>& ] W Qj w\v t *-. \,^ J tJ -**^.2-.J.'r>.-, ^> Mri XT** - -v >' J>^S ^r ^, \^ / i ,vV> (i ) = l 5 I. i o 5 ' - P' A2 * * ' /->- . -0 &UIBKAHY0/ \\\t t'MVth'V/A : " ^M^-.0 13 * n 3 s ff g ^ ^ j i ~, - ~t- %/~>~>2 |JL 1 |L^ IMPRESSIONS OF JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE IMPRESSIONS OF JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE AND THE ALLIED ARTS BY RALPH ADAMS CRAM Fettow of the American Institute of Architects Member of the Society of Arts, London Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society I THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY, Publishers 33-37 EAST 17TH ST., UNION SQUARE NORTH, NEW YORK Copyright, 1905, by THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY Published, September, 1905 The Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U.S.A. Architecture fc Urban PlanniK Librsry To MT WIFE In Grateful Acknowledgement of Inspiration, Guidance and Correction. AUTHOR'S NOTE OF the ten papers that together make up this series of impressions of the esthetic voicing of Japanese civilization, five have been printed before, one is a paper read before the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts, while four are now published for the first time. For the privilege of reprinting these five chapters, the acknowledgments of the author are due to the editors of the Architectural Review (Boston), The Church- man (New York), The Architectural Review (London), and House and Garden (Phila- delphia). CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I THE GENIUS OF JAPANESE ART ... 15 II THE EARLY ARCHITECTURE OF JAPAN . 25 III THE LATER ARCHITECTURE OF JAPAN . 46 IV TEMPLES AND SHRINES 71 V TEMPLE GARDENS 103 VI DOMESTIC INTERIORS 115 VII THE MINOR ARTS 143 VIII A COLOUR PRINT OF YEIZAN . . . 166 IX A NOTE ON JAPANESE SCULPTURE . . 190 X THE FUTURE OF JAPANESE ART 204 Vll ILLUSTRATIONS The Dai-butsu of Kamakura .... Frontispiece PLATE FACING PAGE I Lord Fuji 20 II The Monastery of Horiuji .... 28 III The Pagoda of Horiuji .... 30 IV The Kondo, Horiuji Elevation . . 33 Va&V& Section and Elevation of Pagoda, Horiuji 34 VI Yakushiji Pagoda 37 VII Ho-o-do, Uji 40 VIII Sanctuary of the Ho-o-do .... 42 IX Kinkakuji, Kyoto 50 X An example of curve composition . 52 XI Nikko Gate 54 XII An Interior Nikko 56 XIII A Yashiki Gate 58 XIV The Royal Palace, Kyoto .... 60 XV Kumamoto Castle 63 XVI Hikone Castle 64 XVII A Contemporary Shinto Shrine . . 87 ix Illustrations PLATE FACING PAGE XVIII ATorii 88 XIX Type of Revived Enryaku . . 93 XX Kasuga Gate, Nara 94 XXI Interior of Chion-in Kyoto . . 97 XXII A Buddhist High-Altar ... 99 XXIII Before the Shrine of lyeasu. . . 100 XXIV At Shiogama 103 XXV In the Forest of Nara .... 104 XXVI Narita Steps 106 XXVII The Garden of Ishi-yama ... 108 XXVIII a Koshoji Gate, Uji 110 XXVIII b A Monastery Garden, Kyoto . .110 XXIX a The Fore-court, Koshoji ... 112 XXIX b Koshoji Garden 112 XXX Wood, plaster, rice-paper, and straw 120 XXXI A Yashiki Gate 122 XXXII Thelri-kawa 124 XXXIII A Modern Zashiki or Parlour . . 127 XXXIV Tokonoma and Chigai-dana . . 128 XXXV A Stately Tokonoma .... 130 XXXVI A Domestic Interior .... 133 XXXVII A Modern State Apartment in the Palace Style 134 XXXVIII Hotel Galleries 137 Illustrations PLATE FACING PAGE XXXIX The Shukinro, Nagoya ... 138 XL A "Tea-house" 140 XLI A Farmhouse 142 XLII A Colour-print of Yeizan ... 176 XLIII Korean Statue, Nara .... 190 XLIV An Armida of the Seventh Century 192 XLV A Seventh Century Bhodisatwa . 194 XLVIo A God of War 197 XL VI 6 A Sculptured Guardian ... 197 XLVII The Incarnation of Power . 198 XLVIIIa A Portrait Bust XLVIII6 A Buddhist Priest Between XLIXa A Young Daimyo Pages XLIX6 An Hieratic Figure La&L6 Two Priestly Portraits f Between LI a & LI 6 Ni-o from Kofukuji Pages 200 200 200 201 202 203 LII A Vision of Fujiyama . . . .212 Impressions of Japanese Architecture CHAPTER I THE GENIUS OF JAPANESE ART THE title of this chapter is ambi- tious and perhaps misleading. I have no intention of trying to express in a few phrases the essence of the esthetic manifestation of a great people, but rather to call attention to the fact that, in the ultimate winnowing, the essential residuum is to Occidental hands impalpable. We may look at, and speak of, and think about the art of Japan, but we can never reduce it to a chronological list and a table of [15] Impressions of Japanese Architecture formulae, as is our wont with the art of our own West. Somewhere, somewhen, two roads diverged in the immemorial past, and they struck out in opposite directions, losing themselves in the jungle of the unachieved. A race, till then united, then divided, the half to the east, the half to the west. With every forward step something of the old community of thought and action and aspiration was cast aside. Divine revelation was as diverse as earthly experience, mind and body were moulded in opposite fashion, the last obvious link of kinship snapped, and when at last East and West met suddenly face to face, the mystery of the severed roads that joined again in a perfect ring was no more baf- fling than were the firmly fixed personalities that were innocent of intention in the round that had brought them together. For thousands of years both had gone on their separate ways, oblivious, severally satis- [16] The Genius of Japanese Art fied. Somewhere, threading the depths of tangled experience, were others acknowledged as kin: sometimes the paths touched, merged, separated again. There was calling across the wild, interchange of stories of adventure, assist- ance rendered, combat joined. But these were only threads of the sundered halves of the rope of life eternally divided far back in the shadowy abysm of the long forgotten. The strands stretched east and the strands stretched west, and between East and West was no meeting of any sort whatsoever. Now the strands have drawn together, East and West; many are lost, broken; some have been knotted again and extended afresh, but where West comes to the meeting with a thick sheaf of gathering threads, East halts at gaze holding a single strand. This is no strained simile: there is some- thing between -Europe and Asia besides a dif- ference of tongues, and explicit comprehen- sion does not follow the mastery of a grammar [17] Impressions of Japanese Architecture and a vocabulary. There is an utter antago- nism of ideals and methods. Neither can you measure wine with a yardstick, nor Yamato- damashii by The Data of Ethics. One stand- ard is inoperative in the case of the other. In the matter of art, for example, all the tests of detail are different. Velasquez and Korin are the diverse sides of a shield, either destructive of other, it would seem at first. And yet going deeper we find that really not only is either supplementary of other, but that away down beneath the lauded and much be- praised show of each is a fundamental soul that is identical, and it is this last unresolvable essence that gives eternal quality to both, not the obvious vehicle that stuns with its palpa- bility, and, to the elegant rabble, is the "thing-in-itself." The circling of the world by the streams of divided life wrought very diverse vestures to cloak and embellish a final reality that was in itself immutable. The Japanese and the [18] The Genius of Japanese Art American, thinking in terms of Nippon and of the United States, stare, uncomprehen- sive and mutually repellant, but when either is able to cast aside the convention race has wrought, understanding is possible, or if not understanding then at least implicit accept- ance. The trouble is, however, that it is almost impossible to say where racial convention merges into racial character, and where this in its turn stops before the universal human, the quality that is one in the Japanese and the European. Art is in so large measure a thing of both character and convention, that it is particularly hard for a man to look through and beyond these things and apprehend the ultimate reality. It is hard enough to lay hold of the final truth in religion or the conduct of life when the modes are aloof and forbidding: hard to do justice to charac- ter when the intricate weaving is of a warp unheard of, a woof unimaginable; but when 19] Impressions of Japanese Architecture art is involved, the task is enormously more difficult. Art is conventionalized imagination: now when this quality which is so largely the fruit of racial experience develops from an inherited tradition that has been changeless through generations unnumbered; when it grows from a system religious in its origin, now expanded until it envelops every form of physical, men- tal, and spiritual activity, and this system one that died out of western civilization thousands of years ago, why the task is arduous indeed. For all the civilization of Japan, and there- fore all the body of her art, is based on a communism that involves the family, the State, and the past, present, and future. Reverence for ancestors, worship of all the dead, recognition of the perfect unimpor- tance of the individual and of the supreme moment of the family, the commune, and the State, these are the deep-laid founda- tions of Japanese character. They are far [20] The Genius of Japanese Art from Western standards, they have made a people as aloof in character, in disposition, in aspiration. All the art of Europe is indi- vidual: all the art of the East is communal. With us, the greatest art, the art of the church-builders, the Venetian painters, the German masters of music, is gauged by its departures and its adventures: with them, the men of China and Korea and Japan, the art is greatest that is most conservative, most faithful to reverend tradition. In a way, Greek and Japanese art are closely akin: each represents the exquisite perfect- ing in every minutest detail of a primary conception neither notably exalted nor highly evolved, yet the result is, in plain words, final perfection. Byzantium, Italy, France, Eng- land, each struck out dazzling flashes of transcendent genius; each was supreme as a radiant, almost Divine conception, but none, not even thirteenth century Gothic, nor fifteenth century Italian painting, was suffered to de- [21] Impressions of Japanese Architecture velop to its highest possible point: each was abandoned when hardly more than sketched in, a new prophet arising to claim univer- sal allegiance, and, after a very few centuries, to inherit implacable oblivion. In Japan one mode, one civilization, held for more than a thousand years, essentially changeless and unchanged. Shinto, Confucianism, Bud- dhism, all beat and broke against the ada- mant of a racial character fixed for ages eternal. Buddhism