a question we do not venture to answer. But, as a very astute critic has remarked, “Japanese drawing so depends on its lines, its character is so wrapped up in them, that if the lines changed their sweep and flow, that character would be lost.”
It will easily be inferred from what has thus far been written that the mannerisms of Japanese art are numerous. The decorative limits within which it is for the most part confined render such a result almost inevitable. In the course of time, certain tricks of delineation have received the cachet of great masters and been recognised as the ne plus ultra of forceful suggestiveness. A fatal temptation to learn these tricks without attempting to acquire the spirit that suggested them besets the average student. It is so comfortable, so reassuring, to know that waves, bamboos, clouds, flowing water, hair, rock, and a multitude of other objects may be depicted by lines, curves, and washes combined and arranged in ways capable of being memorised as accurately as an ideograph or a syllabary. The result is painful ease of reproduction. One is lost in admiration of the directness and facility of a Japanese artist who seats himself among a group of onlookers and paints a dozen pictures in an hour, each presenting some points of excellence. But it may very well happen that a year or two later one is invited to attend a séance where the same artist performs the same tour de force by producing exactly the same pictures in the same time. We speak here of the rank and file of the profession—the men who, being without originality of conception, are obliged to substitute skill of pencil, and who find in the mere processes of the great masters a sufficient equipment for the purposes of every-day art. Unfortunately such mechanists of the brush have abounded in every era. Their skill as copyists constitutes a barrier to foreign appreciation of true Japanese art. How many collectors or connoisseurs in Europe or America have had an opportunity of examining genuine works of great Japanese painters? How many Japanese in Japan have had such an opportunity? Their combined number might probably be counted on the fingers of two hands. Copies, imitations, forgeries, they have seen in abundance, but to authenticated originals they have had no access.
What has already been said about picture galleries may be recalled here. In Europe and America one can visit collections, private or public, where examples of all the celebrated artists of France, Italy, Germany, and so on are displayed. There is nothing of the kind in Japan, and there never has been anything of the kind. Japanese pictures are hidden away among the heirlooms of temples or in the store-houses of noblemen and ​wealthy merchants. They are practically inaccessible. A not uninterested or unintelligent observer may have lived for years in Japan before the trivial estimate he has formed of Sesshu, of Shiubun, of Motonobu, of Cho Densu, of Tanyu, or of the other masters is rudely disturbed some morning by a revelation that startles him into a new belief. He may never have that revelation at all. The chances are a thousand to one that it never comes to a resident of a foreign settlement. Certainly some of the European authors whom the world accepts as true exponents of Japanese art have never been introduced to genuine representatives of many of the historical schools that they describe. They have utilized their limited opportunities with diligence and ability, but it was impossible that they could speak discerningly of what they had not seen, or had viewed only through copies scarcely ranking above caricatures. A summer landscape (Sesshu).
In this reflection is to be found, perhaps, a sufficient explanation of the great divergence between views submitted to the public on the subject of Japanese art. Chamberlain can scarcely conceal his contempt for it: he finds that it “stops at the small, the petty, the isolated, the vignette,” and that the chief lesson it has taught the world is “the charm of irregularity.” Fenollosa, on the other hand, talks of Motonobu as “scaling the heavens and battling with Titans;” of “the depth and intensity which startle us like the voices of the Gods from the mellow-toned sheets of Shiubun, Noami, Jasoku, and Masanobu;” of “the draught of immortality that all late artists have sought to drink from the well of Sesshiu’s irrepressible vigour,” and of “Yeitoku, whose heart burns with the internal fire lit from the torch of the Sung genius.” It is impossible that two men of very much more than average intelligence can speak of the same thing with voices so dissentient. The truth is that their verdicts are based on different evidence.
​The remarks made above with reference to the decorative limitations of Japanese art apply with clearer truth to secular than to religious paintings. In the latter field we occasionally find work that does not suggest any consideration for the plane of its display or the nature of its environment. Some of the earliest masters are known to us chiefly, if not entirely, by the pictures that they painted for Buddhist temples or Buddhist priests, and these pictures would deservedly rank high in any country. They show loftiness of conception, massiveness of treatment, and vigour of method that rival the achievements of the Italian mediæval celebrities. Yet they can not be cited as witnesses against the general theory we have enunciated, for they are without either linear perspective or cast shadows.
Japanese pictorial art is permeated with Chinese affinities. The one is indeed the child of the other, and traces of this close relationship are nearly always present in greater or less degree. To discern the marks of consanguinity is, however, a difficult task at times, not because of their actual obscurity, but because our means of identification are defective. Imperfect as is our knowledge of Japanese pictorial art, it compares favourably with our knowledge of Chinese. Of the latter virtually nothing was known by Western connoisseurs until they were introduced to it through the medium of the former; for, strange as the fact may seem, fine Chinese pictures are very much more accessible in Japan than in China. Japan is perfectly frank in acknowledging the debt she owes to the neighbouring empire. She does not pretend for a moment that her own painters have ever surpassed their models, the great masters of the Tang, the Sung, the Yuan, and the Ming dynasties, and she treasures the latter’s works with all the reverent love that an Occidental virtuoso feels for the gems of Rubens, of Angelo, of Titian, or of Holbein. It may, indeed, be fairly claimed for the Japanese that in some branches of painting their modifications deserve to be regarded as efforts of original genius, and that, speaking generally, their work is superior to that of the Chinese in tenderness, grace, and, above all, humour. But, for the rest, they sit at China’s feet. Korea should also be included among their masters, for there is evidence that Korean influence preceded Chinese. But the earliest really great Japanese artist—Kose no Kanaoka—is an unalloyed product of Chinese inspiration, and stands at the crest of a flood of Chinese influence that inundated his country in the eighth and ninth centuries. Three hundred years before his time (850–880 A.D.), Buddhism had become established in Japan, and the best efforts of her artists were soon devoted to the service of the new faith. Thus the most ancient painting now extant is a mural decoration in the temple Horiu-ji near Nara, which is believed to date from the opening years of the seventh century, and it may be stated at once that in no country has the spirit of art been more closely connected with religion than in Japan. Not merely did painting, architecture, and sculpture make their entry in the train of the Indian creed, but close study shows that the development of the various sects may be traced by the latter’s ​influence on the artistic features of their respective epochs. To Buddhism also are due the Grecian affinities distinctly traceable in Japanese art, for the conquests of Alexander brought Grecian civilization to northern India, whence Buddhism set out for China, Korea, and Japan.
Concerning the history of Japanese art, the best authorities refer its genesis to the reign of the Empress Suiko (563–567 A.D.) when Chinese court fashions, literature, and etiquette were introduced, and with them came applied art for decorating the Buddhist temples then beginning to be built. A visit with a lyre (Motonobu).
We need not insist upon the accuracy of this date, for the evidence is traditional; but certainly the seventh century bequeathed to posterity a few specimens which show that the casting and chiselling of metal, and the manufacture of lacquer were already practised with considerable skill; that fine examples of embroidery had been imported from China, if not produced in Japan, and that painting, though still crude and elementary, had made some progress. A great deal of ingenuity and close research have been devoted to tracing fine lines of division between the periods of Japanese development in these early days, but the resulting differentiation is too subtle to be practical. The problem of real interest is to separate foreign inspiration from native originality; to determine whether this art, which has so greatly moved the world in modern times, is a mere by-product of inspiration emanating in the first place from Greece, and becoming more and more deflected from the line of identity as it passed through the refracting media of Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese assimilations, or whether any part of it may be regarded as the unmixed offspring of Japanese genius. With that object in view it would certainly be ​helpful to trace the record back to its very alphabet; but unfortunately the materials are not sufficient for accurate analysis. If the most profound students take the latter half of the sixth century as the opening era, it is not because they believe the preceding cycles to have been entirely barren, but because the spread of Buddhism at that time supplied the first elevating impulse, as well as the first means of preserving and transmitting the art products of the time. There is no apparent possibility of determining, however, whether the scanty specimens transmitted from the sixth century and the first half of the seventh were the work of Japanese, Chinese, or Korean hands. Not until the end of the seventh century does solid ground present itself, and we then find Japan in such close contact with China that a full tide of civilization flowed from the latter to the shores of her neighbour—civilization which, so far as its artistic side is concerned, was permeated with Indo-Grecian influences. The materials for study now cease to be few and apocryphal. A very considerable number of authenticated sculptures, several paintings, and a remarkably full assemblage of examples of applied art, illustrate the culture of the epoch.
