FINE ARTS LIBRARY
FL 2P2T 8
301.
36
THE SPIRIT
JAPANESE ART
WISDOM
EAST



SHES-VINCIA TRONUL
CRENVILLE-LINDALL-WINTHROP
- -
-
-
-
-
--
FOGG MUSEUM LIBRARY
FROM THE BEQUEST OF
GRENVILLE LINDALL WINTHROP
TO
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
1943
This book is not to be sold or exchanged


Tbe wisdom of the East Series
EDITED BY
L. CRANMER-BYNG
Dr. S. A. KAPADIA
THE SPIRIT OF JAPANESE ARTI





WISDOM OF THE EAST
THE SPIRIT OF
JAPANESE ART
BY YONE NOGUCHI
AUTHOR OF "THE SPIRIT OF JAPANESE POETRY"
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1915


CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION
I
KOYETSU
.
.
.
.
.
.
II
.
KENZAN
.
.
.
.
.
UTAMARO
.
IV
.
HIROSHIGE
.
.
.
.
.
38
GaHO HASHIMOTO .
.
.
.
.
44
VI
.
Kyosai .
.
.
.
.
.
56


CONTENTS
VII
PAGE
THE LAST MASTER OF THE UKIYOYE ART.
67
BUSHO HARA .
VIII
. .
.
.
.
IX
THE UKIYOYE ART IN ORIGINAL
.
.
93
х
WESTERN ART IN JAPAN .
.
.
.
100
APPENDIX I
THE MEMORIAL EXHIBITION OF THE LATE
HARA . . . . . .
109
APPENDIX II
THE NERVOUS DEBILITY OF PRESENT
JAPANESE ART . . . .
113


TO
EDWARD F. STRANGE
OF THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM


INTRODUCTION
In the Ashikaga age (1335–1573) the best Japanese
artists, like Sesshu and his disciples, for instance,
true revolutionists in art, not mere rebels, whose
Japanese simplicity was strengthened and clarified
by Chinese suggestion, were in the truest mean-
ing of the word Buddhist priests, who sat before
the inextinguishable lamp of faith, and sought
their salvation by the road of silence; their
studios were in the Buddhist temple, east of the
forests and west of the hills, dark without, and
luminous within with the symbols of all beauty
of nature and heaven. And their artistic work
was a sort of prayer-making, to satisfy their own
imagination, not a thing to show to a critic whose
attempt at arguing and denying is only a nuisance
in the world of higher art; they drew pictures to
create absolute beauty and grandeur, that made
their own human world look almost trifling, and
directly joined themselves with eternity. Art for
them was not a question of mere reality in expres-
sion, but the question of Faith. Therefore they
never troubled their minds with the matter of
subjects or the size of the canvas ; indeed, the


10
INTRODUCTION
mere reality of the external world had ceased to
be a standard for them, who lived in the temple
studios. Laurance Binyon said of them : “Hints
of the divine were to be found everywhere-in
leaves of grass, in the life of animals, birds, and
insects. No occupation was too humble or menial
to be invested with beauty and significance."
Through them the Ashikaga period becomes very
important in our Japanese art annals. Binyon
says: “The Ashikaga period stands in art for
an ideal of reticent simplicity. A revulsion from
the ornate conventions, which had begun to
paralyse the pristine vigour of the Yamato school,
and fresh acquaintance with the masterpieces of
the Sung era, brought about by renewed contact
with China, after a hermit period of exclusion,
created a passion for swift, impassioned or sug-
gestive painting in ink, on silvery-toned paper."
People, like myself, who are more delighted at
the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square with,
for instance, “A Summer Afternoon after a
Shower,” or a “ View at Epsom,” by Constable,
and with “ Walton Reach,” or “ Windsor from
Lower Hope,” by Turner, than with their other
bigger things, will be certainly pleased to see
“Temple and Hill above a Lake," by Sesshu, or
“ Travellers at a Temple Gate,” by Sesson, repre-
senting this interesting Ashikaga period, exhibited
in the new wing of the British Museum. You
have to go there and spend an hour or so with the


INTRODUCTION
11
Arthur Morrison collection of Japanese art, if
you wish to feel the real old Japanese humanity
and love that our ancient masters inspired into
their work. To be sure, none of the things
exhibited there, small or large, good or poor, are
so-called exhibition pictures, which are often a
game of artistic charlatans. In real Japanese
art you should not look for variety of subjects ;
but when you find an astonishing richness of
execution, certainly it is the time when your
eyes begin to open toward another sort of as-
ceticism in art. How glad I am that our
Japanese art, at least in the olden time, never
degenerated into a mechanical art!
What a pity Sesson's "Travellers at a Temple
Gate,” this remarkable little thing, has been
mended in two or three spots. If you wish to
see the real power and distinction of great Sesshu,
you might compare his “Daruma” in the ex-
hibition with the other “Daruma" pictures by
Soami and Takuchu also in the exhibition :
the point I should like to bring out is that
Sesshu's “Daruma” is an artistic attempt to
proclaim the spiritual intensity which shines
within from the true strength of consciousness
and real economy of force, while the others are
rather a superficial demonstration.
There is no other Japanese school so inter-
esting, even from the one point of style in expres-
sive decoration, as the Koyetsu-korin school,


12
INTRODUCTION
the much-admired branch of Japanese art in the
West. Although I was glad to see a good speci-
men of Sotatsu in “Descent of the Thunder God
on the Palace of Fujiwara” in the exhibition,
I hardly think that such a figure painting (a
really good work in its own way) shows Sotatsu's
best art; while my memory of the Sotatsu
exhibition at Uyeno of Tokyo a few years ago
is still fresh, I am pleased to connect Sotatsu
with the flower-screens and little Kakemono for
the tea-rooms, now with a pair of rabbits nibbling
grasses, then with a little bunch of wild chrys-
anthemums. You will see what an admirer I
am of this school, since I have dwelt at some
length on Koyetsu and Kenzan in this little
book of Japanese art. I regret that I have to
beg for some more time before I make myself
able to write on great Korin; I am sure that
Hoitsu, one of the most distinguished decadents
of the early nineteenth century, and the acknow-
ledged successor of the Koyetsu-korin school,
would give us a highly interesting subject to
discuss. Oh, those days at Bunkwa and Bunsei
(1804–1830)! Dear, rotten, foolish, romantic
old Tokugawa civilisation and art !
Two articles on Harunobu and Hokusai are
still to be written for the Ukiyoye school; I know,
I believe, that without those two artists the
school would never be complete. I am happy
to think that I have Gaho Hashimoto in the
of the early nineet of the Korresting su


14
INTRODUCTION
but it may have been the usual payment in those
days, and the Professor's friendship was more
to Hogai than money. He received fifteen yen
afterward when he was engaged by the Educa-
tional Department of the Government in 1884 ;
how sad he could not support himself by art alone.
And alas, he was no more when the general
appreciation of his great art began to be told.
Quite many specimens of Hogai's work are
treasured in the Boston Museum at present. How
changed are the conditions now from Hogai's
day! But are these fortunately changed con-
ditions really helpful for the creation of true art ?
To look at some of the modern work is too
trying, mainly from the fact that it lacks, to
use the word of Zen Buddhism, the meaning of
silence; it seems to me that some modern artists
work only to tax people's minds. In Nature we
find peacefulness and silence; we derive from it
a feeling of comfort and restfulness; and again
from it we receive vigour and life. I think so
great art should be. Many modern artists cannot
place themselves in unison with their art; in
one word, they do not know how to follow the
law or michi, that Mother Nature gladly evolves.
It is such a delight to examine the works of
Hogai, as each picture is a very part of his
own true self; the only difference is the
difference that he wished to evoke in interest;
his desire was always so clear in the relation be-


جمعه تشاد تعاسة . - . - مه ش کنه ... بعد ده ده م
ه
لمس تمه س -


YEARNING OF POETICAL SOUL 19
allured my mind back, perhaps, to Koyetsu's
age of four hundred years ago—to imagine myself
to be a waif of greyness like a famous tea-master,
Rikiu or Enshu or, again, Koyetsu, burying me
in a little Abode of Fancy with a boiling tea-
kettle; through that smoke of candles hurrying
like our ephemeral lives, the characters of Koye-
tsu's writing loomed with the haunting charm
of a ghost. They say :
“Where's cherry-blossom ?
The trace of the garden's spring breeze is seen no more.
I will point, if I am asked,
To my fancy snow upon the ground.”
“What a yearning of poetical soul ! " I exclaimed.
It is your imagination to make rise out of fall,
day out of darkness, and Life out of Death; not
to see the fact of scattering petals is your virtue,
and to create your own special sensation with the
impulse of art is your poet's dignity; what a
blessing if you can tell a lie to yourself ; better
still, not to draw a distinct line between the
things our plebeian minds call truth and untruth,
and live like a wreath shell with the cover shut
in the air of your own creation. Praised be the
touch of your newly awakened soul which can
turn the fallen petals to the beauty of snow ;
there is nothing that will deny the yearning of
your poetic soul. It is not superstition to say
that the poet's life is worthier than any other
life. Some time ago the word loneliness impressed