did, indeed, create Japa- nese civilization and art, but it was only the Divine spark, the Finger-touch of God, that stirred the waiting potentiality into activity. As a religion Buddhism was powerless to bring revolution or fundamental change. Japan is the vortex of the East. Into her has been drawn the essential elements of India, China, Korea: she stands now, pre- served to our own day by the wisdom of Toku- gawa lyeasu, the sole representative of Asiatic civilization. Her art is not only intrinsically The Genius of Japanese Art precious, but infinitely valuable as a record of sociological and spiritual development. I do not mean to imply by what I have said above that it is impossible to judge it by western standards: in so far as these are uni- versal and neither local nor special, Japanese art stands the test as well as that of our own race. Indeed, I am not sure that it may not possess a distinct value in enabling us to dis- criminate between those standards univer- sally accepted, which are fixed and for all time, and those others, equally accepted, but arbitrary, ephemeral, unsound. All art meets and is judged on one common and indestruc- tible basis: but each manifestation possesses numberless other qualities, many of them of almost equal value, but peculiar, intimate, and personal. These must be judged by other standards, and it is here that I think we shall fail in our estimate of Japanese art, since the two races are at present absolutely unable to think in the same terms. If, fail- [23] Impressions of Japanese Architecture ing to apprehend these minor qualities, we can separate them, and lay them, for the time, to one side, so revealing the kernel which contains the very essence of all, we shall be able, if not to judge Japanese art justly, at least to realize the position it takes in the body of art that belongs to mankind as Man. [24] CHAPTER II THE EARLY ARCHITECTURE OF JAPAN JAPANESE architecture is undoubtedly less well known and less appreciated than the architecture of any other civilized nation. Not only this, but it is almost universally mis- judged, and while we have by degrees come to know and admire the pictorial and indus- trial arts of Japan, her architecture, which is the root and vehicle of all other modes of art, is passed over with a casual reference to its fantastic quality or a patronizing tribute to the excellence of some of its carved decoration. Unjust and superficial as is this attitude it is perhaps excusable, for the architecture of Japan being logical, historical, ethnic, is, of [25] Impressions of Japanese Architecture course, profoundly Oriental, and it is as difficult for the Western mind to think in terms of the East, as it is for the same mind to understand or appreciate the vast and splendid fabrics of Oriental thought and Oriental civilization. In nearly every instance those who have written most intelligently of Japan and of her art have shown no rudimentary appre- ciation of her architecture: it is dismissed with a sentence. To the Western traveler it seems only fanciful and frail, a thing un- worthy of study; the shrines of Nikko are assumed to be the highest point attained, and the consummate work of the great period between the seventh and twelfth centuries is ignored. Nikko, Shiba, Ueno, indeed only the temple architecture of the Tokugawa period is considered at all, while Horiuji, Yakushiji and the Ho-o-do of Byodo-in, are completely ignored, and the castle and domes- tic architecture are treated as non-existent. [26] The Early Architecture of Japan This is unjust and absurd: it is as though one presumed to judge the architecture of Italy by the works of the High Renaissance, or that of France by the Flamboyant period; the architecture of the Tokugawa Shogunate has many elements of unique grandeur, while its splendour of colour and decoration are with- out parallel, but it is no more to be compared with that of the Nara, Kyoto, and Kamakura periods than is the work of Palladio with the temples of Athens. As a matter of fact the architecture of Japan is one of the most perfect examples of steady development and ultimate decay - the whole lasting through twelve centuries - that is anywhere to be found. In the West a certain style lasts at most three centuries, when it is superseded by another of quite different nature, itself doomed to ultimate extinction: in Japan we see the advent of a style coincident with the civilization of which it was the artistic manifestation, and then [27] Impressions of Japanese Architecture for twelve hundred years we can watch it develop, little by little, adapting itself always with the most perfect aptitude to the varying phases of a great and wonderful civilization, finally becoming extinct (let us hope only temporarily) after a blaze of superficial glory that led to the imperiling of national civiliza- tion and the submergence of a great and unique nation in the flood of Western mediocrity. Such a progress as this cannot fail to be interesting to the student of art, while the architecture itself, when once it is known, \\becomes a thing of extreme beauty, dignity, and nobility, immensely significant, profoundly indicative of the fundamental laws that under- lie all great architecture. Carefully analyzed and faithfully studied, Japanese architecture is seen to be one of the great styles of the world. In no respect is it lacking in those qualities which have made Greek, Medieval, and Early Renaissance architecture immortal: as these differ among [28] The Early Architecture of Japan themselves, so does the architecture of Japan differ from them, yet with them it remains logical, ethnic, perfect in development. In one respect it is unique: it is a style developed from the exigencies of wooden construction, and here it stands alone as the mosjt^pejiect mode-m weed the world has known. As such it must be judged, and not from the narrow canons of the West that presuppose masonry as the only building material. Again, it is the architecture of Buddhism, and it must be read in the light of this mystic and wonderful system. Finally, it is the art of the Orient, taking form and nature from Eastern civilization, vitalized by the " Soul of the East," the artistic manifesta- tion of the religion of meditation, of spiritual enlightenment, of release from illusion. It is separated from the art of the Western re- ligion of action, of elaborate ethical systems, of practicality, by the diameter of being. Bearing these things in mind, let us con- [29] Impressions of Japanese Architecture sider historically and critically the beginnings and subsequent development of Japanese architecture. Previous to the reign of the Empress Suiko in the latter part of the sixth century, Japan was a comparatively barbarous State, but the mixture of Tartar and Malay blood had resulted in a race that was waiting only for the impulse that should start it on its career of greatness. The ethnic religion was a prim- itive cult of the dead of which the modern Shinto is a somewhat artificial restoration. It was impotent of the highest spiritual good, and when the revelation of Buddhism burst on the people of Japan, an entire race rose suddenly into splendid action. Bud- dhist priests and monks came from Korea to the waiting nation, and with them, at the instigation of Prince Shotoku, came archi- tects, sculptors, and scholars. Nara became the capital: in a few years the monastery of Horiuji was built by Korean architects, and [30] Plate III. THE PAGODA OF HORIUJI. The Early Architecture of Japan of this first great work of art on Japanese soil, the Kondo, Go-ju-to, and Azeku-no- mon still stand, priceless records of the birth of a great nation. (Plate II.) In style they are purely Korean, or rather Chinese, of the Tang dynasty, for the civiliza- tion of Korea was that of Chinese Buddhism, and it is doubtful if any material change had taken place in its acquired architecture, though a distinct refinement was visible in the great school of Korean sculpture that was now to make possible in Japan plastic art of the most notable and supreme type. This Korean or Chinese architecture was, at the time of its advent in Japan, a style that was almost perfectly developed; in simplicity and directness of construction, in subtlety and rhythm of line, in dignity of massing, in perfection of proportion and in gravity and solemnity of composition, it shows all the evidences of a supreme civilization; as must indeed have been the case, for at this time, the [31] Impressions of Japanese Architecture last quarter of the sixth century, China was, without doubt, the most perfectly developed and most nobly civilized of the then existing nations of the earth. This group of buildings, gate, temple, and pagoda is the most precious architec- tural monument in Japan, indeed in all Asia, for it not only marks the birth of Japan as a civilized power, but from it we can reconstruct the architecture of China, now swept out of existence and only a memory. And its artis- tic value is no less; small as they are, these buildings are almost unequaled in Japan for absolute beauty, and they have remained the type from which all the architecture of the nation has developed. The Azeku-no-mon, or Middle Gate, re- mains as it was first built: the lower galleries of the Kondo and Go-ju-to (Plates III and IV) date only from the sixteenth or seven- teenth centuries and grievously injure the proportions of the ancient buildings, while [32] The Early Architecture of Japan the angle supports of the upper roof of the Kondo are of the Tokugawa period, and are also unfortunate. In spite of these addi- tions the extraordinary grace and refinement of the work compel the most profound admi- ration; and at first it seems as though there were nothing more for Japan to do in the line of development, so perfect seems this architecture borrowed from China and Korea: yet further development was possible as we shall see later. Here at Horiuji the technical details are almost beyond criticism. The plan of the Kondo is of the simplest type: a central space open to the cornice and covered by a ceiling of wooden beams, flat, except for a delicate coving at the sides. The clearstory if it may be called so, since it is without windows - is supported by cylindrical columns of wood; the whole is surrounded by an aisle with a sloping roof. Everything is absolutely constructional, and such ornament as there [33] Impressions of Japanese Architecture is, is only applied to the constructive details. The columns have a delicate entasis and the spacing is most refined; the bracketing is straightforward and constructional; the dis- tribution of wood and plaster carefully studied, the vertical and lateral proportions, and the curves of the roofs and ridges are consummate in their delicacy; the colour is of the simplest, dull but luminous red for all the woodwork, the plaster being white, the roofs of green-gray tiles. (Plates IV and V.) These three buildings form but a small part of the enormous monastery of Horiuji, but they are the only ones that unquestion- ably date from the beginning of Japanese civilization. The whole forms a good model of the early Buddhist monastery, with its central group of temple, pagoda, and lecture- hall standing in the midst of a vast, covered kwairo or cloister entered through the great two-story gate, its subordinate shrines, tern- [34] m ^J^& " ' .