To this time we owe the celebrated collection preserved in an imperial store-house called the Shoso-in at Nara. Nara was the capital of Japan and the residence of the Imperial Court from 709 to 749 A.D. During not merely that interval but also for some forty years subsequently, the priests of Horiuji, to which temple the Shoso-in is attached, received from the palace various memorial relics, so that the Shoso-in collection ultimately comprised specimens of the ornaments, utensils, robes, musical instruments, etc., used by three Emperors and three Empresses, from 709 to 784 A.D. This collection, supplemented by temple treasures, brings us into intimate touch with the civilization of the era. We can speak of it confidently. As to sculpture, the point of excellence to which it had been carried is attested by two figures of the Deva Kings which form part of the Nara relics. These are magnificent carvings. Dr. Anderson, in his excellent work, speaks enthusiastically of “the vigour of action, truth of proportion, and wonderful accuracy of anatomical form” that they display. It may, indeed, be objected that they are instinct with suppressed ferocity and implacable menace, rather than with lofty benignity and calm resolve. But no critic can deny that they belong to a very high realm of artistic conception and technical skill. Tradition assigns them to the chisel of an anonymous Korean sculptor. But no such sculptures have hitherto been found in either Korea or China. Here we are confronted by one of the difficulties besetting every effort to decipher the alphabet of Japanese art. Working in the service of religion, the Japanese artist buried his individuality in his purpose; and, on the other hand, since Korea originally transmitted Buddhism to Japan—and China during several centuries remained the sole source of its exegesis—the priests and propagandists of the faith were naturally disposed to claim the cachet of Korean and Chinese artists for the decoration and equipment of sacred edifices. The ​artist effaced himself; his employers ignored him, and posterity was probably betrayed into the error of attributing to foreign masters much that Japan had a just title to call her own. The tendency of modern research is to throw doubt upon the foreign provenance of several important works hitherto attributed to Chinese or Korean artists. Men that could conceive and construct the colossal bronze figure of Lochâna Buddha at Nara, and the numerous images preserved in the temples there, can not have experienced much necessity to employ Chinese or Korean hands. The glyptic art, the lacquerer’s art, the inlayer’s art, unquestionably attained a high stage of development in this epoch; but the pictorial art remained in a secondary place, and a careful examination of the Shoso-in collection shows that, even in the field of decorative art, the features which constitute the chief charm, as well as the specialty of Japanese genius in later ages had not yet been evolved. Without exception the decoration seen in the Shoso-in specimens is geometrically distributed. There is no evidence that the Japanese had yet begun to fathom the secret of natural proportion, or to study the lesson they afterwards acquired so perfectly, namely, that to conceal, while preserving, the geometrical relations of part to part, to obtain equilibrium while apparently despising equipoise, is the fundamental axiom of graceful symmetry.
Rihako looking at a waterfall (Masanobu).
But as sculptors they unquestionably stand at the head of Far-Eastern artists, and, although the degree of their supremacy varied from age to age, the fact could never be questioned. In point of originality, however, little can be claimed for them. They invested their glyptic work with power, vitality, and idealism not to be found in the sculptures of China, Korea, or even India; but their models were derived, not created. What has been said above of painting applies with equal truth to sculpture. In both alike the impress of Japanese genius shows itself chiefly in tenderness, grace, and, above all, humour. It is doubtful whether the Japanese pictorial artist ever scaled the heights on which the greatest of the Chinese masters stood. It is virtually certain that the converse is true in the case of sculpture. But these are mere differences of degree. The distinction becomes radical only when we consider the characteristics of humour, tenderness, and grace.
Let us say a few words here about Chinese art, since it occupies such an important ​place in the vista of our retrospect. While accepting the indisputable truth that the art of Japan in its greatest phases is but a reflection of the art of China—a reflection frequently vying with its original in vigour and vitality, but more frequently displaying the weaknesses incidental to imitations in general—we must avoid the inference that the native genius of the Chinese artist was wholly responsible for his successes. The fact is that in both countries pictorial art drew its best inspiration from the same fount, Buddhism, and in both derived some of its most striking technical features from the same source, caligraphy. The Chinese doubtless had pictures long before the days of Apelles and Zeuxis, but their artists failed to attract any national attention until Buddhism, coming in the third century of the Christian era, brought to them Græco-Indian suggestions which soon raised to the dignity of an art what had hitherto been nothing more than a branch of caligraphy. By a slow process of evolution this reformed art gradually attained, in the eighth century, a culminating point at which stands the figure of Wu Tao-tsz. Speaking broadly, the painters of his epoch—the Tang Dynasty (618–907 A.D.)—are believed to have been the most powerful and original their country has produced, but it is difficult to determine how much that verdict owes to Oriental reverence for the antique. If the works of Wu Tao-tsz, Wong Wei (Japanese O-i), and Han Kan (Japanese Kan-Kan) served as splendid models to the first Japanese painters of note—Kose no Kanaokoa and his immediate successors,—the pictures of the Sung (969–1205 A.D.) masters were even more esteemed and copied by subsequent Japanese artists, and continuously in later eras the influence of the various Chinese Schools made itself felt in the neighbouring empire. Turning to the general characteristics of the art, the first point to be noted is that strength, directness, decision, and delicacy of stroke ranked above all other qualities. Outlines were frequently traced, the fact that they do not exist in nature being deliberately ignored. Doubtless for the same reason, accuracy of drawing was often sacrificed to conventionalised beauties of curve and contour, and nature’s effects were translated into the language of decorative mannerisms. Linear perspective was either absent altogether, or present in a form that violated European canons. Cast shadows did not appear. Colours were used very sparingly in the earlier eras, the best works being in black and white, pure monochrome, or pale tints relieved by an occasional touch of brighter hue. No subject was too trivial for representation, but if pictures were often produced which, so far as concerns the objects depicted, would rank only as studies in the Occident, their narrowness of range was redeemed by remarkable subtlety of suggestion, and in the case of landscapes there was a really noble power of representing space
* ↑ Pronounced Go Dashi, according to the Japanese sound of the same characters.
* ↑ The greatest of these, men whose names are household words in Japan, were Li Lung-yen (Japanese Ri Riumin), Ma Yuen (Japanese Bayen), Muh Ki (Japanese Mokkei), Hia Kwei (Japanese Ka-Kei) and Ngan Hwai (Japanese Ganki).
* ↑ For detailed lists of Chinese artists of the Yuan (1260–1367), Min (1368–1646) and later eras, the reader is recommended to consult Dr. Anderson’s “Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Paintings in the British Museum.”
The Three Comic Actors. From a painting by Gogyo.
​and atmosphere. We are speaking now of secular rather than of religious paintings. In the latter, figure subjects predominate, and are treated not only with grandeur of conception but sometimes also with gorgeous wealth of decorative detail.
Group of monkeys (Sosen).
The religious pictures of China and Japan are scarcely distinguishable. That is not surprising when we remember the identity of their motives and caligraphic methods, as well as the fact that in early days the Middle Kingdom stood towards the island empire in nearly the same relation as that occupied by Italy towards western Europe in mediæval and modern times. China was the bourne of the Japanese art student as well as of the Japanese litterateur, and to have sat at the feet of the Tang, Sung, or Yuan masters or philosophers was counted the highest possible education, whether æsthetic or scholastic. Representing the same subjects and inspired by the same devotional instincts, the Buddhist paintings of the two countries might well resemble each other to the point of identity. But it is strange to find among the secular works of Chinese artists exact prototypes of drawings that hang in the alcoves of thousands of Japanese houses, or form the decorative bases of innumerable Japanese objects of virtu. The perched hawks and roosting pigeons of Hwei Tsung; the swooping cranes and curling waves of Mih Yuen-chang; the beetling cliffs, dashing waterfalls, and rugged trees of Wu Tao-tsz; the ferocious dragons of Ch’en So-ung; the marvellously bold and vital sketches of Muh Ki, herons flying from the silk and boughs waving on the paper; the vivid, crisp figure-subjects and the exquisitely delicate suggestions of still life and landscape by Li Lung-yen; the bamboos of Yuh Kien, every leaf drinking the sunny air and every spray instinct with lustiness; the eager timid wild-fowl and wood-birds of Wan Chin and Wang ​Lieh-pan; the tender glimpses of scenic gems by Liu Liang and Lu Ki, like choice stanzas from a great poem—these and many another graceful conception, delineated with such fidelity to the first canon of art that a maximum of effect is produced with a minimum of visible effort, reveal to us the gallery where Japanese painters found their inspiration from century to century. Nothing has ever been written that sums up more happily and justly the facts we are now discussing than the following extract from the work of the most accurate and discriminating student of Far-Eastern art, Dr. William Anderson:—
“There is, perhaps, no section of art that has been so completely misapprehended in Europe as the pictorial art of China. For us the Chinese painter, past or present, is but a copyist who imitates with laborious and undiscriminating exactness whatever is laid before him, rejoices in the display of as many and as brilliant colours as his subject and remuneration will permit, and is original only in the creation of monstrosities. Nothing could be more contrary to the fact than this impression, if we omit from consideration the work executed for the foreign market—work which every educated Chinese would disown. The old masters of the Middle Kingdom, who, as a body, united grandeur of conception with immense power of execution, cared little for elaboration of detail, and, except in Buddhist pictures, sought their best efforts in the simplicity of black and white, or in the most subdued of chromatic harmonies. Their art was defective, but not more so than that of Europe down to the end of the thirteenth century. Technically they did not go beyond the use of water colours, but in range and quality of pigments, as in mechanical command of pencil, they had no reasons to fear comparison with their contemporaries. They had caught only a glimpse of the laws of chiaroscuro and perspective, but the want of science was counterpoised by more essential elements of artistic excellence. In motives they lacked neither variety nor elevation. As landscape painters they anticipated their European brethren by over a score of generations, and created transcripts of scenery that for breadth, atmosphere, and picturesque beauty can scarcely be surpassed. In their studies of the human figure, although their work was often rich in vigour and expression, they certainly fell immeasurably below the Greeks; but to counterbalance this defect no other artists, except those of Japan, have ever infused into the delineations of bird life one tithe of the vitality and action to be seen in the Chinese portraitures of the crow, the sparrow, the crane, and a hundred other varieties of the feathered race. In flowers the Chinese were less successful owing to the absence of true chiaroscuro, but they were able to evolve a better picture out of a single spray of blossom than many a Western painter from all the treasures of a conservatory. If we endeavour to compare the pictorial art of China with that of Europe, we must carry ourselves back to the days when the former was in its greatness. Of the art that preceded the Tang dynasty we can say nothing. Like that of Polygnotus, Zeuxis, and Apelles, it is now represented only by ​traditions, which, if less precise in the former than in the latter case, are not less laudatory; but it may be asserted that nothing produced by the painters of Europe between the seventh and thirteenth centuries of the Christian era approaches within any measurable distance of the works of the great Chinese masters who gave lustre to the Tang, Sung, and Yuan dynasties, nor—to draw a little nearer to modern times times—is there anything in the religious art of Cimabue that would not appear tame and graceless by the side of the Buddhist compositions of Wo Tao-tsz, Li Lung-yen, and Ngan Hwui. Down to the end of the southern Empire in 1279 A.D., the Chinese were at the head of the world in the art of painting, as in many other things, and their nearest rivals were their own pupils, the Japanese.” Cliffs in a fog (Tanyu). Having thus briefly examined the characteristics and merits of Chinese pictorial art, we revert to our summary of the evolution of art in Japan. Up to the middle of the ninth century, Japanese artists were still living in the Chinese studio as immature pupils. They had apparently developed glyptic ability far superior to that of the Chinese, but as painters they were separated from the latter by a long interval. Now, however, we find ourselves in the presence of a master, Kose no Kanaoka (850–888, A.D.), worthy to rank with the great Tang artists. We place him at the beginning of Japanese pictorial art, for, though the logic of evolution would be better consulted by putting him at the climax of an epoch, the fact is that we can only infer the existence of his predecessors. Their names alone are known, and we ​may fairly call Kanaoka the father of the various schools to which the term “classical” is usually applied, though he can not be justly regarded as the “founder” of any school, since he did but transmit the inspiration emanating from the Tang masters. There exists to this day among Japanese connoisseurs much uncertainty as to the nature of Kanaoka’s work. The majority believe that delicacy and minuteness were his characteristics: that he aimed at decorative effects rather than at boldness and vigour. That is an error which recent researches ought to have dispelled. Such specimens of Kanaoka’s work as have been clearly identified show that, like the great Chinese artist Wu Tao-tsz upon whom he modelled himself, his conceptions were as broad and lofty as his style was masculine and direct. He bequeathed much of his talent to his lineal descendants, especially to his great grandson, Hirotaka.