20
KOYETSU
me as almost divine as Rikiu pledged himself
in it; I wished, through its invocation, to create
a picture, as the ancient ditty has it, of a “ lone
cottage standing by the autumn wave, under the
fading light of eve.” But I am thankful for
Koyetsu to-day. How to reach my own poetry
seems clearly defined in my thought; it will
be by the twilight road of imagination born out
of reality and the senses—the road of idealism
baptised by the pain of death.
What remains of Koyetsu's life is slight, as his
day was not feminine and prosaic, like to-day,
with love of gossip and biography-writing; he,
with the friends of his day, Sambiakuin Konoye,
Shokado, both of them eminent chirographers of
all time of Japan, Jozan the scholar, Enshu the
tea-master, and many others, realised the age of
artistic heroism which is often weakened by the
vulgarity of thought that aims at the Future
and Fame. The utter rejection of them would
be the prayer itself to strengthen the appreciation
of art into a living thing. Koyetsu made his
profession in his younger days the connoisseur-
ship of swords as well as their whetting; it was
for that service, I believe, that Iyeyasu, the great
feudal Prince of Yedo, gave him a piece of land,
then a mere waste, at Taka ga Mine of the lonely
suburb of Kyoto, by the Tanba highway, where
he retired, with a few writing brushes and a
tea-kettle, to build his Taikyo An, or Abode of
waste, by the Taiting brlor Ab


ABODE OF VACANCY
Vacancy, giving his æsthetic fancy full swing
to fill the “ vacancy” of abode and life. He
warned his son and family, when he bade them
farewell, it is said, that they should never step
into Yedo of the powerful lords and princes,
because the worldly desire was not the way of
ennobling a life which was worth living. We
might call it “ seihin,” or proud poverty that
Koyetsu most prized, as it never allures one from
the chasteness of simplicity which is the real
foundation of art. There is reason to believe
that he must have been quite a collector of works
of art, rich and rare, in his earlier life; but it is
said that he most freely gave them away when he
left his city home for his lonely retirement;
indeed he was entering into the sanctuary of
priests. What needed he there but prayer and
silence ? There is nothing more petty, even
vulgar, in the grey world of art and poetry, than
to have a too close attachment to life and physical
luxuries; if our Orientalism may not tell you
anything much, I think it will teach you at least
to soar out of your trivialism.
Koyetsu's must have been a remarkable per-
sonality, remarkable because of its lucidity dis-
tilled and crystallised—to use a plebeian expres-
sion, by his own philosophy, whose touch breathed
on the spot a real art into anything from a
porcelain bowl to the design on a lacquer box;
I see his transcendental mien like a cloud (that
vulgar. in There is led he then the sand


THE STYLE CALLED “GYOSHO”
23
hanging of his (thousand thanks to the Doctor)
to which I look up to-day as a servant to his
master, with all devotion. The sure proof of its
being no mean art, I venture to say, is seen in
its impressing me as the singular work of accident,
like the blow of the wind or the sigh of the rain ;
it seems the writer (great Koyetsu) was never
conscious, when he wrote it, of the paper on
which he wrote, of the bamboo brush which he
grasped. It is true that we cannot play our
criticism against it; it is not our concern to
ask how it was written, but only to look at and
admire it. The characters are in the style called
“gyosho,” or current hand, to distinguish from
the “ kaisho,” or square hand; and there is
one more style under the name of “sosho,” or
grass hand, that is an abbreviated cursive hand.
As this was written in “gyo" style, it did not
depend on elaborate patience but on the first
stroke of fancy. I have no hesitation to say
that, when it is said that the arts of the calli-
grapher and the painter are closely allied, the
art of the calligrapher would be by just so much
related with our art of living; the question is
what course among the three styles we shall
choose-the square formalism of “kaisho" or
the “sosho "-like romanticism? It does no
justice to call “gyosho " a middle road; when
you know that your idealism is always born
from the conventionalism of reality of “ kaisho ”.


26
KENZAN
snoring, growling, and hissing of the engines day
and night. Alas, he could not foresee the future
of a few hundred years when he died. But I
welcomed the news when the sudden removal of
the grave was reported as a result, a fortunate
result indeed, of the expansion of the railway
track; this time, to be sure, I thought, his grey-
loving, solitary soul would be pleased to find a
far better sleeping-place, as he was to be moved
to the large old garden of the Kokka Club (a
well-known artist club), with a deep pond
where many gold fish peep underneath the um-
brella-like lotus leaves in early summer, and in
later autumn the hagi or two-coloured lespedozas
(Kenzan's beloved subject) would lean upon the
water to admire their own images ; and it is a
matter thrice satisfactory to think that this new
place is also in Negishi (which somehow recalls
Hampstead, though there is no natural resem-
blance between them).
I was invited to attend the memorial exhibition
of Kenzan's work to commemorate the removal
of his grave the other day. With the greatest
anticipation I went there with two friends of
mine, a fellow poet and an artist, both of them
great admirers of Kenzan Ogata. When we
entered the ground, we found at once that the
Buddhist ceremony, that is the Sutra-reading
called Kuya Nembutsu, around the newly dug


28
KENZAN
d, when for his teat reverened,
know where is a thing more truly egotistic than
the flowers." ;
“That egotism in the picture,” I proceeded,
“might be a real result from the great reverence
and intense love of Kenzan for his subjects; we
can see that his mind, when he painted them, was
never troubled with any other thing or thought.
You know that such only occurs to a truly gifted
artist. After all, the greatness of Kenzan is his
sincerity. And it goes without saying that the
pictures on tea-bowls we see here are not things
which were made to some one's order. We become
at once sincere and silent in their presence; to
say that his art was spiritual is another way to
express it—by that I mean that we are given all
opportunities to imagine what the pictures them-
selves may not contain. Our imagination grows
deeper and clearer through the virtue or magic
of his work ; and again his work appears thrice
simplified and therefore more vital. The art
really simple and vital is never to be troubled
with any rhetoric or accessories of unessentials ;
before you make such a picture, you must have,
to begin with, your own soul simplified and vital
in the true sense. Kenzan had that indeed.”
“To call Kenzan's work merely beautiful,” my
friend-poet said, evidently in the same mind
with myself, “ whether it be the picture on paper
or China-bowls, does no justice; what he truly
aimed at was the artistic expression,--and he was


EXPRESSION OF PERSONALITY 29
most successful when he was most true. To him,
as with the other great artists of East or West,
the beauties only occurred—and Kenzan's beauties
occurred when his simple art was most decorative;
in his decorativeness he found his own artistic
emotion. It was his greatness that he made a
perfect union of emotion and intellect in his work ;
to say shortly, he was the expression of person-
ality.”
“What a personality was Kenzan's ! Again
what a personality !” I exclaimed. I proceeded,
as I wished to take up the talk where my friend
poet had left off, “ It is his personality by whose
virtue even a little weed or insignificant spray of
a willow-tree turns to a real art; he had that
personality, because he had such a love and sym-
pathy. Indeed the main question of the artist is
in his love and sympathy; the external technique
is altogether secondary. When you commune
with the inner meaning, that is the beginning
and also the ending. We see here the picture
of a cherry-tree covered by the red blossoms,
which might happen to be criticised as a bad
drawing; but since it does appear as nothing but
a cherry-tree, proud and lovely, I think that
Kenzan's artistic desire was fully answered. He
was an artist, not merely either an illustrator or
a designer. He was a true artist, therefore his
work is ever so new like the moon and flowers ;
and again old, like the flowers and moon.”


30
KENZAN
"If the so-called post-impressionists could see
Kenzan's work !” my friend-artist suddenly
ventured to exclaim, “I am sure that Vincent
Van Gogh would be glad to have this six-leafed
screen of poppy-flowers.”
“Really the picture is the soul of the flowers,"
I said, “but not the external flowers. It is
mystic as the flowers are mystic. And imagine
Kenzan's attitude when he drew that screen! I
believe that he had the same reverence as when
he stood in the religion of mysticism to paint a
goddess; indeed his work was prayer and soul's
consolation. Though the subject was flowers, I
have no hesitation to call the picture religious.
I almost feel like lighting a candle and burning
incense before this screen of poppies.”
As with other gifted artists, we see Kenzan's
real life behind his work. Some critic ably said
that true art was an episode of life ; I can imagine
that, when his artistic fancy moved and his work
was done, he must have thrown it aside into the
waves of time, off hand, most unceremoniously,
and forgotten all about it. We can truly say of
his works that they never owed one thing to
money or payment for their existence—and that
is the greatest praise we can give to any work
of art. His material life might be said to have
been quite fortunate in that he was invited to
Yedo (present Tokyo) by the Prince of the Kanyeiji
Temple of Uyeno, under whose patronage his


THE BAPTISM OF POVERTY
31
art was pleased to take its own free independent
course; but his greatness is that when the Prince
passed away and he was left to poverty, he
never trembled and shrank under its cold cruel
baptism ; indeed that baptism made his per-
sonality far nobler, like the white flame from
which the whiteness is taken out, and conse-
quently his art was a thing created, as we say
here, by the mind out of the world and dust.
The works which to-day remain and are admired
by us are mostly the work he executed after he
reached his seventieth year. We have many
reasons to be thankful for the fact that he left
Kyoto, the old city of court nobles and ladies,
somewhat effeminate, and the side of his brother
Korin, whose great influence would have certainly
made him a little Korin at the best; we see no
distinction whatever in the work which he gave
the world under Korin's guidance. His art made
a great stride after he appeared in the Yedo of
the warriors and manliness and touched a different
atmosphere from that of his former life ; I will
point, when you ask me for the proof, to the now-
famous six-fold screen with the picture of plum-
blossom, or the hanging also of the plum-blossom
owned by the Imperial Museum. Oh, what a
noble plum-blossom, which reminds us of a
samurai's heart, simple and brave !