- - **=. ife r /: %A The Early Architecture of Japan pies, and halls, and its adjoining street of houses for the priests and monks. Apparently the style of the original work has been most carefully followed in all the rebuilding, and though the cloisters, and all the subordinate buildings, are only a few hundred years old, they are, in all probability, perfectly reliable models of the early Korean work. The general plan is noble and dignified, and the grouping and composition consummately deli- cate, though everything is on a much smaller scale than in many of the more recent mon- asteries around Kyoto. The temples con- tain treasures of sculpture that cannot be equaled elsewhere in Japan, while the Kondo shows on its walls remains of most extraor- dinary mural painting that make clear the curious combination of influences that gov- erned the art of China and Korea in the seventh century. This is much more evi- dent in the sculpture of the sixth and seventh centuries than in any other form of art, but [35] Impressions of Japanese Architecture these singular wall decorations show plainly the powerful influence of India, and even that of the decadent classic of Asia Minor; the only absolute trace of this latter quality as it was shown in architecture is the entasis of the columns of the great gate, used here, I believe, for the first and only time. Next in date to the work in Horiuji is the San-ju-to, or three-storied pagoda of Hokiji, not far from Horiuji, and dating from the year 646. In detail this very beautiful little structure is identical with those at Horiuji, and must either have been built by Korean architects, or (more probably) Japanese, who dared not vary an hair's breadth from the perfect model. The vertical dimensions are a little greater in proportion to the width than at Horiuji, and as this is directly in line with the future development of the style, it seems quite possible that this is the work of Japanese architects, and if so the first existing instance in the country. At the [36] Plate VI. YAKUSHIJI PAGODA. The Early Architecture of Japan ruined temple of Horinji, also close at hand, is another three-storied pagoda, the vertical proportions of which are still more drawn out, with yet greater lightness of effect. Still nearer the present shrunken city of Nara lies the temple of Yakushiji, and here we find a pagoda that is not only unique, but, as well, one of the most beautiful structures in Japan, and also the first undoubted work by a native architect (Plate VI). If the pro- totype of so revolutionary a structure existed in China we can never know, but as this triumph of imagination dates from the year 680, a full century after the coming of the Korean architects, and as it is full of charac- teristically Japanese features, we are, I think, justified in accrediting it to native genius, particularly as its date corresponds exactly/) / with that of the highest level reached by the first great school of purely Japanese sculp- ture. This pagoda of Yakushiji is one of the most [37] Impressions of Japanese Architecture daring, original and yet successful works of architecture in Japan; nothing of the delicacy of line, frankness of construction, subtlety of proportion so characteristic of Horiuji is wanting, but in place of the severe and classic masses of the Korean work is an aspiring lightness, a captivating grace that only find a parallel in the medieval architecture of Europe. And yet this consummate achieve- ment was the work of a people separated by hardly more than a century from practical barbarism, and it had already stood five hundred years when Europe emerged from the dark ages and first began her tentative efforts at building a new civilization and a new art. The pagoda of Yakushiji marks the birth of national Japanese architecture; in it may be discovered the germs of its future develop- ment; loftiness and varied grace in place of the somber severity of the Chinese model, daring originality, richness and elaboration [38] The Early Architecture of Japan of detail. Here, for the first time, we find the doubled brackets that were to develop into the splendid system of the Kamakura and Ashikaga periods and ultimately fritter themselves away in the trivialities of the Tokugawa regime. From this single example we may form some idea of the general architecture of the period, but it can only be inadequate. Owing to the perishable nature of the building material, the constant wars that ravaged Japan, and the incessant moving of the Court, nearly every work of architecture dat- ing from the first three centuries of Japanese civilization has been destroyed. All the im- portant temples and all the palaces of the seventh and eighth centuries that cover the Nara period are gone, and all that remains is this one pagoda of a comparatively small temple. Yet at the close of this period Nara covered an area of nearly thirty square miles, and had a population of more than half a [39] Impressions of Japanese Architecture million. Hundreds of temples surrounded it, and the hills were full of monasteries, while the Imperial palace, fashioned probably after the gorgeous palaces of China, must have been a structure of extreme beauty. Of this latter no tradition I believe remains, but judging from the slight changes that took place in temple architecture between the Tenchi and Fujiwara periods, we are justified in finding some hint of its nature in one build- ing that dates from the eleventh century, the Ho-o-do of the temple of Byodo-in at Uji. Before this wonderful building was erected, Japanese architecture had passed through several stages; the first Korean impulse had worked itself out, and from the year 725 on to the beginning of the ninth century there was a steady retrogression both in sculpture and architecture. The only buildings of this period that remain are the small and very simple temples of Toshodaiji, Todaiji and Shiny akushiji, all of which show a primitive [40] The Early Architecture of Japan plan, simple construction, low roofs, and absence of ornament. With the ninth cen- tury came, however, a new impulse, this time directly from China, and at once Japanese civilization leaped to a height unattained before. The Court was removed to what is now Kyoto, and organized on the most elabo- rate Chinese lines: learning, philosophy, the fine arts, manners, became the objects of study for the new and magnificent aristocracy, and a veritable golden age of culture began. This was the period of the Fujiwara, and the best record of its magnificence now left us is this same Ho-o-do at Uji, now a small village, only a few miles from Kyoto. No description and no photograph can give any idea of the almost inconceivable grace and dignity of this unique building. (Plates VII and VIII.) It is in the purest palace style and consists of a central shrine ap- proached from the rear by a long, enclosed corridor, and with open two-story arcades [41] Impressions of Japanese Architecture terminating in low pavilions, reaching out on either hand. In delicacy of proportion and refinement of composition it marks the cul- mination of Japanese architecture; the com- ing centuries were to see structures of far greater size, grandeur, and dramatic quality, but in no instance were they to approach this "Phoenix Hall" in all that makes for refine- ment and classical perfection. Exquisite as this building is from without, one must go inside to learn of the splendid gorgeousness that characterized the work of the Fujiwara period; ruined by neglect and inevitable decay it yet remains beautiful in line, detail, and design. In the days of its glory it must have been a marvel, for all the woodwork of the wonderfully carved and coffered ceiling was covered with black lacquer inlaid with ivory, mother-of-pearl, and silver, while all below was gilding and polychromatic decoration. These, then, are the three temples from [42] The Early Architecture of Japan whose few remains we must learn all that we can ever know of the architecture of the first five centuries of Japanese civili- zation, Horiuji, Yakushiji, and Byodo-in. Carefully studied and without Western preju- dice, they will be seen to indicate inevitably the existence in Japan of a system and school of architecture quite worthy to take its place with the already recognized schools of classical, medieval, and Renaissance Europe. In them one sees at once how unjust must be a judgment of Japanese architecture founded on the shrines of Shiba and Nikko, and the crowded temples of the Tokugawa period that rise in every village in Japan. In every detail the early work has been coarsened and vulgarized; the low roofs with their wonderful curves have risen to gigantic sweeps of blue tile, steep, coarsely curved, and loaded with huge ridges; the bracketing has become a wilderness of tortured carving and joinery, tedious and overloaded: ornament is [43] Impressions of Japanese Architecture no longer constructional, it is arbitrary, and by its very prodigality it becomes cheap and tawdry. So far as the interior is concerned, the results have been by no means so bad, for the Korean work was simple almost for- bidding; and it must be confessed that a temple interior, like that of Chion-in at Kyoto, leaves almost no loophole for criticism, while the inconceivable richness of Shiba and Nikko is yet in perfect taste. The riotousness that occurred in external work never happened to a like degree in the interior, and the plan and details remain simple and closely modeled on the early work. The greatest revolution was in decoration, and instead of the Korean woodwork covered with red oxide of lead, the white plaster and formal wall painting, came an apotheosis of colour. Certain temple interiors are a glory of burnished gold, columns, walls, and ceilings, with just enough black and red lacquer to give the required accent; in others, the black lacquer predomi- [44] The Early Architecture of Japan nates, and the floors and columns are like polished ebony; in others