The Significance of Japanese Art

Sir Alfred East, in lecturing on the subject of Japanese art, described it as "great in small things, but small in great things," and this, generally speaking, is very true. The Japanese artist excels in depicting flowers and insects and birds. He is triumphant in portraying the curl of a wave, a branch of cherry-blossom against a full moon, a flight of heron, a group of pine-trees, and carp swimming in a stream; but that genius for minute and accurate detail seems to have prevented him from depicting what we understand as a great subject-picture, an historical scene crowded with many figures. This zest to portray various fragments from Nature was no narrow and academic affair. Art was not intended solely for the kakemono, or hanging scroll, to be suspended in the alcove of a Japanese home, to be admired for a time, and then to be replaced by another. Art in Japan was universal to an extent not to be found in any other country, where a cheap towel had a pleasing design upon it, and where the playing cards, unlike our own, were works of art.

It has been said that the woman in Japanese art is wooden. This is not really so, if by wooden we mean entirely without expression; but it is necessary first of all to know something about the Japanese woman in actual life before we can understand her representation in art. There is a wealth of old tradition behind that apparently immobile face. It is a curious fact that until we get accustomed to the various Japanese types one face so closely resembles another that discrimination is out of the question, and we are apt to run away with[Pg 113] the idea that Nature in Japan has been content to repeat the same physiognomy over and over again, forgetting that we in turn present no diversity of type to the Japanese on first acquaintance. The Japanese face in art is not without expression, only it happens to be an expression rather different from that with which we are familiar, and this is particularly true in regard to the portrayal of Japanese women. Most of us have seen a number of colour-prints devoted to this subject in which we find no shading in the face. We are apt to exclaim that this omission gives an extremely flat effect to the face, and to observe in consequence that the work before us must be very bad art. But it is not bad art, for the Japanese face is flat, and the artists of that country never fail to reflect this characteristic. Colour-prints depicting Nipponese women do not reveal emotion—a smile, a gesture of yearning, are absent; but because we find so much negation we should be very far from the truth to suppose that a colour-print of this kind expresses no feeling, that the general effect is doll-like and uninteresting. We must take into consideration the long period of suppression through which the Japanese woman had to pass. A superficial study of that extraordinary treatise by Kaibara known as Onna Daigaku, or "The Greater Learning for Women," will help us to realise that it was the duty of every Japanese woman to be sweet, amiable, virtuous; to obey those in authority without demur, and above all to suppress her feelings. When we have taken these points into consideration we shall very slowly perceive that there is strength and not weakness in a portrait of a Japanese woman; a quiet and dignified beauty in which impulse is held in check, veiled, as it were, behind a cloud of rigid tradition. The Japanese woman, though she has been surrounded at every turn by severe discipline, has, nevertheless,[Pg 114] given us a type of womanhood supreme in her true sweetness of disposition, and the Japanese artist has caught the glamour of her charm. In the curve of her form he suggests the grace of a wind-blown willow, in the designs upon her robe the promise of spring, and behind the small red mouth a wealth of infinite possibilities.

Japan owed her art to Buddhism, and it was quickened and sustained by Chinese influence. Buddhism gave Nippon her pictorial art, her mural decoration and exquisite carving. Shintō temples were severe and plain, those of Buddhism were replete with all that art could give them; and last, but not least, it was Buddha's teaching that brought into Japan the art of gardening, with all its elaborate and beautiful symbolism.

A Japanese art critic wrote: "If in the midst of a stroke a sword-cut had severed the brush it would have bled." From this we may gather that the Japanese artist put his whole heart into his work; it was a part of him, something vital, something akin to religion itself. With this great force behind his brush it is no wonder that he was able to give that extraordinary life and movement to his work, so strikingly depicted in portraits of actors.

Though we have so far only shown the Japanese artist as a master of little things, he has, nevertheless, faithfully and effectively represented the Gods and Goddesses of his country, and many of the myths and legends connected with them. If he excelled in the beautiful, he no less excelled in depicting the horrible, for no artists, excepting those of China, have succeeded in portraying the supernatural to more effect. What a contrast there is between an exquisite picture of Jizō or Buddha or Kwannon and the pictorial representation[Pg 115] of a Japanese goblin! Extreme beauty and extreme ugliness are to be found in Japanese art, and those who love the many pictures of Mount Fuji and the moth-like colouring of Utamaru's women will turn in horror from the ghastly representations of supernatural beings.
The Gods of Good Fortune