III
UTAMARO
I FEEL I scent, in facing Utamaro's ladies, whether
with no soul or myriad souls (certainly ladies, be
they courtesans or geishas, who never bartered
their own beauty and songs away), the rich-soft
passionate odour of rare old roses; when I say
I hear the silken-delicate summer breezes winging
in the picture, I mean that the Japanese sensuous-
ness (is it the scent or pang of a lilac or thorn ?)
makes my senses shiver at the last moment when
it finally turns to spirituality. It was our
Japanese civilisation of soul, at least in olden time
under Tokugawa’s regime, not to distinguish
between sensuousness and spirituality, or to see
at once the spiritual in the sensuous ; I once wrote
down as follows, upon the woman drawn by lines,
or, more true to say, by the absence of lines, in
snake-like litheness of attitude, I might say more
subtle than Rossetti's Lillith, with such eyes
only opened to see love :
“ Too common to say she is the beauty of line,
However, the line old, spiritualised into odour,
32


THE LADY OF UTAMARO'S ART 33
(The odour soared into an everlasting ghost from life and
death),
As a gossamer, the handiwork of a dream,
'Tis left free as it flaps :
The lady of Utamaro's art is the beauty of zephyr flow.
I say again, the line with the breath of love,
Enwrapping my heart to be a happy prey :
Sensuous ? To some so she may appear,
But her sensuousness divinised into the word of love."
Although I can enjoy and even criticise
Hiroshige or Hokusai at any time and in any
place, let me tell you that I cannot do so with
Utamaro, because I must be first in the rightest
mood (who says bodies have no mood ?) as when
I see the living woman; to properly appreciate
his work of art I must have the fullness of my
physical strength so that my criticism is disarmed.
(Criticism ? Why, that is the art for people
imperfect in health, thin and tired.) I feel, let
me confess, almost physical pain-is it rather
a joy ?-through all my adoration in seeing
Utamaro's women, just as when with the most
beautiful women whose beauty first wounds us ;
I do not think it vulgarity to say that I feel
blushing with them, because the true spiritualism
would please to be parenthesised by bodily
emphasis. It is your admiration that makes
you bold ; again your admiration of Utamaro's
pictures that makes them a real part of yourself,
therefore your vital question of body and soul;
and you shall never be able to think of them


34
UTAMARO
separately from your personal love. When I say
that we have our own life and art in his work,
I mean that all Japanese woman-beauty, love,
passion, sorrow and joy, in one word, all dreams
now appear, then disappear, by the most wonder-
ful lines of his art.
I will lay me down whenever I want to beauti-
fully admire Utamaro and spend half an hour
with his lady (“ To-day I am with her in silence
of twilight eve, and am afraid she may vanish
into the mist”), in the room darkened by the
candle-light (it is the candle-light that darkens
rather than lights); every book or picture of
Western origin (perhaps except a few reprints
from Rossetti or Whistler, which would not break
the atmosphere altogether) should be put aside.
How can you place together in the same room
Utamaro's women, for instance, with Millet's
pictures or Carpenter's “ Towards Democracy” ?
The atmosphere I want to create should be most
impersonal, not touched or scarred by the sharp-
ness of modern individualism or personality, but
eternally soft and grey; under the soft grey
atmosphere you would expect to see the sudden
swift emotion of love, pain, or joy of life, that may
come any moment or may not come at all. I
always think that the impersonality or the per-
sonality born out of the depth of impersonality
was regarded in older Japan as the highest, most
virtuous art and life ; now not talking about


THE ACCUSATION OF OBSCURITY 35
life, but the art-Utamaro's art, the chronicle
or history of the idealised harem or divan. How
charming to talk with Utamaro on love and beauty
in the grey soft atmosphere particularly fitting to
receive him in, or to be received by him in. I
would surely venture to say to him on such a
rare occasion: “You had no academy or any hall
of mediocrity in your own days to send your
pictures to; that was fortunate, as you appealed
directly to the people eventually more artistic
and always just. I know that you too were once
imprisoned under the accusation of obscenity;
there was the criticism also in your day which
saw the moral and the lesson, but not the beauty
and the picture. When you say how sorry you
were to part with your picture when it was done,
I fully understand your artistic heart, because
the picture was too much of yourself; perhaps
you confessed your own love and passion too
nakedly. I know that you must have been
feeling uneasy or even afraid to be observed or
criticised too closely."
As a certain critic remarked, the real beauty
flies away like an angel whenever an intellect
rushes in and begins to speak itself; the intellect,
if it has anything to do, certainly likes to show
up itself too much, with no consideration for the
general harmony that would soon be wounded
by it. Utamaro's art, let me dare say, is as I once
wrote :


36
UTAMARO
“She is an art (let me call her so)
Hung, as a web, in the air of perfume,
Soft yet vivid, she sways in music :
(But what sadness in her saturation of life !)
Her music lives in intensity of a moment and then dies ;
To her, suggestion is her life.
She is the moth-light playing on reality's dusk,
Soon to die as a savage prey of the moment;
She is a creation of surprise (let me say so),
Dancing gold on the wire of impulse.”
Some one might say that Utamaro's ladies are
brainless, but is it not, as I said before, that the
sacrifice of individuality or personality makes
them join at once with the great ghosts of uni-
versal beauty and love? They are beautiful,
because all the ghosts and spirits of all the ages
and humanity of Japan speak themselves through
them; it is perfectly right of him not to give
any particular name to the pictures, because they
are not the reflection of only one woman, but of a
hundred and thousand women ; besides, Utamaro
must have been loving a little secrecy and mysti-
fication to play with the public's curiosity.
We have his art; that is quite enough. What
do I care about his life, what he used to wear
and eat, how long he slept and how many hours
he worked every day; in fact, what is known
as his life is extremely slight. It is said that he
was a sort of hanger-on to Juzaburo Tsutaya, the
well-known publisher of his day, at the house
within a stone's throw of Daimon or Great Gate
of Yoshiwara, the Nightless City of hired beauties


THE UKIYOYE WOMAN
37
we sisters. Ind themselvehere sens
and lanterns, where, the story says, Utamaro
had his nightly revel of youthful days as a fatal
slave to female enchantment; while we do not
know whether he revelled there or not, we know
that as Yoshiwara of those times was the rendez-
vous of beauty, good looks, and song, not all
physical, but quite spiritual, we can believe that
he must have wandered there for his artistic
development. Indeed there was his great art
beautifully achieved when he suddenly entered
into idealism or dream where sensuousness and
spirituality find themselves to be blood brothers
or sisters. In the long history of Japanese art
we see the most interesting turn in the appear-
ance of a new personality, that is the Ukiyoye
woman; and who was the artist who perfected
them to the art of arts ? He was Utamaro,
You may abuse and criticise, if you will, their
unnaturally narrow squint eyes and egg-shaped
smooth face; but from the mask his woman
wears I am deliciously impressed with the strange
yet familiar, old but new, artistic personality.
The times change, and we are becoming more
intellectual, as a consequence, physically ugly ;
is it too sweeping or one-sided to say that ? I
have, however, many reasons for my wishing to
see more influence of Utamaro's art.