every inch of the fabric is painted in brilliant yet delicate colours. Whatever the treatment, the effect is always splendid and imposing, sometimes, as at Chion-in, unspeakably sublime, and matched, if matched at all, only by St. Mark's in Venice, or the Capella Palatina in Palermo. After the time of the Fujiwara, Japanese architecture certainly degenerated steadily, but decoration advanced with equal rapidity until the opening of the ports by Commodore Perry started the final catastrophe that has involved both architecture and decoration, if nothing else, in final, if not irretrievable, ruin. [45] CHAPTER III THE LATER ARCHITECTURE OF JAPAN TOWARDS the end of the fourteenth century the dynasty of Fujiwara Sho- guns was finally overthrown after almost two centuries of domestic warfare, and a new line was established, that of the Ashikaga, who completely severed themselves from the Im- perial Court at Kyoto, and, building the great city of Kamakura far to the north and near the site of the present capital, began a new and brilliant, though corrupt and chaotic, administration. During the two centuries of internal conflict Japan had almost wholly cut herself off from China, the great source of learning and culture, [46] The Later Architecture of Japan but by the founding of the Ashikaga dynasty intercourse was resumed, and under the influ- ence of the Zen mission temple building began again on new lines, and a recrudescence of Chinese influence came into existence. At this time the Ming dynasty was striving to restore the almost incredible glories of that of the Sungs which had made Hangchow the culmination of world civilization in the twelfth century. For some years Buddhist priests had been coming from China to Japan bring- ing the new gospel according to the Zen sect, and now, with peace established, their work began to show its results. A new epoch of civilization, generally called the Kamakura period, set in, and architecture received a new accession of vitality, reaching its last phase of greatness before the first trace of decay showed itself under the Tokugawa Shoguns. Two sets of buildings are most characteristic of this period; the Zen temples and the palace pavilions of Kyoto. [47] Impressions of Japanese Architecture In the former we immediately see certain deviations from the old types. The arrange- ment of the group of temple buildings is different; there is seldom a pagoda, and the temple and preaching hall stand one behind the other in the centre of the main enclosure; libraries, schoolrooms and monastic buildings surround this space, and oftentimes open cloisters connect them with the central temples, dividing the entire area into three great courts ; minor courtyards with shrines and schools and priests' houses continue the group on either hand in complete bilateral symmetry. In many cases the group of buildings is laid out on a vast and imposing plan, but in almost every instance so many of the buildings have been burned that little idea can be gained of the original design. The gigantic monastery of Obaku-san between Uji and Kyoto, though dating from the middle of the seventeenth century, is perhaps the most complete ex- ample of the great Zen temple in Japan. [48] The Later Architecture of Japan The low and often long temples of the Korean style give place in the Zen architec- ture to buildings that are nearly square, and very lofty inside. A central space reaches high into the roof, which rests on twelve widely spaced columns, often of great size. One and sometimes two aisles surround this central area, and small shrines, chapels, and altars are grouped at the chancel end. The temple itself is raised on a low stone terrace, and the floor is also of stone slabs. Plaster is seldom used, all the work being of wood, and the roofs rise in steep and graceful curves. The system of bracketing is becom- ing more and more elaborate and complex, but carving is still almost wholly absent. This is the type of architecture that became fixed in Japan and persevered until the Tokugawa regime, when it burst into such unexampled exuberance and luxury. Of the palace architecture of this time we have still the fragments at Ginkaku-ji and [49] Impressions of Japanese Architecture Kinkaku-ji in Kyoto. As both these delicate little structures were originally but garden pavilions it is possible that they do not exactly represent the more dignified work of the time, but they certainly bear a close resemblance to the Chinese palaces as they are recorded for us in the screens painted by the great artists of the age. The grandeur and dignity of the Fujiwara or Kyoto style has given place to a lightness and grace that are very charming. (Plate IX.) Originally one of these pleasure pavilions was entirely covered with gold leaf, the other with silver, and in this gorgeous innovation we find the first in- dication of the tendency that was to reach its climax under the Tokugawa. With the end of the sixteenth century came the fall of the Ashikaga, the revolt and triumph of the barons under the adventurer Hideyo- shi, and the almost simultaneous founding of the Tokugawa dynasty by lyeasu, the establishment of the most perfect feudal [50] ^o Plate IX. KINKAKUJI, KYOTO. The Later Architecture of Japan system the world has ever known, the trans- ferring of the capital of the Shogun to Yeddo, and the closing of Japan to the outer world. This tremendous revolution was accomplished within a period of thirty-five years, the over- throw of the Ashikaga marking the beginning, the closing of the ports the consummation of the revolution that cut Japan off from the world and held her so for two hundred and twenty-five years. The epoch which followed was one of industrial development and domestic civiliza- tion. The Tokugawa feudalism was one of the most elaborate and perfect of which we have record, and under it Japan was peace- ful, prosperous, and happy. One fatal error was made by the founders of the dynasty, otherwise so notably judicious and far seeing. There must be no rival power in the State, and therefore not only was Christianity, at the time numbering hundreds of thousands of converts, utterly destroyed, but Buddhism [51] Impressions of Japanese Architecture was violently antagonized, and in its place a revival of Confucianism attempted, an empty system of ethics unvitalized by any religious element. The attempt was successful in a measure, and ultimately led to the blunder of revived Shinto, while Buddhism, out of favour with the nobility and the knighthood, fell back upon the support of the peasantry, with the inevitable results. As a consequence of this sequence of events, architecture, cut off from Chinese in- fluence, and answering to the demands of the new society with all its ostentatious magnifi- cence, burst into a riot of unparalleled decora- tion. The development of the industrial arts made possible a degree of splendour hitherto inconceivable, and for the future, until the opening of the ports sounded the death knell of the ancient regime, architecture was to be merged in decoration, losing little by little its original qualities as a system of con- structive design. [52] The Later Architecture of Japan One curious reaction took place in the shape of a third recrudescence of the Chinese type just at the time of the closing of Japan. Obaku-san near Uji, already referred to, is the great monument of the classical style, and it came as a protest against the almost barbaric richness of the work of Hideyoshi's time. Complete as it is in plan and imposing in design, it is yet weak and inferior in detail, and shows very clearly how self-conscious and affected an imitation it was of the Chi- nese type. This last flicker of classical influence was purely sporadic, and quite impotent to stop the triumphant progress of the luxurious style already formulating itself at Nikko in the shrine of lyeasu. (Plates XI and XII.) In the presence of this bewildering piece of reckless ornamentation one is apt to be blinded by its extravagance to the actual shortcomings of its architecture; but once strip it of its carving, its lacquer, its gold leaf [53] Impressions of Japanese Architecture and polychromatic decoration, and compare it in detail with the work of the Korean period, or even of the Fujiwara and Ashikaga, and it is easy to see how great has been the fall: the roofs are heavy and often coarse in their curves, the roof ridges and ribs have become enormous, crude, and meaningless, the bracketing is fantastic and irrational in its intricacy and has lost the last structural excuse. Above all, the following of the lines, the curve composition, is no longer inevitably good. In the work of the Nara and Kyoto period one may view a building from any point, and by some magical power the archi- tect has so composed his curves that there is not a discord, a lack of rhythm anywhere. (See Plate X.) Under the Tokugawa this is no longer true, and one is constantly shocked at some violent discord in the composition of line. It is quite true that many of the temples of this period, like the Higashi Hongwanji at [54] The Later Architecture of Japan Nagoya, are tremendously imposing, more so in size and general effect than any of the earlier structures, and occasionally there is almost no fault to be found with the com- position of their curves; but too often size is the only reason for admiration. Leave out the question of pure architecture and the Nikko shrines, together with those of Shiba and Uyeno in Tokyo, are marvels of exquisite art. The decoration is masterly, the dramatic and pictorial effect triumphant, but it is the triumph of prodigal decoration, not of architectural achievement. Throughout Japan the majority of temples that now exist date from this period of the Tokugawa Shogunate. None of them ap- proaches the gorgeousness of Nikko, Shiba, and Uyeno, but many are vastly greater id more dignified. In all of them, however, one can trace the progressive coarsening of detail and loss of sense of perfect curvature, until they reach the final point of degradation in [55] Impressions of Japanese Architecture the contemporary Shinto shrine, Shokonsha, and the main temple of the monastery of Zojoji, both in Tokyo. Internally the Toku- gawa temples are less susceptible of adverse criticism, many of them, like Chion-in and Nishi Hongwanji in Kyoto, being models of religious grandeur and solemn splendour. In this respect, as examples of interior decora- tion, the Nikko shrines and those at Shiba may be placed beyond criticism. Every period in Japan has had its fitting artistic expression, sculpture, architecture, religious, historic, and genre painting, and decoration, and the last is the true