Had the intercourse between Japan and China continued to develop, it would doubtless have been fully reflected in the pictorial arts of the two countries. But the opening of the tenth century witnessed a political severance which made itself felt in the region of art, and a gradual divergence from the Chinese style can thenceforth be traced in Japanese secular pictures. Religious paintings still preserved their Chinese affinities, with the natural exception that in proportion as conception was less profound and execution less vigorous, decorative details grew more elaborate. It may be said of all Japanese painters down to the twelfth century, perhaps even down to the thirteenth, that they regarded the religious picture as the field of highest achievement, and that, when their subject was a Buddhist divinity, a Nirvana, an Arhat, or a Rishi, they sought inspiration either directly from the Chinese masters or indirectly from the latter’s most famous disciples. Religious paintings, like religious propagandism, appeal either to the intellect or to the senses. Pictures of the former class are, of course, the exception; those of the latter, the rule. The characteristics of Japanese Buddhist paintings in general are the characteristics of the illuminated missal; a rich display of gold and of glowing but harmonious colours, with conventional drawing, complete absence of chiaroscuro, apparent errors of anatomy, and faithful observance of traditional types. Sometimes, however, just as the noble thoughts of a great preacher impart new and lofty aspects to the familiar faith he inculcates, so Buddhist pictures from a master hand cease to be a mere repetition of hackneyed types, and reveal glimpses of a world of divine inspirations and emotions. It is unnecessary to pursue this part of our subject. The greatest painters whose names have become famous ​in connection with Buddhist pictures only are Kanaoka, Hirotaka, and Meicho (commonly called Cho Densu). But the reader must always remember that Japan’s best artists in all ages contributed their quota to the pictorial treasures of the temples, and that not until after the twelfth century did the secular picture rise to a place of at least equal importance with the sacred.
The river boat (Hokusai).
The divergence of the Japanese secular artist’s brush from Chinese lines—spoken of above as having commenced simultaneously with a political break between the two empires at the beginning of the tenth century—gradually became so marked that, a hundred years later, the public recognised the existence of a native school, and called it the Yamato Riu, or Wa-gwa Riu (synonyms for “Japanese style”). The reputed founder of the School was Kasuga Motomitsu, but the truth is that, like Kanaoka, his genius represented, not ​the origin of a tendency, but its outcome. It is in the direction of motives that this new departure can be traced most easily. The artist no longer sought his subjects in the field of sacred mythology, but turned rather to scenes of everyday life—court ceremonials, legendary lore, incidents in the biographies of celebrated men, episodes suggested by poetry, fiction or history, and so on. If we have to define the technical distinctions between these pictures and their predecessors of the Chinese School, the task becomes more difficult. Delicacy of stroke, more or less loss of firmness and strength, and the use of fuller-bodied colours, constitute, perhaps, the most palpable differences. This last feature—recourse to strong tints—became more and more marked as the school advanced in age, and ultimately a fashion arose of disposing the elements of a picture with a prime view to decorative effect, so that the coloured areas conveyed a suggestion of diapers or brocaded patterns. Such freaks, however, did not obtain vogue until the sixteenth century, and were confined almost entirely to what may be called the book illustrations of the time; namely, paintings on interminably long scrolls inscribed with historical or biographical records. The Yamato artists are often said to have failed signally in their delineations of the human figure; to have followed traditional types, generally ungraceful and unnatural, and to have drawn faces, legs and arms that seldom approximated to correctness. That criticism must not be accepted too implicitly. It is certainly true when applied to the work done by the rank and file of the school; but in the case of the masters, close examination generally reveals that the outlines of their figures diverge, not from the standard of absolute correctness, but from the standard which we ourselves have been accustomed to regard as normal. They show us lines which assuredly exist in nature, but which are not the lines that Europeans and Americans have taught themselves to consider salient. We shall have occasion to refer again to this point.
The Yamato, or Japanese, School received the name of Tosa Riu (riu means style or school) in the middle of the thirteenth century, its principal representative (Tsunetaka) at that time having been honoured with the title of “Tosa Gon-no-Kami.” Thenceforth through every era down to our own day, the successive artists of the School bore the family name “Tosa.” The twelfth and thirteenth centuries represent the zenith of their achievements. A learned critic, Mr. E. F. Fenollosa, speaks of “a score of the greatest artists of Japan, who illuminated this period in constellated clusters, and made of it, perhaps, the most brilliant epoch of Japanese art.” He calls it “the culmination of the power and splendour of that school which comes the nearest to giving us a pure national art; an age of supreme delicacy, purity and graceful spirituality in Buddhist painting, but especially the age of superb national historical painting. It was then that magnificent rolls, inscribed with the glory and horror of war, were daily issuing from the ateliers of ​artists the most facile and inspired. It is to that age that we owe the glories of Mitsunaga and Keion, the greatest draughtsmen of Japan; of Tsunetaka and Takanobu; of the divine Nobuzane; of Arimune, Genkei, and Tamehisa the superb, with his colour rivalling Titian, and of Shoga, Rioga, and Tameyuki, the pride and flower of the Takuma line. All these were men whose works stand in the very foremost rank of the time. Compared with them the artists of Tokugawa days seem scarcely better than pigmies.”
Fishing at the dam (Hokusai).
In the twelfth century was born a style of art entirely independent of foreign inspiration. It consisted of humorous sketches, in which not merely the motives but also the drawing were burlesqued. The Japanese have never been notably skilful caricaturists. Even in modern times their attempts to produce comic publications after the fashion of Punch or Puck are not successful owing to their persistent inability to preserve a likeness while distorting it. In the Toba-ye, as humorous pictures were called after their ​originator—the Priest of the Toba Monastery (Toba Sōjō) otherwise Minamoto no Kakuyu—particular emotions were emphasized by exaggerating the part of the body affected by them, so that accuracy of drawing, in the Occidental sense of the term, became a secondary consideration. Kakuyu, though generally remembered only as the father of this school, distinguished himself highly as a painter of religious and secular (Yamato) pictures, and the authenticated specimens—a very few rolls—of his comic drawings that have been handed down to posterity, show admirable power of brush and play of fancy. He had a host of successors in every age, the majority immeasurably inferior, some even greater than himself, and many whose style differed so essentially from his that they had nothing in common with him except a keen sense of humour. To appreciate the work of this School it is necessary to have an intimate knowledge of Japanese legends, folk lore, proverbs, history and customs, all of which the Toba-ye artist illustrated. It is also necessary to remember the art axiom that in naturalistic drawing accuracy of proportion and beauty of line are properly sacrificed to the appearance of life. From the time of Toba Sōjō to the days of Hokusai and Kyōsai, the Japanese humorous painter always recognised that his first duty was to give the character—the burlesque, laughter-provoking character—of the objects he depicted, and that if he succeeded in conveying a strong and immediate impression of that character, his purpose was accomplished even though his lines were classically incorrect. In short, his work forcibly illustrates the principle that whereas line in classic drawing is generally attained at the expense of life, life in naturalistic drawing is often attained at the expense of line.