IV
HIROSHIGE
THE Sumida River's blue began to calm down,
like that of an old Japanese colour-print, into the
blue, I should say, of silence which had not been
mixed with another colour to make life; that
blue, it might be said, did not exist so much in
the river as in my very mind, which has lately
grown, following a certain Mr. Hopper, to cry,
“Hiro-Hiro-Hiroshige the Great!” The time
was late afternoon of one day in last April ; the
little boat which carried a few souls like mine,
who, greatly troubled by the modern life, were
eager to gain the true sense of perspective towards
Nature, glided down as it finished the regular
course of the “Cherry-blossom viewing at Muko-
jima." And my mind entered slowly into a
picture of my own creation-nay, Hiroshige's.
“ Look at the view from here. (I was thinking
of Hiroshige's Sumidagawa Hanasakari among
his Yedo pictures.) It may be too late now to
agree with Wilde when he said that Nature
imitates Art," I said to my friend. He saw at
once my meaning, though not clearly, and ex-
pictuok at the ends Sumidit may be said thatle saw at
38


NATURE IN HER EMPHASIS
39
panded on how artistically the human mind has
been advancing lately; and I endorsed him with
the fact that I have come to see, for some long
time, the Japanese scenery through Hiroshige's
eye. My friend exclaimed : “Is it not the same
thing, when you think Nature imitates Art, that
your mind itself imitates the Art first ? ” It is
not written in any book how much Hiroshige was
appreciated in his day; but I believe I am not
wrong to say that he is now reaching the height
of popularity in both the East and the West, of
popularity in the real sense, and you will easily
understand me when I say that he is the artist
of the future in the same sense that I disbelieve
in the birth register of Turner and Whistler. He
is, in truth, greatly in advance, even if I fancy he
is an artist of the present day, your contemporary
and mine; I always go to him to find where
Nature is pleased to put her own emphasis.
Every picture of his I see seems to be a new one
always; and the last is ever so surprising as to
leave my mind incapable for the time being of
apprehension of his other pictures. One picture
of his is enough ; there is the proof of his artistic
greatness.
We did not know until recently what meant
the words realism and idealism (should we thank
the Western critics?) except this : “The artist,
whatever he be, idealist or realist or what not,
is good when he is true to his art. I mean that


THE FAREWELL VERSE
43
theory of composition; and he gained it, I think,
from the Chinese prosody. In the East, more
than in the West, art is allied to verse-making.
When we consider the fact he was the artist
of only fifty years ago, it is strange why we can-
not know more of his own life story, and how he
happened to leave the words that generally pass
as a farewell verse as follows :
“I leave my brush at Azuma, and go on the
journey to the Holy West to view the famous
scenery there."
I cannot accept it innocently, and I even doubt
its origin, as it is more prosaic than poetical. It
is only that he followed after a fashion of his
day if he left it, as the verse is poor and at best
humorous. But when it is taken by the English
seriousness, the words have another effect. In-
deed, Hiroshige has had quite an evolution since
he was discovered in the West; he is, in truth,
more an English or European artist than a
Japanese in the present understanding.


GAHO HASHIMOTO
The art of Gaho (Hashimoto's nom-de-plume,
signifying the “Kingdom Refined") is not to
discard form and detail, as is often the case with
the artists of the “ Japanese school,” while they
soar into the grey-tinted vision of tone and
atmosphere. His conventionalism-remember
that he started his artist's life as a student of
the Kano school, whose absurd classicism, arrest-
ing the germ of development, invited its own
ruin--was not an enemy for him by any means.
With the magic of his own alchemy he turned it
into a transcendental beauty, bearing the dignity
of artistic authority. I am sure he must have
been glad to have the conventionalism for his
magic to work on afterward ; and when he left
it, it seems to me, he looked back to it with a
reminiscence of sad longing. Conventionalism
is not bad when it does not dazzle. To make
it suggestive is an achievement. To speak of
Gaho's individuality in his pictures does no justice
to him. His thought and conception are the
highest, and at the least different from many
With twas not an edevelopment, Classicism,


46
GAHO HASHIMOTO
blasphemy against Nature. In that respect he is
the humblest artist, and at the same time his
humility is his own pride. Indeed, it is only
through humility you are admitted to step into
the inner shrine of Nature. Art for Gaho was
not the matter of a piece of silk and Chinese ink,
but a sacred thing. And to be an artist is a life's
greatest triumph, and I am sure that Gaho was
that.
I have been for some long time suspecting the
nature of development of artistic appreciation
of the Western mind, when only Hokusai’s and
Hiroshige's pictures, let me say, of red and green
in tone of conception, called its special attention,
and I even thought that our Japanese art, with
the silence of blue and grey, would be perfectly
beyond its power of reach. When Nature soars
higher, she turns at once to the depth of dreams,
whose voice is silence. To express the grey
stillness of atmosphere and tone is the highest
art, at least, to the Japanese mind. Not only
in the picture, but in the “ tea house ” or incense
ceremony, or in the garden, the appreciation of
silence is the highest æsthetics. It gives you a
strong but never abrupt thrill of the delight
which is nobly touched by the hands of sadness,
and lets you lose yourself in it, and slowly grasp
something you may be glad to call ideal. And
the same sensation you can entertain from Gaho's
art, which you might think to be reminiscent


GAHO HASHIMOTO
greatest simplicity is the greatest complexity,
and I will say that Gaho holds both extremes.
The elements of his art embrace something older
than art, larger than life, something which inspires
you with the sense of profundity. They give
us strange and positive pulses of age and nature,
and the sudden rapture of dream, for which we
will gladly die. They give us the feeling of peace
and silence, and suggest something which we
wish to grasp. The delight we gain from Gaho
is purely spiritual. His pictures are living as a
ghost which vanishes and again appears.
His conception of Buddhism was not sad,
although this religion is generally said to be a
pessimism, but joyous and sympathetic. I am
sure that to associate Buddhism with something
of grief and tears is not a proper understanding
at all. (See Gaho's pictures of the Buddha and
Rakans, the Buddha disciples. They do not in-
spire any awfulness.) Tenderness and joy, with
a touch of sorrow, which is poetry, are the road
toward the Nirvana. For Gaho, silence meant
the highest state of peacefulness. The sad joy,
which is the highest joy, is an evolution which
never breaks the euphony of life, while tears
and grief are rebellious. His art inspires in us
a great reverence, which is religious, and it is
always justified. And it reveals a light of faith
under which he was born as an artist, and he
was glad to fulfil his appointed work. Then his


HIS FOUR YEARS OF PUPILAGE 51
we can trace back to Yeiki Hashimoto, who lived
some time in the Meiwa (1764), and from whom
the family line has continued unbroken down to
the present. Yeiki was originally a native of
Kyoto ; and there he happened to be known to
Suwonokami Matsudaira, the Shogun's minister,
who took him into his service; and on the lord-
ship’s return to Yedo Mr. Hashimoto accom-
panied his master. And he happened to settle
at Kobikicho, where the Kano family lived, and
soon gained Kano's friendship. Since that time
the family line was continued by Ikyo, Itei, and
Yoho. Gaho was Yoho's son. The year after
he became a student of the Kano school he lost
his father and also his mother. It is said to be
extraordinary that he was called upon to act,
after only four years of pupilage, as an assistant
to his master Shosen in painting personal figures
on the cedar door of the Shogun palace. At
twenty years of age he was made head pupil.
When he married he was twenty-six years
old, and he began to lead his independent life,
which turned tragic immediately. While the
problem of getting his subsistence was not easy,
his wife, whom he married with hope, became
insane.
Mrs. Hashimoto was obliged to withdraw to the
Higuchi village in Saitama prefecture, where
was an estate of her husband's master, to avoid
danger in the city ; but she grew worse, and ran


62
GAHO HASHIMOTO
mad. And it is said that such a sad turn was
from the reason that she was often tormented
by some country ruffians. She was soon taken
back to the city again, where she was put under
her husband's sole protection. Thus, when poor
Gaho's mind was completely engrossed with his
family trouble, the great restoration of Meiji
(1866) was announced, and the feudalism which
had prospered for some three hundred years fell
to the ground. Whole Japan was thrown at
once in the abyss of social tumult and change ;
under the speedily felt foreign invasion she lost
herself entirely. What she did was to destroy
old Japan; she thought it proper and even wise.
It was the darkest age for art; when people did
not know of the safety of their own existence,
it goes without saying that they had no time
to admire art and spend money for it. It is
perfectly miraculous to think how the artists
managed to live; there are, of course, many
heart-rending stories about them.
Gaho's is sad enough, although it may not be
saddest of all. He gave up his own painting
temporarily, and tried to get a pittance by paint-
ing pictures on folding fans which were meant for
exportation to China. And it is said that he was
often scorned by his employer for his clumsy
execution and, sadder still, he was told to leave
his job. Is it Heaven's right to treat one who
was destined to be a great artist like that ? He