manifestation of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Of the secular architecture of this period we have many existing examples, all, as was to be expected, characteristic of the dominant feudalism. The great castles of Himeiji, Kumamoto, Nagoya, and Hikone are mag- nificent representations of the feudal estab- lishments of the daimyo, or territorial nobles, [56] The Later Architecture of Japan and it is most regrettable that their palaces in Tokyo, where they were compelled to live a portion of the year, have been destroyed, nothing remaining but the great gates and surrounding barracks. The arrangement of these "yashiki" varied but little: a hollow square, often very large, was formed by the barracks for the daimyo's retainers; these barracks were usually two stories in height, surmounted by low pitched roofs of tiles with the heavy ridges and angle rolls with their clumsy terminals so characteristic of the last stages of Japanese architecture; the walls were covered with black or blue-gray tiles, about eighteen inches square, set diagonally, the joints being protected by great rolls of cement. In the centre of the principal fa9ade was the great gate, used only by the daimyo or by guests of equal station; these gates were the most elaborate and stately portions of the entire group of buildings, and are of two types : the first a single line of gigantic columns of [57] Impressions of Japanese Architecture wood, square, and capped and bound with bronze or iron, supporting a massive system of huge beams that bore the tiled roof. On either side were porters' lodges and rooms for the guard, usually very rich in design and forming a part of the whole composition. (Plate XIII.) The second type was one which took the place of that already described, in case it should have been destroyed by fire; because of some superstition or prejudice, the original gate could never be restored on the same lines. These substitute gates still re- tained the flanking guard-houses, but the main roof was omitted, and the enormous posts with the equally massive cross-bar acted no longer as supports, except for the ponderous gates, studded with big bronze bolt-heads. Inside the quadrangle of barracks came a second for the accommodation of the domestic officials of the household, and finally in the centre of all was the daimyo's yashiki, a plain one-story building, huge in extent, but very [58] x The Later Architecture of Japan simple. A forest of square wooden columns arranged on a unit of six feet formed the frame of the structure, and sliding screens of rice-paper or heavy wooden "fusuma," gor- geously painted and gilded, filled in the spaces between the posts, forming rooms of various sizes. In certain specified places the walls were of solid plaster, but this was unusual except around the place of honour where were the two alcoves called "tokonoma" and "chigai-dana," in the chief rooms. Around the greater part of the house was a narrow gallery, called the "yen-gawa," which by its projecting roof served to protect the rice- paper screens, or shoji, that formed the outer walls of the house. The principal rooms, "jo-dan" and "ge-dan," were often of great size; the former was raised a step above the latter, and at the end were the tokonoma and chigai-dana where the picture for the day, and a choice selection from the art treasures of the daimyo, were exposed. [59] Impressions of Japanese Architecture On one side of the upper room where the lord sat on state occasions were two doors of the most gorgeous workmanship, through which he came from his anteroom. Around these two rooms ran the iri-kawa, or corridor, from six to nine feet wide, forming in fact a portion of the state apartments, though of less honour than the jo-dan. In the Japanese house there is no distinc- tion between parlour, dining-room, and bed- room, so a repetition of the group of rooms already described, together with reception- rooms, kitchens, baths, and rooms for the taking of tea, made up the entire yashiki. The royal palaces are externally simple and monastic (see Plate XIV), but within the decoration is often splendid beyond descrip- tion; gold, black lacquer, carved wood, coved and coffered ceilings, and splendid wall paint- ings making up a whole of extraordinary richness; but in the palace of the daimyo much greater simplicity was the rule, and the [60] The Later Architecture of Japan wood was usually left with a natural satiny surface, while the ceilings were of plain boards delicately veined and coloured, the whole effect being one of great simplicity, reserve, and refinement. In the country castles of the nobles there was a still greater degree of simplicity, the daimyo usually having near by a more domes- tic dwelling on the lines of the Tokyo yashiki, the castle being principally for refuge in case of attack. Many of the castles still remain in an almost complete condition, Himeiji in particular being a most noble structure. If the site were level, vast walls of stone curved upward from a wide moat, crowned by tiled and plastered parapets. Extensive barracks stood within, and in the midst rose the great keep, three or five stories in height, each story somewhat smaller than the one below, the roofs curving outward in noble lines. These keeps were built of enormous timbers, the walls being filled in several feet thick with [61] Impressions of Japanese Architecture wattles and clay and covered outside with fine white plaster. Sometimes they were plain and ungraceful like Nagoya, but often they were wonderfully imposing, and withal graceful, like Himeiji, Kumamoto (Plate XV), or better still Hikone (Plate XVI). I have dwelt at length on the arrangement of the yashiki, for with allowances for the difference in station of the respective owners, it is practically a type of the contemporary domestic architecture of Japan. The system of construction is the same and the arrange- ment of the rooms very similar, except that the state corridor is often absent and the jo-dan and ge-dan have become modest apartments of eight or ten mats in size, and serve as parlour, bedroom, and dining-room as the case may demand. It must be evident that where construction is entirely of wood conflagrations must be pretty certain, and such is the case, a fire that does not destroy a thousand houses hardly [62] The Later Architecture of Japan being considered worthy of chronicling in the daily papers. For the protection of valuables, therefore, a separate and fireproof building is imperative, and every house of any pretension possesses its "kura," or store- house, built of wood and bamboo, but cov- ered two feet thick with clay that effectually resists a conflagration of the utmost fierce- ness. After a big fire in a Japanese city, nothing is left but fine ashes and the scorched but reliable kura. We have now reached the present day, and only a word is necessary as to the archi- tecture under the new regime of Westernism and " progress." Domestic work is still almost wholly on the old lines, so far as the middle classes are concerned: the nobles are building palaces from European designs that would dishonour a trans-Mississippi city or a Ger- man suburb. The public buildings designed by local "foreign" architects are even worse, and the least offensive examples of Western [63] Impressions of Japanese Architecture styles are the work of natives, the Nippon Ginko and the Teikoku Hotel being fairly creditable examples of German classic. Oc- casionally important temples are built in the native style, conscientiously and with fine results in the case of the great Higashi Hong- wanji temples in Kyoto, but usually of the bastard Shinto that marks the Tokyo Sho- konsha already referred to. So far as one can see, the period of good architecture is over in Japan. The native attack on Buddhism two centuries ago was the beginning of the end; the restoration of Shinto was its continuation, and the accept- ance of Western civilization was its consum- mation. For thirteen centuries it has de- veloped as civilization progressed, each period perfecting some special quality, until it reached its climax of splendour under the first of the Tokugawa Shogun. It is now a dead style, a thing of the past, and with all other mani- festations of art in Japan must forever remain [64] > The Later Architecture of Japan so unless some not impossible revolution brings back the great ideals and wholesome principles of the past. We have now considered the historical development of Japanese architecture from its beginning in the sixth century to its ap- parent extinction in the last years of the nineteenth century. Examined so it is seen to follow the lines of all other architectural history, expressing very accurately the chan- ging conditions of civilization. Like other architectural styles it is a consistent, logical development from the conditions that brought it into existence, and it demands and should receive the same respect and study that are devoted to the styles of the West. It is true that, so aloof is it from Western ideals and methods of thought, it can never serve so completely as a model for contemporary work as those styles of Europe with which we in America have such close kinship and sympathy. [65] Impressions of Japanese Architecture On the other hand, it is possible for us to learn many most valuable lessons from it. In the first place we shall see how delicately buildings of all kinds may be made to fit themselves to their surroundings. In this respect the architecture of Japan acknowl- edges no superior. Nothing could be more subtle and sympathetic than the relationship between the temples and pagodas, the castles, cottages, and inns, and their natural surround- ings. In every line and mass the harmony is complete. The buildings seem almost to be a concentration and perfection of the hills and trees of which they seem to be a part. One feels this particularly when looking on any structure designed on. Western lines, no matter how excellent it may be according to European standards. The native work is a part of the country, the foreign is ugly, un- grammatical, offensive. Another quality that is most salient is the exceeding unity and perfection of composi- [66] The Later Architecture of Japan tion either of single temples or of whole groups, either of the exterior or the interior. The whole thing is built up with the utmost subtlety of feeling and delicacy of apprecia- tion until it forms a consistent and united whole. The refinements of line and propor- tion have their equals only in the architec- ture of Greece and medieval Europe. The mere measuring of some one of the older buildings reveals a subtlety of feeling for proportion that is