The Chinese influence, which, from the end of the tenth century, had gradually become faint almost to total disappearance in the realm of Japanese secular painting, was revived, at the close of the fourteenth, by a priest named Josetsu, whose inspiration came from the masterpieces of the Sung and Yuan artists. Josetsu is said to have been of Chinese origin. There are some close students who deny to him the title of having led the Chinese renaissance in Japan. They claim that honour equally for another naturalized Chinese artist, Shōga Shiubun, and for a predecessor of both, Nen Kawo. Neglecting these questions, we pass to the broad fact that the style of painting thus introduced found its chief expression in monochromatic, or lightly coloured, landscapes of great delicacy, naturalness, and beauty, and in wonderfully life-like, vigorous sketches of birds, from the saucy sparrow to the stately crane. It is characteristic of this school, which has had numerous representatives in every era since its foundation by the immigrant monks of Kyoto, that its motives, like its style, are exotic. Until modern times, the Japanese always loved to derive examples of chivalry, of statesmanship, of warlike prowess, of philosophy, of filial piety, of feudal devotion, and of legendry folk-lore from the annals of the Middle Kingdom. Hence the artists of the fourteenth-century renaissance, and their followers in every era, chose Chinese motives for their pictures, and instead of
* ↑ The central figure of the era (778–858 A.D.) immediately preceding that of Kanaoka was Kukai, better known by his posthumous name, Kobo-Daishi, the greatest priest in Japanese history. Visiting China to complete his religious studies, Kukai had an opportunity of witnessing the superb civilization of the Tang dynasty, and on his return to Japan, he set himself to propagate, under official auspices, a doctrine (the Mikkyo), which depended largely on appeals to the sensuous side of human nature, and enlisted in its service whatever aids were furnished by the beautiful, the gorgeous, and the picturesque. It is not to be supposed that Kukai attempted to revolutionise anything. Revolution has never been the rôle of Buddhism. If he favoured magnificent ceremonials and elaborate decorative effects, it was because the spirit of his day tended in that direction. Kukai obtained renown as a sculptor, and so did a contemporary priest of scarcely smaller fame, Saicho (commonly called Dengyo-Daishi). But neither of these men seems to have made any serious study of painting. Posterity recognises only one painter among Kanaoka’s predecessors, namely, Kawanari, and of his work no specimens survive.
* ↑ It is essential that any student of the religious paintings of Japan should make himself acquainted with their motives. These are exhaustively discussed in the British Museum’s “Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Pictures” by Dr. W. Anderson.
* ↑ Hence the “Kasuga School” is often spoken of as a subdivision of the “Yamato.” Some students carry the beginnings of the Yamato School back to the days (950 A.D.) of Takuma Tame-uji, who founded the Takuma School. This is a point of unpractical subtlety.
* ↑ Every collector knows these maki-mono, or pictorial scrolls. Sometimes the long series of pictures told their own tale, but generally the drawings served only to illustrate a chapter of history or legend written in their intervals or on their margins.
* ↑ It is well to explain that all these artists, enumerated by Mr. Fenollosa as belonging to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, are not to be included in the Yamato-Tosa School. Some of them represent the Chinese School—generally spoken of as the Kose riu, from Kose no Kanaoka its first great figure,—but the reader can easily make these identifications.
Reproduction from a Painting by Gekko.
Illustrating the tradition regarding Matahei, a famous Japanese artist of the older time, whose figures were so real that they walked out of the picture.
​drawing inspiration direct from the exquisite scenery of their own country and the noble acts of their own countrymen and countrywomen, were content to copy Chinese ideals of landscape, and to devote themselves to illustrating Chinese traditions. It is easy to conceive what a despotism of methods, of mannerisms, and of conventionalities would reign in such a school. Just as West’s great picture of Wolfe’s death was supposed to violate all the proprieties of art because the figures were depicted in eighteenth-century coats and hats instead of Grecian “drapery” or Roman togas, so the Japanese disciple of the Chinese School had to obey canons which cramped his originality and were only saved from becoming anachronistic by the immemorial conservatism of the Chinese nation. Concerning the excellences of this School, we may say that, apart from force, directness, and delicacy of line, which are common to all Japanese masters, there is a really remarkable sense of “values;” a subtle attention to colour gradations and atmospheric conditions which would have given almost perfect results had the principle been recognised that nature does not show accented outlines; that edges are never the deepest notes of colour in her landscapes and seascapes. A very appreciative paragraph from Anderson’s “Pictorial Arts of Japan” may be quoted here:— Quail and rice (Tosa).
“The Chinese artist was often remarkably felicitous in the renderings of the wilder forms of picturesque beauty in landscape. Silvery cascades; tranquil pools and winding streams; towering silicic peaks and rugged headlands; gnarled fantastic pines and plum-trees, side by side with the graceful forms and feathery foliage of the bamboo; mansions or pavilions, gorgeous in vermilion and gold, crowning the heights or bordering the expanse of an inland lake, and rustic cottages with straw-thatched roofs nestling in the cultivated valleys: these were elements that the painter could assort and reconstruct into a thousand pictures of never-failing interest and beauty. The Japanese painters of the classical schools, seduced by the charm of the foreign ideal, were often led to neglect the familiar attractions of their own scenery, and without having beheld any of the spots depicted by the old landscape masters of China, squandered an infinity of talent in building up new creations of their own with the material borrowed from their neighbours.”
​It is a habit among connoisseurs to divide into three great streams the flood of Chinese renaissance that invaded Japan in the fifteenth century; the purely Chinese stream, of which we have just spoken as springing from Josetsu and Shiubun; the Sesshiu stream, springing from Sesshiu, whom many count the most colossal figure in Japanese art; and the Kano stream springing from Masanobu and Motonobu, who, whether they rank above or below Sesshiu, certainly founded the chief academy of Japanese painters. The reader will at once seek some explanation of the reasons underlying this division. It is difficult to give any that can be called satisfactory. As to Sesshiu, some Japanese connoisseurs claim that he developed a peculiar style of his own, untrammelled by classical traditions. We can only say that to Occidental eyes this independence is not apparent. He adhered to Chinese motives and Chinese methods as faithfully as did Shiubun and his disciples, and to us no dictum appears truer than that Sesshiu was “the open door through which all contemporary and subsequent artists looked into the seventh heaven of Chinese genius.” Masanobu and Motonobu, the founders of the Kano School, were not less “classic” than Sesshiu. In the works of all three masters, though in varying degree, we find the noble breadth of design, the subtle relationship of tones, the splendid caligraphic force and the “all pervading sense of poetry” that constituted the highest features of Chinese pictorial art in the Tang, Sung and Yuan epochs. For all purposes of true appreciation it seems sufficient to say that the fifteenth century was the culminating period of Chinese pictorial art in Japan, and that its giant figures, Shiubun, Sesshiu, Masanobu, and Motonobu, though they stand at the head of three distinct lines of artists, drew their inspiration from the same source and set before themselves the same ideals. Motonobu’s masterpieces had the special excellence of being free from the hard outlines that in Sesshiu’s pictures offend against natural laws; but this superiority is partly balanced by loss of vigour and massiveness.
Our object here being to trace the development of Japanese art itself, not the history of Japanese artists, we leave unnoticed the names of several great disciples upon whom the mantle of the four renaissance masters fell, and pass at once to the closing years of the sixteenth century when a new departure was made by two leaders of the Kano School, Eitoku and Sanraku. It has been shown above that pure Chinese influence reached its first culminating point in the ninth century, when Kose no Kanaoka won immortal fame, and that his classical style continued to monopolise the field of pictorial art until the eleventh century, when Motomitsu founded the Yamato, or Japanese, School, which subsequently developed decorative characteristics, and finally, in the hands of the Tosa masters, became more remarkable for rich colour harmonies and gorgeous illuminations than for any of the qualities recognised by classical canons. So, too, we find that the re-birth of Chinese influence in the fifteenth century, which speedily reached the zenith of its glory in the hands of Sesshiu, was followed, within less than two hundred years, ​by a decorative impulse precisely analogous to that represented by the genesis and growth of the Yamato School. Eitoku and Sanraku introduced this decorative method in the Kano academies at the close of the sixteenth century, just as the internecine wars by which the country had been tortured for five hundred years were drawing to a close, and feudal castles and nobleman’s residences of unprecedented massiveness and magnificence were beginning to be built throughout the empire. Heron (Sesshiu). Eitoku created, perhaps, the greatest purely decorative style of painting that the East has ever produced. His style accurately reflected the fashions and tendencies of his time, when, under the rule of Hideyoshi, the administrative power began to be associated with displays of imposing magnificence, and æstheticism, officially inspired, found expression in the lavish adornment of castles, temples and palaces and in the construction of beautiful parks. On the walls and sliding-doors of these edifices, Eitoku, Sanraku and their followers produced pictures glowing with gold and rich colour harmonies. The decorative artists that preceded them had used the precious metal sparingly for picking out designs, whereas they employed it to form wide fields on which they painted episodes of war, phases of aristocratic life, or subjects taken from the kingdom of flowers and foliage, the ensemble conveying a suggestion of rich gems clustered in broad areas of mellow gold. Perhaps it should be added here that though the decorative mode represented by the Yamato-Tosa School undoubtedly preceded that of the Kano School, the former began to be strongly conspicuous almost simultaneously with the development of ​the latter, and both are to be traced to the political and economical conditions of the time rather than to any independent art impulse. The whole period of the Tokugawa Regency’s sway—that is to say, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the first half of the nineteenth—was marked by profound peace and by the spread of luxurious habits hitherto confined to the great administrative families in the Imperial capital. The applied arts certainly attained their highest development during those centuries, and it is probably safe to say that in no other country nor at any other epoch, ancient or modern, were the services of pictorial art so widely and so successfully employed for decorative purposes. We can trace, too, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, a patriotic reaction against the slavish adherence of the classical schools to Chinese motives and methods, and a growing impulse to favour the work of the Tosa masters, who chose Japanese subjects and attached to the decorative quality in their pictures importance which brought them into close touch with the architectural developments of the time. Doubtless this taste for exquisite harmonies of colour and glowing yet tender tints, grand illustrations of which may be seen in the interior decoration of temples, palaces and mansions, owed something to a contemporaneous change in Chinese pictorial methods—a change from the noble simplicity and force of the Tang, Sung and Yuan monochromes to the strong, full-bodied colours and microscopically elaborate style of the later Ming pictures. But the influence of Chinese artists was not a prime factor in the movement; it must be regarded, rather, as a reflection of the development of Japanese civilization under the Tokugawa Regents, the tendency, if not the aim, of whose policy was to cultivate the growth of an effeminate, splendour-loving mood among the aristocratic classes in lieu of the fiercely ambitious temper of mediæval militarism.