THE PROUD PLEBEIANISM
61
day of her third anniversary that he gathered all
the musician accompanists of flute and drum
before her lonely grave at Uyeno, and he, of course
in the full costume of the character, performed
the whole piece of the said Sambaso. Fancy the
scene in the graveyard damp with mosses, dark
with the falling foliage ; and the actor is no other
but fantastic Kyosai. Where could be found a
more gruesome sight than that? This story
among others we find in Kyosai Gwaden is most
characteristic in that no other artist of the
long Japanese history, perhaps with the possible
exception of Hokusai, could make it fit for him-
self; the story reveals Kyosai’s honesty almost
to a fault, that sounds at once childish or mad-
man-like, a temperament, unlike that of Southern
Japan of female refinement and voluptuousness,
which only the proud plebeianism of the Yedo
civilisation (what an ultra-European imbecility
of present Tokyo !) could create, the temperament,
uncompromising, most difficult to be neutral. If
we call Icho Hanabusa the most proper repre-
sentative of old Yedo's Genroku Age, the time
when people found spirituality through the conse- i
cration of materialism, I think we can well call
Kyosai the representative of the later Tokugawa
Age (although his life extended a good many
years into the present Meiji era) which, again like
his own art, fell with the abruptness of an oak-
tree. I have some reason when I beg your


which tring; grobe her
THE REALISTIC MINUTENESS 65
realistic accuracy; I wonder what artistic mean-
ing there is, for instance, when people, even
acknowledged critics, speak with much admira-
tion of the anatomical exactness of those skele-
tons fantastically dancing to the ghost's music
in that famous Jigoku-dayu picture. Let me
ask again what the picture would lose, supposing,
for instance, the most whimsical dancers around
the courtesan's gorgeous robe had two or three
joints of bone missing ; is not Kyosai’s realistic
minuteness, which the artist was perhaps proud of
displaying, in truth, rather a small subordinate
part in his pictures ? He was already in the
present age, many years before his death, when
many a weak artistic mind of Japan only received,
from the Western art, confusion and reasoning,
but not strength and passion. Now let me ask
you: was it Kyosai's artistic greatness to accept
the Western science of art ?
He was never original in the absolute under-
standing as Sesshu, Korin, in a lesser degree
Harunobu and Hokusai were ; it might be that
he was born too late in the age, or is it more true
to say that his astonishing knowledge of the old
Japanese art acted to hold him back from striking
out an original line? Education often makes one
a coward. When I say that he was himself the
sum total of all Japanese art, I do not mean to
undervalue him, but rather to do justice to his
versatility and the swing of his power. And it


66
KYOSAI
w work. Afterartist of techistoria
was his personality, unique and undefinable, that
made his borrowing such an impression as we feel
it in fact in his work. After all, he has to be
judged, in my opinion, as an artist of technique.
I do not know what picture of his the Victoria
and Albert Museum and the British Museum
have, except a few reproductions in books, which
impressed me as poor examples. It is not too
much to say that Professor Conder's Kyosai
book is the first and may be the last; there is
no more fit man than he, who as Kyosai's student
knew him personally during the last eight years
of his life. The book contains some good speci-
mens which belong to that period; but what I
most wish to see, are the pictures he produced in
his earlier age. He is one of the artists who will
gain much from selection; who will ever publish
a book of twenty or thirty best pieces of his life’s
production ?


VII
THE LAST MASTER OF THE UKIYOYE ART
for hinause a littrare in the
YOSHITOSHI TSUKIOKA, as Kuniyoshi's home stu-
dent of high talent in his younger days, it is said,
had a key to the storehouse entrusted to his care,
where Kuniyoshi treasured foreign colour-prints
of saints or devils strayed from a Dutch ship,
Heaven's gift most rare in those days, which
made him pause a little and think about a fresh
turn for his work. When we know that vul-
garity always attracts us first and most, provided
it is new to us, we cannot blame Yoshitoshi much
when he reproduced in his work, indeed, stealing
a march on his master, an immediate response to
the Western art, whose secret he thought he could
solve through varnishing. Doubtless it was no
small discovery for Yoshitoshi. And the general
public were equally simple when “Kwaidai
Hyaku Senso,” his first attempt after the new
departure, quite impressive as he thought, was
well received by them; when he went too far in
this foreign imitation through his little knowledge,
as in his “Battle at Uyeno,” he varnished the
whole picture. We have another instance that time
67


72 LAST MASTER OF UKIYOYE ART
bewildered mind, and, as a result, he immortalised
the rôle. It was the age when realism, of course,
in more vague, doubtful meaning than the
present usage, had completely conquered the
stage, the old idealistic stage art having fallen off
the pedestal. Certainly Danjuro, the first of all
to be absorbed in that realism which prevailed
here twenty or twenty-five years ago, did never
serve the stage art for advancement, but, on the
contrary, it was the realism, if anything, that
cheapened, trivialised, and vulgarised the time-
honoured Japanese art; but it seemed that there
was nobody to see that point of wisdom. It is
ridiculous to know how Danjuro insisted, as Tomo-
nori, in the play of Sembon Sakura, that the
blood upon his armour should be painted as real
as possible, and troubled the great artistic brush
of Yoshitoshi on each occasion during the whole
run of the play ; but how serious the actor was
in his thought and determination! Again that
realism was the main cause why Yoshitoshi's art
failed to compete with the earlier Ukiyoye artists
like Shunsho, Utamaro, and even Hokusai ; it
was an art borrowed from the West doubtless,
when I observe how Yoshitoshi, unlike the earlier
artists, was delighted to use the straight, forceful
lines as the modern Western illustrators ; the
picture called “Daimatsuro " is a fit example in
which he carried out that tendency or mannerism
with most versatility. I daresay that his pic-
of possible, and termour should be
realised to compeUtamaro:com the


"IMAYO GENJI”
73
tures, whether of historical heroes or profes-
sional beauties, which were least affected by the
so-called realism or Western perspectives and
observed carefully the old Ukiyoye canons,
limiting themselves in the most artistic shyness,
would be only prized as adorning his name as the
last master; for the ninety per cent. we have no
grief for their hastening into blessed dusts. I
have in my collection the three-sheet picture
called “Imayo Genji,” showing the view of
Chigoga Fuchi at Yenoshima, with the romantic
posture of four naked fisherwomen, which is
dated very early in Yoshitoshi's artistic life, no
doubt being the work of the time when he was
still a home student at Kuniyoshi's studio or
workshop; you can see the artist's allegiance to
his teacher in those somewhat stooping woman
figures; there is no mistake to say that Yoshi-
toshi, at least in this picture, had studied Hiro-
shige and Hokusai to advantage for the general
effect of rocks and fantastic waves.
Although it is clear that it is not a specimen of
his developed art, I have in mind to say that it
will endure, perhaps as one of the best Ukiyoye
pictures of all ages, through its youthful loyalty
to the traditional old art and the painstaking
composition for which the best work is always
marked. How artistically troubled, even lost,
are his later works, though once they were popular
and even admired !


82
BUSHO HARA
hy Remballery wetermine
preciator in Japan, even while we admit that we
have the buyers ? I will take a few pictures with
me when I go to England next, and show them
to the right sort of people ; really, truly, only
London of all the cities of the world has the right
sort of people in any line of profession. Besides,
I should like to examine the English art again
and let the people there listen to my opinion; I
was not enough prepared for such a work when I
went there last."
But I believe that his own self-education in art,
which he most determinedly started at the
National Gallery, where he was forcibly attracted
by Rembrandt and Velasquez, must have been
happily developed, when the same Graphic critic
spoke of his “sensitive and searching eyes,” and
(printing Hara's intelligent rendering of Rem-
brandt's “Jewish Merchant” on the page) said
that it proved the painter was at the root of the
matter, and declared that the critic had rarely
seen better or more intelligent copy, and again to
prove that Hara was not merely a copyist or
imitator, he also reproduced on the same page his
original work called “The Old Seamstress.”
And I am doubly pleased to find that the same
English critic mentioned him somewhere as a
“keen and acute critic, but generous withal”;
I was so glad to have Hara as my friend for the
rare striking power of his critical enlightenment
(Oh, where is another sane artist like himself ?),
natter, proved the Merchant , render


THE ENEMY IN HIS OWN SELF
83
even when he failed to make a strong impression
on me with his art. It was his immediate question
on his return home how to apply the technique
of oil painting he learned in London to Japanese
subjects; if he failed in his art, as he always
believed and I often thought he did, it was from
the reason, I dare think, that he had indeed too
clear a view of self-appraisal or self-criticism under
whose menace he always took the attitude of an
outsider towards his own work. How often I
wished he were wholly without that critical
power, always hard to please, altogether too
fastidious! His artistic ambition and aim were
so absolute and most highly puritanic; as a result,
he was ever so restless and sad with his art,
and often even despised himself. He had a great
enemy, that was no other but his own self; he
was more often conquered by it than conquering
it. I have never seen in my life a more sad artist
with the brush, facing a canvas, than this Busho
Hara. Besides, his poor health, which had been
failing in the last few years, only worked to make
his critical displeasure sharper and more peculiar;
and he utterly lost the passion and foolishness of
his younger days. How often we promised, when
we parted after a long chat, which usually began
with Yoshio Markino, dear friend of his and mine
in London, and as a rule ended with reminiscences
of our English life, that we would hereafter return
to our younger age, if possible to our boys' days,