amazing. Such measure- ments show at once that every curve and every line has been developed with the most astonishing care. Still another quality that could be studied to advantage is that of the extreme solemnity of the temple interiors. For impressiveness and deeply religious feeling, together with extreme splendour of colouring and wealth of detail, they are almost unexcelled. The Gothic interiors of Europe have their own quality of awe-inspiring majesty which no [67] Impressions of Japanese Architecture other architecture has ever approached, but for effects of dusky splendour Byzantine and Japanese architecture stand together. It is when we come to the domestic work of Japan, however, that we find more in the way of salutary teaching. Of course the Japanese private house in plan and con- struction is utterly foreign to Western con- ditions and requirements. Indeed, were it not for the amazing hardiness and indiffer- ence to cold which characterize the people, it would hardly do even for Japan, for it is probably a development from Southern types. For a tropical climate it is beyond criticism, but in the cold winters of northern Japan, it leaves much to be desired. It has certain qualities, however, that we could imitate to advantage. One of these is the perfect sim- plicity of each room, with its soft mats, its beautiful wood, its subtle colouring, its re- served and satisfying decoration. A Japanese room is full of repose, and after one has come [68] The Later Architecture of Japan to feel these qualities fully, one remembers with a kind of horror the stuffy chaos of the apartments in a modern American dwelling. Perhaps the greatest lesson one learns in Japan is that of the beauty of natural wood, and the right method of treating it. The universal custom of the West has been to look on wood as a convenient medium for the obtaining of ornamental forms through carv- ing and joinery, the quality of the material itself being seldom considered. In Japan the reverse is the case. In domestic work a Japanese builder shrinks from anything that would draw attention from the beauty of his varied woods. He treats them as we do precious marbles, and one is forced to con- fess that under his hand wood is found to be quite as wonderful a material as our expen- sive and hardly worked marble. In Japan one comes to the final conclusion that stains, paint, and varnish, so far as interior work is concerned, are nothing short of artistic crimes. [69] Impressions of Japanese Architecture In another respect Japanese builders are right and we are wrong. They do not destroy that sense of protection every room should possess, by filling whole sides thereof with plate glass. Instead their windows are of delicate lattice work covered with translu- cent paper, and the result is a light that is soft and pleasant. Nothing can be more absurd than our modern fashion of filling an entire window opening with one or two sheets of glass, particularly when, as happens in cities, there is no possible reason for look- ing out of doors. There are many minor lessons of similar nature which we would do well to learn from the East, and these lessons it is per- fectly possible to take to heart and adapt, without copying the qualities which are ex- pressive of a civilization radically different to ours. Such copying would be affectation, but the profiting by the lessons set before us would be simple common sense. [70] CHAPTER IV TEMPLES AND SHRINES THERE is a certain curious attitude of mind, a legacy from the old days when the mental ports of the West were as inexorably barred as were the territorial ports of the East, that still continues with mis- directed fidelity to look on Buddhism as simply one of the many forms of horrid idolatry lightly to be overthrown by missionary zeal, and on its architectural monuments, the ancient temples that still stand between the western waters of India and the farthest land of Japan, as on the foolish haltings of poor savages, ethnically interesting, perhaps, but most improper, and reprehensible to all right- minded Christian students. [71] Impressions of Japanese Architecture There is another that abases itself before kakimono, cloisonne and jade, netsuke and porcelain, wood-carvings, embroideries, and lacquer, finding them all a revelation of art, but that ignores the architecture and sculp- ture of the land of its artistic idolatry, hold- ing it strange, and therefore impossible. As a religion and a philosophy, Buddhism brought into existence the brilliant civiliza- tion that expressed itself in the vigorous and fanciful character, the noble feudalism, and the exquisite art of Japan, but as the cathe- drals of medieval Europe stand closer to their inspiring cause than the industrial art of the time, so do the temples of Japan ex- press more clearly and truly the power that brought them into being, than do the kaki- mono and netsuke that have monopolized the admiration of students. We are permitted to believe that the time is at hand when this wonderful people is to receive from the West the final gift of the [72] Temples and Shrines Catholic faith, but if this gift is to come at our hands, we must understand that which it is to supplant, not scorn it; we must meet a pagan but lofty civilization on its own ground, and offer our gift, not as to a barbarian tribe of African fetish worshipers, but as the Apostles offered it to the Athenians, respecting what they had come to destroy. For Japan is by no means a Godless nation; she is possessed of two highly developed religious systems, dwelling side by side in perfect harmony Shinto and Buddhism; one of incalculable age, with a thorough system of Christian ethics, and laws of duty and obedience that are almost without rival in the world and that have justified themselves by that marvelous product, Japanese chivalry; one, also vastly old, though dating here from but fourteen centuries ago, a mystic and delicate religious system, a philosophy so profound and at the same time so scientific that it has always commanded the deep respect of all Western [73] Impressions of Japanese Architecture scholars. Together these religions have built up one of the most wonderful of nations, developed a character of exceeding nobility, brought into existence a culture and an artistic spirit without rivals, created and maintained a potent and penetrating civilization. Thousands of temples and monasteries, tens of thousands of priests and religious of both sexes, millions of adherents of every social class, a vigour of devotion that has just created the largest and most costly Buddhist temple in Japan, little shrines in every house- hold, public worship, prayers and pilgrimages are the outward manifestations of a faith the West is striving to supersede. Such an undertaking calls for the very flower of Chris- tian civilization to match the descendants of long lines of knights and nobles, many of whom have obtained degrees at Oxford and Cambridge. Such a priest I had the privilege of know- ing in Kyoto at the great temple of Nishi [74] Temples and Shrines Hongwanji, founded in the mid thirteenth century by Kenshin Daishi. He was a gradu- ate of Oxford, a master of many languages, a careful student of Herbert Spencer, a scholar of the utmost erudition, of noble and knightly blood, a living exposition of high breeding and courtly manners; withal a poet, a philoso- pher, and a connoisseur. As I sat before this calm and courtly eccle- siastic, a model of so nearly all that is admirable in men, surrounded by the master- pieces of the great painters of the seventeenth century, it was impossible to refrain from drawing a contrast between certain of the denominational missionaries I had met and this grave representative of an august phi- losophy, with his slow smile and his un- fathomable eyes, and to wonder how long it would take the man of the West to con- vert him of the East, and to gather into his own particular fold the sheep now beneath the care of the priest of Nishi Hongwanji. [75] Impressions of Japanese Architecture To understand the essential qualities either of Buddhism or "The Way of the Gods" is for the Western mind almost an impossibility; one may read and reread the Sutras and the Kojiki and strive to fathom the meaning of the commentators thereon; there is a final secret, the soul of Buddhism, that has never been written in words, for it cannot be ex- pressed so to the intelligence, and there is a certain quality in Shinto that finds no voicing in its visible shape. But it is at least possible for us to become familiar with the outward forms of this faith, the temples, the sacred art, the liturgies and the ritual, and through these to appreciate in a measure the fact that the power that brought them into being was no wile of Satan, but indeed a partial mani- festation of the God "Who has never left Himself without a witness." Japan is the offspring of two religions, Shinto and Buddhism: the first, one of those forms of tribal or ethnic religions compounded [76] Temples and Shrines of nature and ancestor worship; the second a most exalted form of spiritual philosophy, probably the highest that man has ever achieved. Under the sole dominion of the first, the inhabitants of the Japanese archi- pelago had made no very startling advance, but they had been prepared for the coming of the vitalizing fire of Buddhism, the ground had been made ready, the seed only was wanting. In the year 552 the first wave of the great Buddhist tide of missionary activity touched the shores of Yamato in the shape of certain Korean priests sent by the King of Kudara. Forty years later Prince Shotoku Taishi, regent of the Empire under the Empress Suiko, accepted the new faith, and from that moment civilization began. The great monastery of Horiuji was the first Buddhist foundation, and it was completed substantially in its present shape in 607. Although built wholly of wood, three of the original buildings are still standing, the great [77] Impressions of Japanese Architecture gate, Azeku-no-mon, the main temple or Kondo, and the pagoda or Go-ju-to. The other buildings, though restorations, are accurate reproductions of those destroyed through process of time. Architecturally all are pure Chino-Korean of the sixth century, one of the most ex- traordinary architectural styles in the world, for it is the counterpart of the Romanesque of the south of France, and the two styles bear exactly the same relation to the root style of Greece, with the single exception that in the West there was no change in materials, while in the East there was a re- version to the original and primitive wood. From Athens to Asia Minor, thence to Persia and so to India, architecture, painting