We arrive now at the Ukiyo-ye Riu, or “Popular School” as it has been generally called by Western critics. The word ukiyo literally signifies “floating world;” that is to say, this transient world, or every-day life. Hence, when a Japanese speaks of ukiyo-ye (ye signifies picture) he means simply genre paintings—representations of persons and things that belong to the ephemeral scenes among which the artist moves. It is generally alleged that the so-called Popular School owed its origin to Iwasa Matahei, a painter who flourished in the second half of the sixteenth century. But the statement is somewhat misleading. A careful reader of what has been written above will see that, from the beginning of the thirteenth century, incidents of national life furnished to the Tosa masters their chief motives, and that, down to the Chinese renaissance in the fifteenth century, artists did not hesitate to seek subjects for delineation in the daily doings of the plebeian classes. Even the great founders of the Kano School, men whose works support comparison with the masterpieces of Chinese genius, had no fear of degrading their art or alienating aristocratic patronage when they depicted episodes from the kitchen, the stable, the farm-yard and the work-shop. The truth is that in the rise and development of the ​Popular School we must trace, not a new artistic departure, but simply a reflection of the changes which the civilization of the era was undergoing. From the end of the sixteenth century, the actor, the courtesan and the danseuse began to occupy an unprecedented place in everyday life, and became the centres of a voluptuous æstheticism which constantly presented new spectacular attractions for dilettanti and made new appeals to the artistic as well as the sensuous instincts of the people.
Carp in Stream (Ōkio).
Matahei caught the first note of this innovation and fixed it pictorially with wonderful fidelity. The figure-subjects which constitute his specialty are instinct with refined sensuality and graceful abandon. He introduces us to a life where dancing, music and sybaritism in every form are beginning to take the place of politics and war, and where even the strong contours of the male figure show a tendency to merge into the soft curves of the female. He did not succeed, however, in transmitting his inspiration to any of his pupils or immediate successors, and it was not till the close of the seventeenth century, when Hishigawa Moronobu employed the art of wood-engraving to bring the ukiyo-ye within reach of the masses, that the Popular School began to assume a really important place, and to associate itself directly with the production of chromo-xylographs which are now the wonder and the delight of Western collectors. The story of the chromo-xylographic development and of the wealth of artistic treasures and technical triumphs that it has bequeathed to us, deserves an independent treatise, but we must confine ourselves here to a few salient facts.
There is some uncertainty about the origin of wood engraving in Japan. It is generally attributed to the ninth century. That would make it fully a hundred years subsequent to the introduction of block-printing, which came from China certainly not later than the middle of the eighth century. Nothing like proficiency was developed, however, until the time (1320) of a priest named Ryôkin, and even his productions—a few of which are extant—derive interest from their period rather than their quality. All the motives of the early wood-cuts were religious. The blocks, being preserved in temples, ​served for printing pictures of deities which were distributed to pilgrim worshippers. Apparently the idea of using engravings for illustrating printed matter did not suggest itself until the sixteenth century, but from that time wood-cuts began to be freely inserted in the pages of historical romances, poetical anthologies and other kinds of literature. These pictures were not remarkable. Draughtsmen of talent did not concern themselves in their production, and it was not until the last quarter of the seventeenth century that xylography began to be applied to really artistic purposes. Hishigawa Moronobu and Okamura Masanobu were the two artists who supplied drawings for this new departure. Their work was vigorous, their composition clever, and the engraver did his part so well that wood-cuts of really high merit were produced. Almost immediately the potentialities of this branch of art were recognised, and a number of very beautiful albums appeared, chiefly from the brushes of Ooka Shunboku and Tachibana no Morikuni. They contained accurate copies of pictures by the great Chinese and Japanese masters of previous eras, as well as lessons for young painters and suggestions for decorative designs covering the whole range of applied art. Another extensive field for the employment of wood-cuts was the popular novel, which grew out of the monogatari, or historical romance. Nearly all the great artists of the Ukiyo-ye School assisted in the illustration of these books, though it is plain that they did not consider the task worthy of their best efforts. Much more elaborate work appears in the pages of the “illustrated accounts of celebrated places” (meisho-zuye), several of which were compiled in each important city or province, for the purpose of depicting the scenic features of the locality and recording everything of topical interest. In fine, before the middle of the eighteenth century, Japanese xylography had attained a stage of development much higher than that reached at the same epoch in Europe.
Very soon after the wood-cut began to be used artistically for purposes of illustration, the practice of colouring it by hand came into vogue. At first, only two colours were used, orange and green, but yellow was afterwards added. It is evident that the painter desired to preserve the quality of the line engraving, and that he subordinated these broad, decorative effects of colour to the character of the black and white drawing. Among hand-coloured prints two kinds are sometimes mistaken for chromo-xylographs. They are the tan-ye, or orange picture, and the urushi-ye, or lacquered picture. The former derived its name from the fact that orange was the dominant colour, yellow the secondary; and the latter was so called because of the addition of black lacquer, which helped to emphasize the delicate lines of the engraving, though occasionally it threw the other colours out of scale. In some cases the heaviness of the black lacquer was relieved by a sprinkling of gold leaf. All this work, though it produced many beautiful examples, needs only cursory mention.
China could have taught chromo-xylographic processes to Japan while the latter was ​still content with hand-coloured engravings. No sufficient explanation has ever been offered of the fact that the Japanese were so slow to borrow from their neighbours in this field. Probably the truth is that the Chinese chromo-xylograph never appealed to Japanese taste, and never deserved to appeal to it. At all events, the Chinese understood colour-printing early in the seventeenth century, whereas the Japanese did not begin to practise it until nearly the middle of the eighteenth. Their first essays were simple, the colours used being only two, red and green. The Beggars (Hokusai). The artists whose names were connected with this innovation are Torii Kiyonobu and Torii Kiyomasu, followed immediately by Okamura Masanobu, then an old man, and by Torii Kiyohiro, Torii Kiyomitsu and Torii Kiyoshige. These prints received the name of beni-ye (vermilion pictures), in consequence of the red predominating in the scheme of colour. Many of them are admirable examples of skilful massing, disposing and contrasting of colours. The artists evidently appreciated at its full value the technical superiority of colour-printing over hand painting, namely the steady, even tints and the absence of bewildering gradations of tone that wood blocks give. The next step was from the “vermilion picture” to the print of three, or even four, colours. Some ten or twelve years had elapsed before the change took place, and during that time the artists had fully mastered the basic principles of colour composition for such purposes, and had learned the subtleties of balance and harmony. Torii Kyomitsu now produced beautiful prints, in which secondary colours were developed by superposition of primary, so that, while still using only three blocks, red, blue, yellow,—purple and green were obtained, which, with the black and white of the print, ​gave a scheme of seven colours. At this point (about 1760) Suzuki Harunobu appeared. By many connoisseurs he is counted the greatest master of nishiki-ye, and the title rests on at least three solid foundations, namely, the delicacy of his line drawing, the delightful softness and music of his colours, and the atmosphere of fresh innocence with which he envelops his female figures. But Harunobu’s conceptions of life and its graces recall the declining day of Heian civilization, when “cloud gallants” painted their eyebrows, powdered their faces, and aped femininity. His work is never robust; his men are scarcely distinguishable from women; he deforms hands and feet to make them slender, and he knows only one type of female beauty which he produces and reproduces unceasingly. Nevertheless to him undoubtedly belongs the credit of having inaugurated a new and almost final departure in Japanese chromo-xylography. He abandoned the drawing of actors to which his contemporaries had hitherto confined themselves—a limitation which, in turn, confined their public to the lower middle classes, since the theatre and everything appertaining to it belonged essentially to vulgar life—, and he set himself to design chromo-xylographic pictures of ladies and gentlemen amid the luxuries of their lives and the refinements of their pastimes. Further, he included backgrounds in his scheme of colours; multiplied the number of blocks so as to produce a variety of tints, strong, light and soft; changed the shape of the paper, and added embossing, which greatly increased the representative capabilities of the art. From his time no marked advance was made. None, indeed, was possible. There was elaboration, but no important innovation. We now find a large school of brilliant artists, great in a pictorial as well as a decorative sense: Koriusai, Katsukawa Shunsho, Ippitsusai, Buncho, Katsukawa Shunyei, Utagawa Toyonobu, Utagawa Toyoharu, Kitao Shigemasa, Kubo Shunman, Torii Kiyonaga, Shuncho, Chobunsai, Yeishi, Kikugawa Utamaro, Utagawa Toyokuni, Hokusai, Hokkei and Hiroshige. They cover a space from 1750 to 1850, just a century. As to which of them deserves to be placed on the throne of chromo-xylographic art, there are differences of opinion, but the honour certainly belongs to one of these four, Utamaro, Kiyonaga, Harunobu and Koriusai. Some hold that everything culminated in Kiyonaga (1780–1795), that everything subsequent to him was a degeneration, and that everything good in contemporary or later art was due to his influence. But the longer one studies the chromo-xylographs of Japan and the wider one’s range of acquaintance with them, the more does Rikugawa Utamaro force himself into the first place in one’s affection and esteem, alike
* ↑ It will be observed that this record assigns to wood engraving in Japan an antiquity nearly six hundred years greater than that attributable to the beginning of the art in Europe.