84
BUSHO HARA
and even commit the innocent youthful sins and
be happy ; but when we met together again, we
were the same unhappy mortals, Hara with a
brush, I with a pen. He always looked comforted
by my words when I told him my own tragedy and
difficulties to write poetry ; both of us exclaimed
at once with the same breath and longed for life's
perfect freedom. How he wished to cut away
from himself and bid a final farewell to many
portrait commissions, and become a lone pilgrim
on Nature's great highway with only his brush
and oil; that was his dream.
Let me repeat again that he was sad with his
brush only to make his art still sadder ; when he
was most happy, it was the time when he left his
own studio to forget his unwilling brush and send
his love imaginations under the new foliage of
spring trees and make them ride on the freedom
of the summer air. How he planned for future
work while contemplating great Nature ; he was
a dreamer in the true sense. And dream was to
him more real as he thought it almost practicable.
I do not mix any sarcasm in my words when I
say that he was a greater artist when he did not
paint; he rose to his full dignity only when out of
his studio; and it was most unfortunate that I
found him always ill when he was out of it. But
I will say that I never saw one like himself so
well composed, even satisfied, on a sick bed; that
might have been from the reason that his being


AT THE HOSPITAL
85
absorbed in Nature, his thought and contempla-
tion on her, did not give an opportunity for bodily
illness to use its despotism. He gave me in truth
even such an impression that he was glad to be ill
so he could lay himself right before the thought of
great Nature. Once in the spring of 1911 I
called on him at the hospital, when he successfully
underwent a surgeon's knife (he was suffering
from typhlitia); although he was quite weak
then, he was most ambitious and happy to talk
on the beauty of Nature; and he said: “I
almost wonder why I did not become ill and lay
me down on this particular bed of this hospital
before, and (pointing to the blue sky through
the window with his pale-skinned slender hand
that was unmistakably an artist's) see how
the eastern sky changes from dusk to milky grey,
again from that grey to rosy light. How often I
wished you, particularly you, might be here with
me all awakening in this room, perhaps at half-
past three o'clock; that is the time exactly when
the colours of the sky will begin to evolve. Thank
God all the other people are sleeping then. At
such a moment I feel as if all Nature belonged to
me alone in the whole world, and I alone held her
secrets and her beauty; I am thankful for my
illness, as it has made me thus restful in mind and
allowed me to carefully observe Nature, and build
my many future plans. I can promise you that
I will whistle my adieu to the commissioned work,


88
BUSHO HARA
all of it, when I grow stronger again, and become
a real artist, the real artist even to satisfy you.
Oh, how I could paint the mysterious changes of
the sky which I have been studying for the last
week!”
Again I saw him in his sick-bed at his little home
one afternoon; we grew, as a matter of course,
quite enthusiastic and passionate as our talk was
on art and artists; it was the foundation of his
theory, when he expanded on it, not to put any
difference between the arts of the East and the
West; he seemed to agree with me on that day
when I compared even recklessly Turner with
our Sesshu. Although he entered into his art
through the technique, I observed that he was
speedily turning to a spiritualist; I often thought
that he was a true Japanese artist even of the
Japanese school, while he adopted the Western
method. (It was the Graphic critic who said
that he was “ perhaps the ablest Japanese painter
in our method who has visited our shores.") He
and I saw that time the famous large screen by
Goshun belonging to the Imperial Household
called “Shosho no Yau,” or “ The Night Rain at
Shosho”; as our minds were still absorbed in
its soft mellow atmosphere and grey flashes of
sweeping rain, we often repeated our great
admiration for that Goshun. “It's not merely an
art, but Nature herself," he exclaimed. The
afternoon of the summer day was slowly falling ;


TURNER'S GREAT ART
87
the yellow sunbeams, like an elf or fairy, were
playing almost fantastically with the garden
leaves ; Hara was looking on them absent-
mindedly, and when he awoke from his dream,
he said : “Suppose you cut off a few of those
leaves, even one leaf, with that particular sunlight
on them; they are indeed a great art. Who can
paint them as exactly they are ? To prove it is
a real art, when the artist is great and true, a large
canvas and big subject are not necessary at all;
one single leaf would be enough for his subject.
I recall my first impression of Turner's work;
I thought then that even one inch square of
any picture of his in the National Gallery
would be sufficient to prove his great art. I
always vindicated his mastery of technique to
the others who had the reverse opinion; what
made Turner was never his technique. To talk
about technique. I believe that even I have a
better technique than is shown in most of the
pictures drawn by Rossetti; but there is only one
Rossetti in the world.” On my way home after
leaving him, I could not help wondering if he
were not turning to a pessimist : I was afraid
that he was in his heart of hearts denying his own
ability and art.
One day last September, when my soul felt
the usual sadness with the first touch of autumn,
I received a note from Hara saying that his
stomach had been lately troubled, and he wished


88
BUSHO HARA
I would call on him as he wanted to be brightened
by my presence. I could not go then to see him
on account of one thing and another; and when
I was told by one of his friends and mine that
Hara's illness was said to be cancer, even in its
acute form, and that he was eagerly expecting my
call, I hurried at once to his house. He was very
pale and thin. As I was begged by Mrs. Hara at
the door not to let him talk too much, as it was
the doctor's command, I even acted as if I hated
conversation on that day; it was Hara (bless his
sympathetic gentle soul) who, on the contrary,
wished to make me happy and interested by his
talk. He talked as usual on various arts and
artists; when he slowly entered into his own
domestic affairs, he said: “I have decided to sell
all my works of the last ten years, good or bad,
among my rich friends, and raise a sufficient fund
to provide for my old mother and wife ; to have
no child is at least a comfort at this moment. I
think I call myself fortunate since such a scheme
appears to be quite practicable; but if I could
have even one picture which I could proudly leave
for posterity—that might be too great an ambition
for an artist of my class. Will you laugh at me
when I say how I wish to live five years more, if
not five years, two years at least, if not two years,
even one year ? It might be better, after all, for
me to die with hope than to live and fail.” With
a sudden thought he changed the subject; he


HARA GONE TO HIS REST 89
thought, doubtless, he had no right to make me
unnecessarily sad, and resumed the talk on Hokusai
and Utamaro where he had left off a little while
before. “I wish that you will see Utamaro's
picture in my friend's possession ; it is, needless
to say, the picture of a courtesan. How that
lovely woman sits! (Here Hara changed his
attitude and imitated the woman in the picture.)
Oh, these charming bare feet! That is where
Utamaro put his best art; I cannot forget the
feeling that I felt with the most attractive naked
heels of the picture.”
I gave him many instances of doctors' mistakes
to encourage him, before I left his house. I called
on him two weeks or ten days later; but I
was not admitted to his presence, as the doctor
had already forbade any outside communication.
At my third call I was told that he was growing
still worse ; it was on October 29 that I made my
fourth call, and I found at once that the house
had been somewhat upset. Alas, my friend
Busho Hara had gone already to his eternal rest!
I rushed up to the upstairs room where the cold
body of the artist was lying ; he could not see or
hear his friend. I cried. I was told by one of
Hara's friends, who saw his last moment, how sorry
he was that he did not see me when his final end
approached, and that he had begged him to tell
me that he was wrong in what he told me before
about art. Now, what did he mean by that? I


BUSHO HARA
already suspected, as I said before, that he was
growing to deny his own art; now I should
like to understand by that final special message
to me that he wished to wholly deny all the
human art of the world against great Nature
before his death. When he grew weaker and
weaker, I think that he found it more easy to
dream of Nature; whether conscious or uncon-
scious, he must have been in the most happy
state, at least for his last days, as he was going
to join himself with her. I never saw such a
dead face so calm, so sorrowless, like Hara's ;
it reminded me of a certain Greek mask which
I saw somewhere ; indeed, he had a Greek soul
in the true meaning.
We six or seven friends of his kept a tsuya, or
wake, before his coffin, as is the custom, on the
night of the 29th; the night rapidly advanced when
the reminiscences of this passed great artist were
told to keep us from falling asleep. One man
was speaking of the story of Hara's friendship with
Danjuro Ichikawa, the great tragedian of the
old kabuki school of the modern Japanese stage.
Once he played the role of Benkei in “Adaka ga
Seki,” which he wished Hara to draw; it was
a most unusual treat on the actor's part to give
the artist one whole box at the Kabuki Theatre
during fifteen days only for that purpose, where he
appeared every day not to draw, but to look at the
acting. But Hara very quickly sketched him one
night'o before his ºr friends of


SITTING AT THE SHOP FRONT 91
day at the moment when he thought that the
actor was prolonging his acting at a certain place
to make him easy to sketch; in fact, Danjuro
made his acting in some parts stand still for fifteen
minutes. Strangely enough, the other actors
who were playing with him did not know that,
while Hara rightly read the actor's intention and
thought. Danjuro said afterwards that Mr.
Hara understood him through the power of his
being a great artist. Did he draw the picture
and finish it ? That is the next question. He did
not, as was often the case with Hara; he wrote
the actor bluntly he was sorry that this spirit
was gone, making it impossible to advance. The
one who told the story exclaimed : “I never saw
an artist like Hara so slow to paint, or who found
it so difficult to paint.”
Among us there was a well-known frame manu-
facturer, Yataya by name, who, it is said, was
Hara's very first friend in Tokyo, where he came
thirty years before from his native Okayama; he
spoke next on his dear friend : “He made his call
on me at my store in Ginza almost every night;
he never came up into the room, but sat always
at the shop front. And there he gazed most
thoughtfully on the passing crowd of the street
with his fixed eyes ; he made himself quite an
unattractive figure especially for the shop front.
'Who is that sinister-looking fellow ?? I was
often asked. I am sure that he must have been


92
BUSHO HARA
there studying the people ; his interest in any-
thing was extremely intent. He was a great
student.”
While I am now writing upon Hara, I feel I see
that he is sitting at a certain shop front, perhaps
of Hades. Is he not studying the action of the
dead souls clamorous as in their living days ?