Many of the legendary stories given in this volume have been portrayed by Japanese artists, and in the present chapter we propose to deal with the legends in Japanese art not hitherto mentioned. The favourite theme of the Japanese artist is undoubtedly that of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune, nearly always treated with rollicking good-humour. There was Fukurokuju, with a very long head, and attended by a crane, deer, or tortoise; Daikoku, who stood upon rice-bales and was accompanied by a rat; Ebisu, carrying a fish; Hotei, the merry God of Laughter, the very embodiment of our phrase "Laugh and grow fat." There was Bishamon, resplendent in armour, and bearing a spear and toy pagoda; Benten, the Goddess of Beauty, Wealth, Fertility, and Offspring; while Jurōjin was very similar to Fukurokuju. These Seven Gods of Good Fortune, or, to be more accurate, six Gods and one Goddess, seem to have sprung from Shintōism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Brahmanism, and apparently date from the seventeenth century.
The Treasure Ship

In connection with this theme the Japanese artist is fond of portraying the Gods of Good Fortune as jovial passengers on the Takara-bune, or Treasure Ship, which is said to come to port on New Year's Eve, with no less a cargo than the Hat of Invisibility, the Lucky Raincoat,[Pg 116] coat, the Sacred Key, the Inexhaustible Purse, and other curious and magical treasures. At this time of the year pictures of the Treasure Ship are placed under children's wooden pillows, and the practice is said to bring a lucky dream.

"Sleep, my own, till the bell of dusk
Bring the stars laden with a dream.
With that dream you shall awake
Between the laughters and the song."
Yone Noguchi.
The Miraculous in Japanese Art

Among other legends is the story of Hidari Jingorō, the famous sculptor, whose masterpiece came to life when finished, which reminds us not a little of the story of Pygmalion. There are other legendary stories connected with the coming to life of Japanese works of art. On a certain occasion a number of peasants were much annoyed by the destruction of their gardens caused by some wild animal. Eventually they discovered that the intruder was a great black horse, and on giving chase it suddenly disappeared into a temple. When they entered the building they found Kanasoka's painting of a black steed steaming with its recent exertion! The great artist at once painted in a rope tethering the animal to a post, and from that day to this the peasants' gardens have remained unmolested.

When the great artist Sesshiu was a little boy the story goes that he was, by way of punishment, securely bound in a Buddhist temple. Using his copious tears for ink and his toe for a brush, the little fellow sketched some rats upon the floor. Immediately they came to life and gnawed through the rope that bound their youthful creator.

[Pg 117]
Hokusai

There is something more than mere legend in these stories, if we may believe the words of the famous artist Hokusai, whose "Hundred Views of Fuji" are regarded as the finest examples of Japanese landscape-painting. He wrote in his Preface to this work: "At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at a hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvellous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive." Needless to say, Hokusai did not reach the age of a hundred and ten. In his last hours he wrote the following lines, which were afterwards inscribed upon his tomb:

"My soul, turned Will-o'-the-wisp,
Can come and go at ease over the summer fields."

With that strong poetic feeling so characteristic of the Japanese, Eternity meant for Hokusai an infinite time in which to carry on his beloved work—to perfect, to make alive all the wonderful strokes of his brush. As in ancient Egypt, so in Old Japan, the future life could only mean real happiness with periodic visits to this world again, and there is a subtle and almost pathetic paradox in this conception, suggesting, as it were, the continual loading of Eternity with fresh earthly memories. In both countries we find the spirit hankering after old human haunts. In Egypt the soul returned through the medium of its preserved body, and in Japan the Festival of the Dead, described elsewhere, afforded a joyous exit from the world of Emma-Ō, a three days' visit in the middle of July to Japan, a land more beautiful, more dear, it would seem, than any Japanese conception of a future world. But Hokusai appears to suggest that his visits would not be made merely in the[Pg 118] summer season—rather a frequent coming and going at all times of the year.

A Japanese poet has written:

"It is an awesome thing
To meet a-wandering,
In the dark night,
The dark and rainy night,
A phantom greenish-grey,
Ghost of some wight,
Poor mortal wight!
Wandering
Lonesomely
Through
The black
Night."
Translated by Clara A. Walsh.
Ghosts and Goblins

It is scarcely less awesome to come across ghosts, goblins, and other supernatural beings in a Japanese picture. We find ghosts with long necks supporting horribly leering faces. Their necks are so long that it would seem that the ghastly heads could look above and into everything with a fiendish and dreadful relish. The ghoul, though represented in Japanese art as a three-year-old child, has reddish-brown hair, very long ears, and is often depicted as eating the kidneys of dead people. The horrible in this phase of Japanese art is emphasised to an almost unbearable degree, and a living Japanese artist's conception of a procession of ghosts[1] is so uncanny, so weird, that we certainly............