and sculpture worked their way back against the sun and over provinces where still remained traces of enormously ancient civilization. Bit by bit the original impulse was modified and took on new forms : the mysterious and mysti- [78] Temples and Shrines cal East entered in, dominated and revolu- tionized the Hellenic impulse, and at last, when the great progression reached China, the genius of old Cathay brought the final change. Mysticism and meditation, the soul of the infinite East, had wrought out of alien shards its own intimate and exquisite habili- ments. In the West action and conduct and the spirit of innovation, driven by dominant Christianity, had transmuted the original Greek through the decadent Roman, into the vigorous, aggressive, practical Romanesque; in the East mysticism and tradition, guided by the subtleties of Buddhism, had wrought their own intimate change. When at last the limit of land was reached and the advance guard of the new life of the East stood on the shores of the confining sea, almost the last vestige of Hellenic forms was gone, and only in the entasis of the columns of the great gate and in the thin folds and studied calmness of the sculptured drapery [79] Impressions of Japanese Architecture of the statues are to be seen the lurking traces of Greek art, and within a few years these also were to disappear, giving free field for the full exercise of the indigenous Japanese spirit. These few little temples on the outskirts of Nara are the most precious architectural monuments of Japan: together with the mar- velous statues of their own and the succeed- ing century, they are priceless documents in the history of the art of the world. From the seventh to the twelfth centuries, China and Japan stood as the most highly civilized countries of the globe, and therefore their art was the most perfect then existing. With the development of monasticism and feudal- ism in Europe, Christian civilization took the lead, but for six centuries the East bore the banner of art and civilization. It is in this light that we must consider the art of Japan, her sculpture, painting, indus- trial art, and particularly her religious archi- [80] Temples and Shrines lecture, as the visible expression of the highest civilization then existing in the world, a civili- zation that was brave, loyal, upright, lofty in its ideals, based on a religion and a philosophy that were in their esoteric aspect "mystic, wonderful," while exoterically they were simple, intimate, and comforting. From the standpoint of the casual traveler, even of the architect, Japanese architecture is at first absolutely baffling; it is like Japanese music, so utterly foreign, so radically different in its genesis, so aloof in its moods and motives from the standards of the West, that for a long time it is a wonder merely, a curiosity, a toy perhaps or a sport of nature, not a seri- ous product of the human mind, a priceless contribution to the history of the world. Partly by inheritance, partly by education, we have been qualified for thinking in one way, and in one way only. From Athens through Rome, Byzantium, the Auvergne, Normandy, the He de France, to Yorkshire [81] Impressions of Japanese Architecture and Somerset, there is running an easily traceable thread of unbroken continuity of architectural tradition, but from Athens through Ionia, Persia, Hindustan, China, and Korea, to Japan, while the line is equally con- tinuous, it is through lands aloof and barred, and by ways that are blind and bewildering. We can think forward in the terms of the West, we can hardly think backwards in the terms of the mysterious East. Yet when the revolution is accomplished and the rebellious mind is bent to the un- familiar course, this strange architecture comes to show itself in its true light. It is more nearly Greek than any other, for it is the per- fecting of a single, simple, and primitive mass by almost infinite refinements of line and pro- portion. The Gothic cathedrals and abbeys of Europe were monuments of mighty genius, unconsciously created under the influence of overmastering emotion: the temples of Horiuji, Nara, Uji, and Kyoto were the result of a con- [82] Temples and Shrines scious and Hellenic striving for the ultimate perfection in line and curve and form. Note in the pictures of Horiuji, Uji, Nara, the sinuous following of line, the steely curves of the roofs, the massing of the shadows, the fretting of the light and shade they are all the final things; beyond them is no further possibility. There is nothing in the Parthenon more keenly perfect than the sweep of the roof angles; nothing in the Erechtheon more graceful and mobile than the Imperial pavil- ion of the Fujiwara, now the Ho-o-do of Byodo-in. But there is a greater quality in these early temples than these that are purely architec- tural; they are full of a spiritual import that is quite overpowering. They breathe mysti- cism and abstraction, they are dreamlike and visionary. Under their shadows alone could one understand a little of Buddhism. In the vast lines of their sweeping roofs, in the ordered symmetry of their sword-like curves, in the [83] Impressions of Japanese Architecture majesty of their lines, the solemn harmony of their composition, there is so much of the dim and occult East that they seize upon the imagination like some subtle enchantment. It is not until we come to the later temples, those of the Fujiwara, Ashikaga, and Toku- gawa Shogunates that we find the wonderful interiors, dim and silent, sweet with incense and splendid with the glory of cinnabar lacquer and beaten gold. These early temples are homely and barren within, gray plaster spotted with ancient Indian frescoes fading softly away, and round columns of bare, unpolished wood. A jealous government has removed the greatest of the statues, and only a few are left to tell the tale of primal glory. The effect comes from the exterior alone; and here if we can once disabuse our minds of the preconceptions of the West, it is power- ful and direct. Proportion, composition, and the following of line, these are the three architectural triumphs of the Chino-Korean [84] Temples and Shrines architecture of Buddhism, and they are so victorious, so ultimate, that we can only admit that the power that brought them into being was a power of beneficence and might. When Buddhism came to Japan, bringing a highly developed style of architecture, it found the racial religion housing itself in huts barbarous in their nature and differing but slightly from the rough dwellings of the people; walls of posts and planks formed the enclosure, and this was roofed with sloping poles forming a steep gable and projecting through the heavy thatch in X form. The ridge was kept in place by transverse logs of unhewn timber, and this was, so far as we know, absolutely all. The temples of Ise, the most holy of the Shinto shrines, are supposed to be exact copies of originals built long be- fore the Christian era, but as the Shinto law is that these same temples must be razed and reconstructed every twenty years, it is quite possible that modifications may have occurred. [85] Impressions of Japanese Architecture In any case they are sufficiently ugly and barbarous. The splendid architecture of China super- seded all this with scant delay, and scarcely an hundred years after the building of the Horiuji temples, the Japanese, emancipated from barbarism, began the work of developing the Chinese style on their own lines. The pagoda of Yakushi-ji is, I think, the oldest existing building in which one finds the native spirit working itself out, and it is a very wonderful building indeed, brilliant in its conception, radical in its originality, yet faithful in its delicate proportions and its masterly composition to the classical type brought from the continent. From this Yakushi-ji pagoda the progress was direct and unbroken through the epochs of Nara, Kyoto, Kamakura, and Yedo, until it culminated and ceased in the overwrought shrines of Shiba and Nikko and Uyeno; but simultaneously and amicably a more or less [86] Plate XVII. A CONTEMPORARY SHINTO SHRINE. Temples and Shrines independent style was developing in the shape of the architecture of Shinto. For the new religion and the old were seldom in- tolerant of each other. Buddhism very wisely met the ethnic religion in friendliness, cast over it something of the glory of its philosophy and the sweetness of its faith, and left it to follow its course, which it forthwith pro- ceeded to do, treading obediently in the steps of the greater power that represented the spiritual achievements of all Asia. Little by little the rude contrivance of Ise became transformed into the comparative elaboration of Izumo, and for centuries Shinto architec- ture differed little from that of Buddhism beyond the fact that it sternly rejected colour, that it was always parsimonious in its giving of carving and other decoration, that it re- fused roof tiles and held by the traditional thick thatch of velvety hinoki bark, and that it retained the semblance of the X rafters and the transverse logs of the ridge (Plate XVII). [87] Impressions of Japanese Architecture Shinto added nothing either to the architec- ture of Buddhism, or that of the world, for the triumphant torii, one of the most perfectly simple, exquisite, and classical forms ever evolved in the art of building, is the creation of Ryobu-shinto, in other words, of Bud- dhism. The primitive torii was simply two vertical posts connected at the top by a cross beam, all of unhewn wood: it possessed no element of beauty whatever. Buddhism, pro- foundly, monumently wise, recognizing the indestructible power of immemorial tradition, made no attempt to sweep away the primi- tive cult, but accepted it, metamorphosed it, cast around it the glory of its own supreme spirituality and won the whole nation. The torii (Plate XVIII), no longer a perch for sacrificial fowl, ugly and barbarous in its details, became the symbol of all that is sacred, and in its exquisite proportions and subtle lines it is wholly worthy of its new function. [88] Temples and Shrines I may be wrong, but it seems to me that there is a lesson here for us. We send our worthy missionaries to Japan, and so far as those of the Protestant denominations are concerned, they only too often begin by con- demning as entirely damnable every truth as well as every pious practise of Shinto and Buddhism. This means absolute failure, and for just so long as this course is pur- sued. The whole civilization of Japan, and the fundamental character of its people, are the product of Shinto and of Buddhism. No group of missionaries can destroy these in ten thousand