THE UKIYOYE ART IN ORIGINAL
I OFTEN think the general impression that the
best Ukiyoye art reveals itself in colour-print has
to be corrected in some special cases, because the
Ukiyoye art in original kakemono, though not
so well appreciated in the West, is also a thing
beautiful; and I feel proud to say that I have
often seen those special cases in Japan. On
such occasions I always say that I am impressed as
if the art were laughing and cursing fantastically
over the present age, whose prosaic regularity
completely misses the old fascination of romantic-
ism which Japan of two or three hundred years ago
perfected by her own temperament. Whenever
I see it (mind you, it should be the best Ukiyoye
art in original) at my friend's house by accident,
or in the exhibition hall, my heart and soul seem
to be turning to a winged thing fanned by its
magic; and when my consciousness returns, I
find myself narcotised in incense, before the tem-
ple of art where sensuality is consecrated through
beauty.
It is not too much to say that Shunsho Katsu-
93


“BEAUTIES IN A BAMBOO FOREST ” 95
to make the necks, especially the napes, the points
of almost tantalising grace; what a charm of
abandon in those shoulders ! And what a beauti-
ful elusiveness of the slightly inclined faces of
the women ! I am always glad to see Shunsho's
famous picture, “Seven Beauties in a Bamboo
Forest,” owned by the Tokyo School of Art, in
which the romantic group of chignons leisurely
promenade, one reading a love-letter, another
carrying a shamisen instrument, through the shade
of a bamboo forest. Not only in this picture, but
in many other arrangements of women and senti-
ment, Shunsho reminds me of the secret of Cho
Densu of the fifteenth century in his elaborate
Rakan pictures, particularly in the point that the
figures, while keeping their own individual aloof-
ness, perfectly well fuse themselves in the alembic
of the picture into a composition most impressive.
And you will soon find that when the sense of
monotony once subsides, your imagination grows
to see their spiritual variety.
It is rather difficult to see a best specimen of
the originals of Harunobu or even of Utamaro.
I think there is some reason, however, to say in the
case of Utamaro that he did not leave many worthy
pictures in original, because he made the blocks,
fortunately or unfortunately, a castle to rise and
fall with ; while I see the fact on the one side that,
while he was not accepted in the polite society of
his time, he gained as a consequence much strength


96 THE UKIYOYE ART IN ORIGINAL
through his restriction of artistic purpose. There
was nothing more ridiculous for the Ukiyoye artists
of those days than to intrude their work of the
so-called “Floating World” into the aristocratic
to ko noma, the sacred alcove of honour for the art
of a Tosa or a Kano, and to attempt to call them-
selves Yamato Yeshi, whatever that means. What
wisdom is there to become neutral, like Yeishi or
in some degree Koryusai, who never created any
distinct success either as Ukiyoye artist or as
so-called polite painter. I can easily read the under-
meaning how they were even insulted, by the cul-
tured class, when they tried to satisfy their own
resentment by such an assumption of Yamato
Yeshi (“the Yamato artist,” Yamato being the
classic name of Japan); I see more humiliation
in it than pride. The contempt displayed toward
them, however, was not so serious till the appear-
ance of Moronobu, who created his own art out of
their sudden descent; his realism accentuated itself
in the portrayal of courtesans and street vagrants
of old Yedo, for the popular amusement, at the
huge cost of being criticised as immoral. The
artists before his day, even those to-day roughly
termed the Ukiyoye artists, were the self-same
followers. To begin with Matabei, after the
Kano, Tosa, and Sumiyoshi schools successively,
their work was strengthened or weakened accord-
ing to the situation by the irresistibility of plebei-
anism ; it is clear that the final goal for their work


THE WITHDRAWAL FROM SOCIETY 97
was, of course, the tokonoma of the rich man and the
nobles. And it seems that they must have found
quite an easy access into that scented dais, if I
judge from the pictures of the “ Floating World ”
(what an arbitrary name that !) that remain
to-day. They had, in truth, no necessity to
advertise themselves as Yamato Yeshi, like some
artists of the later age who were uneducated and
therefore audacious; and in their great vanity
wished to separate themselves from their fellow-
workers; while their work has a certain softness
-though it be not nobility-at least not dis-
cordant with the grey undertone of the Japanese
room, doubtless they lack that strength distilled
and crystallised into passionate lucidity which we
see in the best colour-prints. When I say that
Moronobu was the founder of Ukiyoye art, I mean
more to call attention to the fact that the Japanese
block print was well started in its development
from his day, into which process the artists put all
sorts of spontaneity, at once cursing creed and
tradition. As for the Ukiyoye artists, I dare say
their weakness in culture and imagination often
turned to force; they gained artistic confidence
in their own power from their complete withdrawal
from polite society. Such was the case with
Utamaro and Hiroshige. I wonder what use there
was to leave poor work in the original like that
of Toyokuni and Yeizan, whose works often serve
only to betray their petty ambition.


98 THE UKIYOYE ART IN ORIGINAL
I have seen enough of the originals of this in-
teresting Ukiyoye art, beginning with Matabei and
Katsushige; Naganobu Kano, the former's con-
temporary, is much admired in the series of twelve
pictures, “Merry-making under the Flowers,"
with the illogical simplicity natural to the first half
of the seventeenth century. The fact that the
name “Floating World” did not mean much in
those days can be seen in the work of Rippo
Nonoguchi or Gukei Sumiyoshi, whose classical
respect weakened the pictorial impression. Mr.
Takamine, who is recognised as the keenest
collector of Ukiyoye art in Japan, has quite an
extensive collection of the works of Ando Kwaige-
tsudo (1688–1715), Anchi Choyodo, Dohan Kwai-
getsudo (early eighteenth century), Doshu Kwai-
getsudo, Doshin Kwaigetsudo, Nobuyuki Kameido,
Rifu Tosendo, Katsunobu Baiyuken, and Yeishun
Baioken, all of them contemporaries of Doshu.
Although their merit is never so high, even when
not questionable, we can imagine that their work
must have been quite popular, even in high
quarters; among them Dohan might be the
cleverest, but as a Japanese critic says, his colour-
harmony is marred by ostentatious imprudence.
I have seen the best representation of Sukenobu
Nishikawa in “ Woman Hunting Fireflies,” soft
and delicate. The other artists I came to notice
and even admire are Choshun Miyakawa, Masa-
nobu Okumura, Shigemasa Kitawo, and other


HEREDITARY SUPERSTITION
09
names. I think that the time should come when
the original Ukiyoye art, too, should be properly
priced in the West; we are still sticking to our
hereditary superstition that no picture is good if
we cannot hang it in the tokonoma, where we burn
incense and place the flowers arranged to invoke
the greyness of the air. But I wonder why we
cannot put an Utamaro lady here on the Japanese
tokonoma.


WESTERN ART IN JAPAN
THE Japanese works of Western art are some-
times beautiful; but I can say positively that I
have had no experience of being carried away by
them as by good old Japanese art. There is
always something of effort and even pretence
which are decidedly modern productions. I will
say that it is at the best a borrowed art, not a
thing inseparable from us. I ask myself why
those artists of the Western school must be loyal
to a pedantry of foreign origin as if they had the
responsibility for its existence. It would be a
blessing if we could free ourselves in some measure,
through the virtue of Western art, from the world
of stagnation in feeling and thought. I have
often declared that it was the saviour of Oriental
art, as the force of difference in element is im-
portant for rejuvenation. But what use is it
to get another pedantry from the West in the place
of the old one? I have thought more than once
that our importation of foreign art is a flat failure.
It may be that we must wait some one hundred
100


THE TAIHEIYO GAKWAI CLUB 101
years at least before we can make it perfectly
Japanised, just as we spent many years before
thoroughly digesting Chinese art; but we have
not a few pessimists who can prove that it is not
altogether the same case. Although I have said
that the foreign pedantry greatly troubles the
Japanese work of Western art, I do not mean that
it will create the same effect as upon Western
artists. I am told the following story :
A year or two ago a certain Italian, who had
doubtless a habit of buying pictures (with little of
real taste in art, as is usually the case with a
picture-buyer), went to see the art exhibition of
the Taiheiyo Gakwai Club held at Uyeno Park, and
bought many pictures on the spot, as he thought
they were clever work of the Japanese school.
Alas, the artists meant them to be oil paintings of
the Western type! The Italian's stupidity is
inexcusable ; but did they indeed appear to
him so different from his work at home? The
saddest part is that they are so alien to our
Japanese feeling in general; consequently they
have little sympathy with the masses. It is far
away yet for their work to become an art of general
possession ; it can be said it is not good art when
it cannot at once enter into the heart. It is not
right at all to condemn only the Western art in
Japan, as any other thing of foreign origin is
equally in the stage of mere trial. I often wonder
about the real meaning of the modern civilisation
Japanist part int from hishey