* ↑ Dr. Anderson assigns 1700 as the time when colour-printing began in Japan, and Mr. S. Tuke has fixed the date at 1710. But the most exhaustive researches assign it to about 1740.
* ↑ Literally “brocade picture,” but the term nishiki (brocade) had long been used in Japan in the sense simply of “many-coloured.” Another term originally applied to these pictures was suri-mono (print), but the name subsequently came to designate little single-sheet chromo-xylographs which were sent to friends at the New Year, and also black-and-white prints. Sheets in sequence—two, three, five, seven or even twelve—which were first introduced by Torii Kiyonaga in 1775, are called tsuzuki-mono. Of nearly contemporaneous origin was the hashira-kakushi-ye (post-concealing picture), a long narrow chromo-xylograph; and to Katsukawa Shunsho (1789) we owe the hoso-ye (slender picture), which often shows remarkably clever examples of designing.
“The God of the Dragon” at Chikugima (an island on Lake Biwa).
​for vigour, for versatility, for tenderness, for truth of line, and for beauty of colour harmonies.
After Hiroshige—whose landscapes are among the finest pictures of the chromo-xylographic gallery,—nothing good was produced. Indeed the era of decadence had set in long before Hiroshige designed his last prints (1855), though the end was postponed by several admirable artists. At one time (1842), and that not by any means the golden age of the art, the Yedo Government, in a mood of economy, deemed it necessary to issue a sumptuary law prohibiting the sale of various kinds of chromo-xylographs—single sheet pictures of actors, danseuses, and “dames of the green chamber;” pictures in series of three sheets or upwards, and pictures in the printing of which more than seven blocks were used. Flower Study (Korin). The prohibition held for twelve years only, but it certainly contributed to hasten the decadence which had already begun. As to that decadence, not much need be said. Its features force themselves upon the attention of the most superficial student. From the exquisite pictures of Utamaro, Hironaga, Harunobu, and their rivals to the meritless, meretricious work of later artists, there is an immense interval in quality though a brief interval of years. It would be a misconception to assume, however, that the ability to produce beautiful chromo-xylographs has been lost. It is there still, as was recently proved by a notable revival with which the names of Ogata Gekko, Watanabe Seitei, Kiyōsai, and Kansai were connected. But the art has been vulgarized. The coloured print has become chiefly a child’s toy. Artists can no longer afford to superintend the technical processes of its production, and cheap, flaring, violent pigments imported from abroad have taken the place of the delicate, rich and costly colours of old Japan.
One of the facts which the student of the Far East soon learns to expect is that Occidental precedents must be reversed to suit Japanese methods. In Europe or America the engraver, even though a copyist, must be a skilled draughtsman: must be able to ​draw with perfect accuracy an inverted, and often a reduced, reproduction of the original. Hence the credit of the picture does not belong solely to the artist but is shared equally by the engraver. In Japan the engraver has no honour: he is a mere artisan. This interesting point will be understood from the following description of the Japanese chromo-xylographic process (furnished by Mr. S. Tuke, one of the profoundest and most zealous students of the subject):—
“In the first place, the artist will compose his original design somewhat in this fashion. He commences with a small rough sketch, perhaps on an odd scrap of paper. Next he proceeds to make an outline-drawing with a brush dipped in very thin and pale Indian ink on a sheet of paper of the requisite size. Having corrected this and satisfied himself with his performance, he will carefully and accurately draw in the whole outline in black ink. If this outline is not entirely satisfactory, he will make a corrected tracing upon thin paper. In this case, he may partially paint the original picture with the colours and designs he intends to employ for the colour-printing.
“At this stage the wood engraver’s services are called in. Having procured a block of cherry wood of the desired dimensions and sawn with the grain, (not across the grain, as is our habit in the West), the original drawing, or the tracing as the case may be, will be pasted face down upon the block. If the drawing can not be distinctly seen through the back of the paper, its upper layers will be very carefully rubbed off with a wet hand or cloth, until the outline can be clearly seen through the thinnest possible film of paper. Having received the requisite instructions from the artist, the engraver will commence to carve out the spaces between the black portions of the design, leaving the black outline alone in relief. This operation concluded, and the fragments of paper having been removed with a brush, the outline having been made, the first stage will be completed. In the case of an ordinary print in black and white, the engraver’s labours are now ended. But in the case of a colour-print, he still has duties to perform, as will be presently seen.
“The printer’s services are now required, and a certain number of copies will be printed on thin paper from the outline block—one copy at least for each colour which is to appear in the finished picture. The artist’s help will now again be needed, and if he has not already coloured portions of the original drawing, he will colour, entirely or in part, one of these printed copies as a model for the finished picture. Then he will paint, possibly by tracing on another of these outline copies, all portions of the picture that are of the same colour; on another copy, in the same way, the parts of the picture that are of another colour, and so on, until he has thus painted as many single-colour copies as there are colours in the finished picture. Each of these coloured copies is now pasted on a separate block of cherry wood. The engraver then resumes work. He carves away the whole surface of each block, including the outline, leaving only in relief the coloured part of the design. In each case he also carves at the corner and edge of the block a ​rectangular nick and a guiding line, which correspond exactly to a similar nick and guiding line in the outline block. A separate block having thus been produced for each colour, the remains of the paper copies will be removed, and unless any alterations are required, the engraver’s work is concluded. Although it is difficult to overrate the amount of skill often exhibited by the Japanese wood engraver, it is easy to see from this description how thoroughly subordinate he is to the artist. Wild Duck (Kishi Renzan Toku).
“Printing is the next process. The various blocks now pass into the hands of an operator of little less importance than the engraver in point of skill, and requiring much greater artistic talent. In a work of any importance the artist, having selected his paper and directed the mixing of the various colours, will probably superintend the printing of the first proofs. But there is no printing-press. The outline block is placed face upwards upon a stool or upon the floor, and the portions in relief are carefully painted with an ink brush. A sheet of paper is then placed upon the block, one of its corners in the rectangular nick, its edge against the guiding line, and retained in position by one of the printer’s hands. He will next proceed to pass a flat padded disc over the back of the paper with his other hand, exercising the requisite amount of pressure with his arm. The whole of this process will be repeated until he has printed off the number of outline proofs required for the first issue. He then replaces the outline block with one of the colour blocks, and applies the colour to the portions of the surface that are in relief. Should any shading be required, he will carefully wipe the colour in gradation partially off the requisite portions with either his hand or a damp rag. This shading, of course, requires very nice manipulation, but it is a process not unknown to English etchers. One of the outline proofs is now placed on the colour block, its corner ​in the nick, and its edge against the guiding line, so that the coloured portions take their right position in the picture. The padded disc is now passed over the proof, after which it is removed and fresh colour having been applied, another proof takes the place of the former. This process will be continued until the proofs of the first issue have all been printed in one colour. Then the process is similarly repeated with each of the colour blocks in turn, and the first issue of our nishiki-ye is now finished and ready for the market. It will probably be a small issue, to the end that the artist, should he not be contented with the result, may be able to make alterations before the outline block has lost its freshness. Such alterations may be effected in several ways, either by an entire redistribution of colour on the old colour blocks, by the substitution of new colour blocks for old, or by an increase in their number.
“It is not unusual to employ a block carved with a design of some sort which is not coloured, but serves to stamp a pattern in relief. In printing from such blocks extra pressure is resorted to. Some of the effects thus obtained are very attractive.
“To obtain good prints it is necessary, in the first place, that the nick and guiding lines should be exactly in their right place on each block, and, in the second, that the printer should exercise very great care in placing each sheet accurately in position on each successive block. Otherwise the colours will over-lap the outline or one another.
“Of course, in the greater number of cases the artist will leave many of the duties here assigned to him to his subordinates. In recent times, this must have been the case to a great extent, and both engraving and printing, to say nothing of the arrangement of the colour blocks, must have been left to the supervision of a pupil, or even in the hands of the engraver, or more likely still, in those of the publishing printer.”
What are the special charms which have won for the paintings, wood-cuts and chromo-xylographs of the ukiyo-ye masters such applause in Europe and America? How is it that a branch of pictorial art which Japanese connoisseurs have always regarded with a certain measure of contempt, evokes the unstinted admiration of Occidental critics? Some answer the question by reference to the motives of the pictures. Here, they say, we have accurate representations of the people’s occupations and pastimes; of domestic life with all its graces and conventions; of the fête and the festival; of love; of battle; of the chase; of elf-land; of the theatre; of the danseuse; of the demi-mode; of high-way scenes, and of street panoramas. Some, again, reply by pointing to the immense mine of decorative wealth that Western designers may find in the detail of the nishiki-ye. Such comments are doubtless true, but they appear to us very unsatisfying. It is not to obtain information about Japanese fashions and habits, nor yet to find a novel pattern for a book-cover or a wall-paper that the collectors of New York, of Boston, of Paris, and of London eagerly seek and jealously preserve these specimens of Japanese art. Other reasons present themselves. Chiefly to harmony of colour does the ukiyo-ye owe its ​charm. There is no ground for supposing, indeed we may confidently deny, that the Japanese ever approached the problem of colour from a scientific point of view; that they knew anything about the law of complements and contrasts; that they possessed a definite idea about the relief of warm colours by cool, or the blending of similar notes and tones by gradation. Playing on the Biwa (Kobori Tomone).
But their practice shows that they fully appreciated the prime qualities of colour symphony—richness, accordance and mellowness. There is never a shrill or strident note in these musical pictures. The primitive colours are there sufficiently to produce strength and volume, but always delicacy of shade and softness of hue are the pervading characteristics, and the broken tones blend gently without jar or conflict. If we consider the chromo-xylograph in the sequel of the magnificent monochromes of Shiubun, Sesshiu, Jasoku, the Kanos and the other giants of the classical schools, where the painter’s appreciation of “values” amounts almost to an unerring instinct, we are led to conclude that the Japanese artists did not attempt to elaborate scientific theories but went direct to nature for their teaching, thus discovering and applying the fundamental law that every shade or colour has its proper place in a scene, and must hold a fixed relation to its associates in the general scale. The ukiyo-ye seems, in short, to have arrived in the regular order of evolution, for the artist passed from a knowledge of low keys and simple colour compositions, developed in the Chinese schools, to a profound sense of the wider scope and fuller harmony of high, diversified colours, and thus succeeded in combining the flame and glow of sunshine brilliancy with the tenderness and refinement of twilight tints.
But while admitting his greatness as a colourist, many critics have condemned his ​drawing. They complain that the linear character of the objects he depicts is not accurate; that anatomical laws are often violated in his figures; that he appears to be without any exact knowledge of form. It would scarcely be correct to endorse that criticism unreservedly. We shall be speaking with more discernment if we say that the Japanese artist, to whichever of the schools he belonged, sacrificed truth of detail to truth of mass. His first aim was to obtain the appearance of life; accuracy of proportion seemed a secondary consideration. Each painter had his type which he idealized more or less, his idealism not being confined to the face but extending to the physique and even to the anatomy of his figures. Ravens on Pine Tree (Giokuden).
If the details of the drawing violate accepted canons, complaint is silenced by the sense of life that pervades the whole; by the perfect naturalness of every attitude, every movement, every gesture; by the eloquence with which the character of the objects speaks to us from the picture. In short, accuracy is sacrificed to the individuality that everything in nature possesses; the individuality which, in actual experience, impresses itself upon the attention of the observer and excludes all thought of linear exactness or anatomical truth. Kiyosai, the greatest modern representative of the Popular School, used to say exactly what Véron has said, namely, that nothing in nature pauses to be portrayed, that there is motion everywhere; if not actual motion in the object itself, then motion of the light falling on it or of the atmosphere surrounding it; that without elasticity of line the sense of life can not be obtained, and that elasticity of line is incompatible with what the classicists call strict accuracy. Kiyosai, as his sketch books showed, knew all about the structure of the human hand and foot, but the hands and feet that he drew in his pictures would have been wholly condemned by a Bouguereau or an Ingres.
​We have already had occasion to note, as a general criticism, that in Japanese pictures—not excepting those that delight us by their fleeting impression of life and movement, by the appearance of reality and character they convey—a discord is often created by the intrusion of accentuated outlines among natural surroundings. This defect is least observable in the paintings and chromo-xylographs of the Popular School because their motives are usually human figures and drapery, subjects which not only permit but require some recognition of outline; and if, occasionally, we are disposed to quarrel even with Kyonaga, Harunobu, Utamaro, Toyokuni or Yeishi for their emphasis of outlines, we forgive them readily for the sake of the charm of manner, the exquisite grace of gesture and the superb rhythm of movement that their figure subjects display.
Passing, further, to the question of composition, we may say that in this greater feature the ukiyo-ye paintings stand on a very high level. More unstinted praise has indeed been bestowed on them, but when we speak here of “composition,” we understand the perfect arrangement to which all the factors of pictorial art must contribute their share—not merely flow and force of line, harmony of colour and due relation of tones, but also linear perspective and chiaroscuro. Some of the artists of the Popular School understood linear perspective sufficiently not to offend by obvious disregard of its rules, but they neglected chiaroscuro, and that defect disqualified their composition to be called a faultless achievement, which epithet would otherwise be often applicable to their admirable grouping of pictorial elements.
We may close this brief analysis by referring to one fault conspicuous in all their work: they did not understand the light-suggestions without which textures and surfaces can not be rendered. They relied upon line and colour to produce effects which are due in nature to the uneven distribution, absorption, or reflection of light. Hence while they show us with admirable accuracy the folds of drapery and the patterns winding and flowing through all its plies, they fail to tell us whether the surface represented is that of velvet, or of silk, or of cotton. It has been well said that in judging pictures we must consider what the painter succeeds in doing and not be forever critical about what he fails to do. The ukiyo-ye artists achieved so much that much may be forgiven to them, but since genre pictures are certainly the proper field for the display of texture painting, the absence of this quality in the work we are considering can not be left unnoticed.
The naturalistic tendency of which the pictures of the Popular School are the most characteristic outcome, found very refined and beautiful expression in the works of Maruyama Okio (born 1733, died 1795), a Kyoto artist, who must be regarded as one of the greatest painters Japan ever produced. Okio is generally spoken of as the founder of the Sho-jo School, and his contemporary Kishi Doshi (known artistically as “Ganku”) is placed at the head of a separate school, the Ganku Riu. But though the individuality of each master impressed itself on his style sufficiently, perhaps, to justify this independent ​classification, both are nothing more than great representatives of the naturalistic sentiment of the era, and both are differentiated from their Ukiyo-ye contemporaries chiefly by the fact that they never devoted their talents to the purposes of the wood-cut or the chromo-xylograph. In force, grace, tenderness and accuracy of line Okio has no superior among Japanese artists. Snow Scene (Hashimoto Gaho).
He went direct to nature for instruction, but into all his exquisite pictures of birds, flowers, grasses, fish, insects, quadrupeds and figures, he introduced a subjective element as eloquent as it is indescribable. It has been said that his drawing of the human figure showed all the anatomical errors of his predecessors, but it must also be said that the question of anatomy never presents itself for a moment in connection with his pictures, and that one has no more inclination to criticise his manner of articulating bones and moulding muscles than one has to remember the surgical solecisms of Michael Angelo or Delacroix. With the exceptions of Mori Sosen and Kano Tanyu, no artist has ever been so assiduously copied in Japan as Okio. Forgeries of his works exist in hundreds, but the originals remain always unapproachable. An eminent critic calls Ganku “stupendous,” and describes him as “the only artist of recent times worthy to be ranked on a level with the great masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.” Without disputing that verdict, not many, we think, will be found to confirm it from their own observation. Ganku died just sixty-two years ago (1838). Numbers of his works remain. The best of them seem to be those that show most clearly the impress of the naturalistic tendency to which Okio so powerfully contributed; but if his countrymen be asked to indicate his title to fame they invariably refer to his delineations of the tiger. Now it may safely be asserted that Ganku never saw a real, live tiger: never had an opportunity of studying its anatomy
​and proportions. He formed his own idea of “ snarling, crouching, treacherous mass of energy,” and he painted that idea with force and effect, but yet with so little resemblance to nature’s original that the distortion of the modelling impairs our appreciation of the essence of the thing. He had, however, seen a tiger’s skin, and a tiger’s skin is just the kind of texture that lends itself readily to linear representation, and consequently comes within full range of the Japanese artist’s brush. Ganku’s tiger-skins are marvels of brush work. Mori Sosen (born 1747, died 1821), one of the greatest of the Shi-jo masters, is as celebrated for his delineations of the monkey as Ganku is for his paintings of the tiger. Sunrise on the Seashore (Nomura Bunkyo).