102
WESTERN ART IN JAPAN
of Japan. Imitation is imitation, not the real
thing at all.
There are many drawbacks, as I look upon the
material side, to the Western art becoming
popular; for instance, our Japanese house-frail,
wooden, with the light which rushes in from all
sides-never gives it an appropriate place to look
its best. And the heaviness of its general atmos-
phere does not harmonise with the simplicity that
pervades the Japanese household; it always
appears out of place, like a chair before the
tokonoma, a holy dais. Besides, the artists cannot
afford to sell their pictures cheap, not because
they are good work, but because there are only a
few orders for them. I believe we must undertake
the responsibility of making good artists; there
is no wonder that there is only poor work since our
understanding of Western art is little, and we
bardly try to cultivate the Western taste. If
we have no great art of the Western school, as
is a fact, one half the whole blame is on our
shoulders.
Here my mind dwells in more or less voluntary
manner upon the contrast with the Japanese art,
while I walk through the gallery of Western art of
the Taiheiyo Gakwai Club of this year in Uyeno
Park. There are exhibited more than two
bundred, or perhaps three hundred pieces-quite
an advance in numbers over any exhibition held
before ; but I am not ready to say how they stand


104
WESTERN ART IN JAPAN
of Nakagawa or Ishii exhibited here, you would
see my point, because they are somehow wrong
for becoming good work, while they impress
with line and colour. I spoke before of effort
and pretence; such an example you will find
in Hiroshi Yoshida's canvases, big or small, most
of them being nature studies. (By the way, this
Yoshida is the artist who exhibited two great
canvases, called “Unknown,” or “World of
Cloud,” painted doubtless from Fuji mountain,
overlooking the clouds at one's feet, and “Keiryu,"
or “ The Valley," at the Government exhibition
with some success some years ago.) I am ready
to admit that the artist has well brought out his
purpose, but the true reality is not only the outside
expression. His pictures are executed carefully ;
but what a forced art! This is the age when all
Japanese artists, those of the Japanese school not
excepted, are greatly cursed by objectivity.
Some one has said that the Japanese dress, speak-
ing of Japanese woman as a picture, does serve to
make the distance greater. I thought in my
reflection on art that so it is with the Japanese art.
And again how near is Western art, at least the
Japanese work of the Western school! Such
a nearness to our feeling and mind, I think, is
hardly the best quality of any art. I have ceased
for some time to expect anything great or astonish-
ing from Wada or Okada or even Kuroda ; we
most eagerly look forward to the sudden appear-


106 WESTERN ART IN JAPAN
It seems to me that at least the ground has been
pre Charles Wirgh from the Twestern art in 1891 in
Charles Wirgman, the special correspondent sent
to the Far East from the Illustrated London News,
might be called the father of Western art in Japan ;
he stayed at Yokohama till he died in 1891 in
his fifty-seventh year. He was the first foreign
teacher from whom many Japanese learned the
Western method of art; Yoshiichi Takahashi was
one of his students. Before Takahashi, Togai
Kawakami was known for his foreign art in the
early eighties; but it is not clear where he learned
it. Yoshimatsu Goseda was also, besides Taka-
hashi, a well-known student of Wirgman, and
Shinkuro Kunizawa was the first artist who went
to London in 1875 for art study, but he died soon
after his return home in 1877 before he became a
prominent figure in the art world.
When the Government engaged Antonio Fen->
tanesi, an Italian artist of the Idealistic school, in
1876, as an instructor, the Western school of
art had begun to establish itself even officially.
This Italian artist is still to-day respected as a
master. He was much regretted when he left
Japan in 1878. Ferretti and San Giovanni, who
were engaged after Fentanesi, did not make as
great an impression as their predecessor. How-"
ever, the time was unfortunate for art in general,
as the country was thrown into disturbance by the
civil war called the Saigo Rebellion. The popu-


THE GOVERNMENT'S INTEREST 107
larity which the Western art seemed to have
attained had a great set-back when the pictures
were excluded from the National Exhibition
in 1890. But in the reaction the artists of the
Western school gained more vigour and deter-
mination; Shotaro Koyama, Chu Asai, Kiyowo
Kawamura, and others were well-known names in
those days. Kiyoteru Kuroda and Keiichiro
Kume, the beloved students of Raphael Collin,
returned home when the China-Japan war was
over ; they brought back quite a different art from
that with which we had been acquainted hitherto.
And they led vigorously the artistic battle; the
present popularity at least in appearance is owing
to their persistence and industry. The Govern-
ment again began to show a great interest in
Western art; it sent Chu Asai and Yeisaku Wada
to Paris to study foreign art. Not only these,
many others sailed abroad privately or officially
to no small advantage; you will find many
Japanese students of art nowadays wherever you
go in Europe or America.
We were colour-blind artistically before the
importation of Western art, except these who had
an interest in the so-called colour-print; but the
colour-print was less valued among the intellectual
class, as even to-day. Our artistic eye, which
was only able to see everything flat, at once
opened through the foreign art to the mysteries
of perspective, and though they may not be


APPENDIX I
THE MEMORIAL EXHIBITION OF THE LATE
HARA
THE memorial exhibition of Busho Hara, a Japanese
artist of the Western school, held recently in Tokyo
to raise a fund for his surviving family as one of its
objects (Hara passed away in October, 1913, in his
forty-seventh year), had many significances, one of
which, certainly the strongest, was in contradiction
of the general understanding that Western paintings
will never sell in Japan; even a trifling sketch in
which the artist only jotted down his momentary
memory fetched the most unusual price. Hara is a
remarkable example of one who created his own
world (by that I mean at least the buyers, though
not real appreciators) among his friends through his
personality, which strengthened his work ; para-
doxically we shall say he was an artist well known
and utterly unknown; and when I say he was an
utterly unknown artist, I have my thought that
he never even once exhibited his work to the public,
and his often defiant spirit and high aim made him
scorn and laugh over people's ignorance on art.
How he hated the Japanese art world where real
merit is no passport at all. But Hara's friends are
pleased to know from this exhibition the fact that
109


110
APPENDIX I
even the public he ever so despised are not so un-
responsive to his art, whose secret he learned in London.
Hara was, sad to say, also an artist whose Western
art-work, like that of some other Japanese artists
to whom quite an excellent credit was given in their
European days, much declined or, better to say,
missed somehow the artistic thrill since he left
England in 1906. Why was that? what made him
so ? Was it from the fact that there is no gallery of
Western art old or new in Japan where your work
will only be belittled after you have received a good
lesson there ? or is it that our Japanese general public
never have a high standard in the matter of art,
especially of Western art ? I think there are many
reasons to say that the passive, even oppressive air
of Japan, generally speaking, may have a perfectly
disintegrating effect on an artist trained in the West ;
it would not be wholly wrong to declare that the real
Western art founded on emotion and life cannot be
executed in Japan. Hara made quite many portraits
by commission since that 1906, some of which were
brought out in this exhibition. As they are work
more or less forced, we must go to his other works for
his best, which he executed with mighty enthusiasm
and faith under England's artistic blessing. He
writes down in his diary, the reading of which was my
special privilege, on January 2nd of 1905, the follow-
ing words : "At last Port Arthur has fallen. When
the war shall be done that will be the time for our
battle of art against Europe to begin. Oh, what a
great responsibility for Japanese artists !” .
Hara made a student's obeisance toward Watts
among the modern masters, whose influence will be


112
APPENDIX I
pleased to say was one of Hara's best pictures. When-
ever I see Hara's pictures of any old woman, not
only this “Old Seamstress," I think at once that
what you might call his soul sympathy immediately
responded to the old woman, since Hara's heart and
soul were world-wearied and most tender.
Markino has somewhere in the book the following
passages : “ First few weeks I used to take him
round the streets, and whenever we passed some
picture shops he stopped to look through the shop
window, and would not move on. I told him those
nameless artists' work was not half so good as his own.
But he always said: 'Oh, please don't say so. Per-
haps my drawings are surer than those, and my
compositions are better too. But the European
artists know how to handle oils so skilfully. I learn
great lessons from them.'".
Indeed when he returned home he had fully
mastered the technique of handling oils from England,
where he stayed some four years. It is really a pity
that Hara passed away without having fully ex-
pressed his own art in his masterly technique, which he
learned with such sacrifice and patience. His death
occurred suddenly at the time when he was about to
break away from his former self and to create his
own new art ten times stronger, fresher, and more
beautiful.
I wish to call the readers' attention to Yoshio
Markino's My Recollections and Reflections, which
contains the most sympathetic article on Busho
Hara.
sacrifice time well another


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