But Sosen studied the monkey in nature, and acquired an extraordinarily intimate knowledge of its habits and attitudes. He may be called the Landseer of Japan, for though his fame rests chiefly on his pictures of the monkey, he has left paintings of deer, of badgers, of rats, of fishes, and of hares that would have won for him a great reputation even without his remarkable studies of simian life.
The reader will understand that no attempt is here made to separate the Shi-jo and the Ganku schools: their differentiation is scarcely a practical problem. He will understand, also, that if special reference is not made in this section to such painters as Gekkei, Keibun, Hoyen, Kikuchi Yosai, Kōrin and Bunrin, it is for the same reason that has compelled us to omit from other sections any detailed account of the works and styles of scores of other famous masters, from the early Tosa and Kano celebrities to Tani Buncho and Hokusai.
What is the present condition of pictorial art in Japan and what are its prospects? The former question has been answered more than once in a pessimistic strain. Japan is said to have outlived the manners and customs from which her old art derived vitality, and to have entered upon a phase of existence so permeated with Occidental influences that her artists, like her tailors and her barbers, can not resist the change. Surely that is a superficial view. It involves the assumption that her art has no elements ​permanently worthy of preservation; no intrinsic merits fit to survive independently of environment. The fact is that if the present era is without giants of the brush like Okio or Sosen, it is not without masters of great talent and high technical skill. Twenty years ago Bunrin died in Kyoto: an artist of whom it has been well said that he “fixed upon paper and silk with exquisite refinement and suggestiveness the most striking of the atmospheric effects that cast a fairyland glamour over the scenery of Japan.” At a yet more recent date died Shōfu Kiyosai, a genre painter of immense versatility, force and humour, who has left a gallery of pictures showing a wide range of conception and study. Still more recently these strong representatives of the Shi-jo and the Popular School, respectively, were followed to the grave by Ganki, who ranks not much below Ganku, the founder of his school. These three artists are sufficient in themselves to redeem the Meiji era from any charge of hopeless decadence. Nor is the present time without painters that will certainly be remembered by posterity. Kawabata Gyokusho, Hashimoto Gahô, Ogata Gekko, Imao Keinen, Taki Katei, Kumagaye Naohiko, Nomura Bunkyo, Watanabe Seitei, and Araki Kwampo, not to speak of others whose talent seems full of promise, make a group of artists inheriting many of the highest qualities of the various schools they represent.
But while the old art flourishes, quietly and steadily enriching the nation with its products, there flourishes also a most pernicious outgrowth of foreign influence; a great crop of wretched pictures; weak, hurried examples of brush tricks which constitute the sole equipment of the purely conventional copyist. It is not implied that such efforts of mere mechanical dexterity have been suggested by contact with the art of the West. The wave of Western ideas, penetrating, as it has done, to the very heart of the nation, could not fail to be felt in the region of the national art. It has been felt, as we shall presently explain. But the comment which we wish to make here—a comment that extends to the whole range of modern Japanese art whether pictorial or applied—is that the mercantile demand resulting from foreign intercourse has created an essentially mercantile supply. Multitudes of people whose purses can never bring objects of Western art within their reach, and who lack either innate taste or educated liking for such things, are tempted by cheapness and novelty to purchase Japanese pictures, and naturally the shrewd trader and the needy draughtsman take care that this undiscriminating public shall be satisfied. Dozens of studios are devoted to the manufacture of painted parodies which no Japanese connoisseur would regard as pictures, and not a bric-a-brac store is without rolls and albums of weak daubs poured out from these workshops. On the evidence of such paintings it is that the great majority of foreign critics base their estimate of modern Japan’s pictorial ability, ignorant that they have before them merely a staple of foreign trade, not an effort of Japanese art.
​Apart from this commercial taint which, after all, is a mere accident, the influx of Western ideas shows itself in two directions: it has called into existence a school based solely and faithfully on the art of the Occident, and it has given new vitality to a school which, while using the old materials and following the old lines, recognises the value of Western principles as to perspective and chiaroscuro, and endeavours to engraft them upon the traditional art of the nation.
The Lumber Yard (Hokusai).
Concerning the purely Western school, a few words will suffice. Its students have virtually neither patrons, nor opportunities, nor instructors. There is no place in a Japanese house for their paintings. There are no studios which they can attend; no galleries which they can visit. Their means are altogether too scanty to permit travel in Europe or America, and at home they are without teachers to guide their hand or examples to educate their eye. Finally, public sentiment is opposed to their radicalism. Yet, for thirty years, they have struggled with such extraordinary courage and perseverance against these terribly adverse circumstances that it seems impossible to doubt their ultimate success, ​poor as have been the results hitherto attained. We have spoken of the modern hybrid school as a revival rather than a new creation. Such a form of speech will perhaps be challenged, for more than one writer of high authority has denied that any marked traces of Western art are visible in Japanese pictures painted before the opening of the country forty years ago. It is admitted that in the field of copper-plate engraving some aid was received from the Dutch at the close of the eighteenth century, and that a few of the later artists of the Popular School obeyed the laws of linear perspective; but even such an astute critic and accurate historian as Dr. Anderson speaks with surprise of the “want of receptiveness” of Japanese artists, and surmises that it was chiefly due to the low grade of the European pictorial works coming under their observation during the era of restricted foreign intercourse. There is another explanation; an explanation vividly illustrated in the story of an artist who has hitherto received singularly inadequate notice from foreign
Ferry Across the Sumida (Hokusai).
essayists. On the 23rd of November in the year 1840, died by his own hand in Yedo (Tokyo) Watanabe Kwazan. He was a member of the patrician (shizoku) order. During ​the last two decades of his life, Japan had begun to turn slowly but surely towards Occidental civilization. It is customary to speak of the Restoration in 1867 as the period when this change of sentiment first made itself distinctly manifest. But the calculation is nearly half a century late. The Riverbank (Giokusho).
Officialdom, indeed, still adhered firmly to the traditional policy of seclusion handed down from the days when the intemperance of Christian propagandists and the jealousies of warring creeds lent to foreign intercourse a startling and deterrent aspect. But in spite of officialdom with its iron rule and pitiless penalties, intrepid reformers among the people stealthily studied Occidental systems, and with wonderful patience struggled to emerge from the intellectual isolation to which their country had been condemned for more than two centuries. Watanabe was among these pioneers. He fell under suspicion and his pictures helped to bear witness against him; eloquent witness, for the talent they displayed could scarcely fail to popularize the heresy they represented. He received the fatal order which every samurai was bound to obey unflinchingly, the order to commit suicide. But his work survived. It would have been more consistent with the heroic methods of those days had every picture painted by him been burned, or buried with his decapitated corpse. That extremity was not resorted to, however, and on the fiftieth anniversary of his death “new Japan” did homage to his memory by bringing together a large collection of his works at the Reigan temple in Tokyo, and exhibiting them for two days while the priests chaunted litanies and recited masses for the repose of the ill-fated painter’s soul. At the edge of the dais supporting the high altar lay an object of sad interest. It was the sword with which Watanabe had committed seppuku, and it rested on the same tray of white pine from which the artist had taken it at the supreme moment. Beside it was placed the ​document written by him on the eve of the final act: a simply worded and brief confession that he had erred in the sight of the law, and that his transgression involved the further crime of taking the life which he owed to his parents and ought to have preserved for their sakes. A strangely sounding voice from the past must this have seemed to many of those that had come to burn incense at the painter’s tomb; men in whose memory the events of his last days were still fresh, though the epoch itself might have been centuries removed, so great a change had come over the political complexion of the times. The collection of Watanabe’s works comprised many hundred pictures and studies. Of some it would be difficult to speak too highly. The combined vigour and delicacy of their execution, the excellence of their composition, and the life breathing from their lines, showed that the anti-foreign prejudices of his era inflicted few heavier losses on the country than the untimely death of such a master. It is not of the purely Japanese pictures, however, that we have to speak, but rather of those showing traces of Western influence. There were many such. The subjects were not distinctly foreign, if we except some studies of animal life; but evidences that the artist had imbibed the spirit of Occidental linear perspective and chiaroscuro were apparent in several pictures, otherwise purely Japanese. This was notably true of a portrait, half-life size, of a well known Buddhist priest. It might have been painted by a Western artist, and would have done credit to any European brush of Watanabe’s era. Is it not easy to understand the reason of the “want of receptivity” to which Dr. Anderson alludes? The penalty of being receptive was out of proportion to the apparent reward. Undoubtedly Hokusai felt the influence obeyed by Kwazan with such fateful results. Many of the works of the great ukiyo-ye master bear traces of foreign methods. But he did not carry this tendency to the length of attracting political censorship. He showed it rather in the undefined though still palpable manner of the modern master Watanabe Seitei, who enjoys in Europe and America the highest, though not, perhaps, the most highly deserved, reputation of any living Japanese artist. The hybrid school of the present day, however, goes far beyond the dubious adaptations of Hokusai or Seitei. It has proposed to itself the same problem that Watanabe Kwazan partially solved sixty years ago—the problem of preserving the characteristics of Japanese painting while adopting all the technical teachings of the West. Hashimoto Gaho stands at the head of this school. He has talent sufficient to secure partial success for any effort. But if there be any justice in the estimate here set down of the distinctive characteristics of Japanese pictorial art, we must conclude that to marry it to the art of the West would be to deprive it of its individuality.
KAKEMONO and MAKIMONO
Kakemono and Makimono.
Key to Table of Signatures.