years. Now a good half of Shinto, and even more of Buddhism, are wholesome, helpful, and true: still more is capable of modification to bring it into har- mony with Christianity. Let us accept these things, win confidence by our charity, and lit- tle by little bring the desired reforms to pass. Let us take the rude "bird rest" and change it into the glorified torii. In twenty years [89] Impressions of Japanese Architecture Japan would be a Christian nation, still pos- sessing the splendid qualities of her national character that we should try to supplement, not to supplant. It is a great artistic catastrophe that an inordinate passion for fighting on the part of the strenuous Japanese, coupled with the perishable nature of their building materials, should have resulted in the almost total de- struction of the religious architecture that came into existence between the last years of the seventh century and the first year of the seventeenth. From the great Fujiwara or Kyoto period, extending from A.D. 700 to the triumph of Yoritomo in 1192, nothing what- ever remains except the marvelous Ho-o-do of Byodo-in at Uji. This exquisite "Phoenix Hall," originally a pleasure pavilion of the splendid Shogun, is now a temple; and as one first sees it in the dusk of early evening perhaps, rising above the dark little tarn clogged with pale iris, it seems like a dream [90] Temples and Shrines or some magical fancy of Kublai Khan. It is a figment of the imagination, not a solid fabric in time and space. Viewed archi- tecturally it reaches the highest level in point of composition and design, taking place with St. Mark's in Venice, Gloucester Cathedral, and the Taj Mahal. Soberness and restraint form its solid foundation, the subtlest feeling for curve-composition vitalizes it into being, and delicate fancy glorifies it as a garment. Once the central hall was one wealth of in- crustation, ebony, ivory, silver, mother of pearl: now it is crumbling and desolate, traces only of decoration clinging to the walls and fretted ceiling. What Japan must have been in the thousand years of the great Fujiwara dynasty we can only conjecture from this one priceless building, rising like the ghost of an empire from the tea fields of Uji. In Kyoto itself three temples only still stand as records of the next two Shogunates the San-ju-san-gen-do, built in 1266 and restored [91] Impressions of Japanese Architecture in 1662, an inferior and valueless structure at best, and the Ginkaku-ji and Kinkaku-ji, the last two pleasure pavilions of the Ashikaga Shoguns. Graceful and pleasing as they are, they are too playful, too essentially domestic in their style, to serve as any indication of the temple architecture of the time. Such temples as there are that date from this period, chiefly those of Kamakura and its environs, have been too completely restored and rebuilt to serve any useful purpose, and we must come down another century to the year 1603, when lyeasu founded the Tokugawa Shogunate and transferred his capital to Yedo. From the two centuries following this date come practically all the existing temples, and they are legion: in style they are very varied, from classical simplicity to a degree of gor- geous elaboration that is almost inconceivable; from an affected reversion to Chinese and Korean types to a daring originality that is without precedent. In one town we shall [92] Temples and Shrines find a vast and imposing structure barren of colour, sparingly touched with carving; in another a little shrine riotous in sculptured wood and covered, every inch of it, with blazing colour and lacquer of gold and ebony and cinnabar. For three fourths of this epoch of two centuries the old laws of proportion and composition held in force, and during this time the Tokugawa temples were almost worthy of equal honour with those of the seventh and thirteenth centuries. Broadly speaking, they fall into three stylistic classes, Enryaku, Ashikaga, and Tokugawa proper. The Enryaku style (Plate XIX) is one based with more or less accuracy on the traditions and drawings of the temples built at the beginning of the Kyoto era by the Mikado Kwammu. This is that style de- veloped by the Japanese themselves from the Chinese norm introduced two centuries earlier. The buildings are low and comparatively simple; there is no carving or painted decora- [93] Impressions of Japanese Architecture tion, and the colour is the simplest; pure white plaster and wood painted with red oxide of lead. This was the favourite style of the temples of the Ryobu-Shinto sect, a friendly and philosophical amalgamation of Shinto and Buddhist theology, swept away about a century ago by a curious and fantastic move- ment toward the restoration of "pure Shinto." Many of the shrines and temples still stand, however, though shorn of the richness of accessories and ritual borrowed from Bud- dhism. The Kasuga temples of Nara are fine examples of this style; and as their flam- ing white and red flashes out in the midst of the enormous cedar trees, hung with fes- toons of purple wistaria, they are certainly picturesque and even beautiful. (Plate XX.) The Ashikaga temples are those that in their largeness of parts, their grandeur of proportion, and their reliance on carving for their decoration, hark back to the reserved work of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. [94] Plate XX. KASUGA GATE, NARA. Temples and Shrines This is the favourite style of the Shin, the greatest of all the Buddhist sects and dating from the year 1224. The Higashi Hongwanji in Nagoya, and the great new temple of the same sect in Kyoto, serve to show the grandeur, even the sublimity, of these mighty structures. The great gates in this particular style are perhaps the most noble of all the different buildings. It really seems as though the perfection of composition, the subtle relation of parts and rhythm of line, had been achieved in these monumental gates. More than any other of the Japanese architectural styles this development of the Ashikaga model seems to be the perfect translation into visible form of the spirit of Japanese feudalism and the equally perfect development of structural form from the qualities of the natural environment. The connection between these brown and gray temples and the forests and fields, rocks and rivers and mountains, is intimate and exact: [95] Impressions of Japanese Architecture as the castles and abbeys of England blend with her landscape and her air, as the nacre- ous palaces and shrines of Venice grow out of the opal sea, as the hot sandstone fortresses of Hindustan rear their blistered walls from the desert sands, or the marble miracles of tomb and pleasure house flash above still pools and in the midst of tropical gardens, so, and with equal intimacy, do these brown and weathered temples rest in the purple shadow of gnarled cryptomeria or lift them- selves from the shoulders of deep-wooded hills. With infinite craft, priests and artists and gardeners have wrought a perfect set- ting for their shrines, piling long flights of stone steps up the broken hillsides, raising ramparts and terraces, training the willing trees into strange architectural forms, blend- ing the whole as a painter blends his colours, composing the lines and masses as he builds his pictorial masterpiece. With the third and most sumptuous de- [96] Temples and Shrines velopment of architecture, or rather decora- tion, the true Tokugawa style, the last de- velopment from the distant Chino-Korean norm, far back in the beginnings of things, a thousand years ago, culminated and crumbled away. Japanese civilization had always ex- pressed itself in some chosen form of art: first of all in sculpture; then, a little later, during the last half of the Fujiwara Shogunate, in literature; then in architecture, under the Hojo and early Ashikaga; then in painting for the last half of the latter dynasty; and finally, in decoration combined with paint- ing, for the first half of the Tokugawa regime. For two and a half centuries, from 1400 to 1650, from Cho-Densu to Korin, Japanese painting had followed a course of almost un- exampled glory. Sesshu, Josetu, Shubun, the immortal Kano Motonubu and the four other masters of the same wonderful house, to- gether with scores of lesser men, had raised Japan to the very highest plane among artistic [97] Impressions of Japanese Architecture nations. Unkei and Hidari Jingoro had made of wood-carving a fine art, not unworthy to stand with the contemporary painting. To- gether, these two arts were in the constant service of architecture and there came a com- plete and radical change in religious build- ing: from the palaces of the Mikado and the nobles the splendid screens and wall paintings, kakimono and ramma, crept into the monas- teries and so into the temples themselves. Gold leaf and burnished lacquer took the place of natural wood and dull colour decora- tion: carved cinnabar lacquer and elaborate metal work engulfed the altars and shrines, and Japanese architecture burst from its brown chrysalis a flaunting butterfly painted with the hues of dreams. Apart from St. Mark's in Venice and the Capella Palatina in Palermo, I know of no religious interiors that can vie with such caves of glory as Chion-in. (Plate XXI.) Words simply fail when an attempt is made to [98] Temples and Shrines describe the unparalleled splendour of such temples. Black lacquer and gold and cinna- bar; chiseled baldachinos of exquisite metal work; massive ropes and tassels of blood-red silk; censers of gold and silver and bronze; great lotus plants sheeted with beaten gold; vestments of stiff brocade heavy with massed embroidery; deep-tongued bells, sonorous drums; strange, unearthly chanting of ton- sured bonzes ; clouds of pale incense it is all like some vision out of the mysterious, in- tangible past, aloof, unapproachable. And nowhere, not for one minute fraction of an inch, is there any failure of faultless art. In St. Mark's are tawdry anilin paper flowers against the pala d'oro. Our Lady of Chartres is decked out in cheap finery of the theatrical costumer. St. Albans cathedral is desecrated by the Brumagem "Gothic" of the modern Vandal, the late Lord Grim- thorpe ; but here in Japan, where, with corrugated iron chapels and trade altar [99] Impressions of Japanese Architecture ornaments we are doing what we can in a religious way to paralyze the art instinct of the last artistic people in the world, the temples themselves still remain virgin and undefiled. If a man wants to see what good art can mean and be when it is unspotted by modernism, he must go, not to Italy, or France or England, but to the Buddhist temples of Japan. (See Plate XXII.) When lyeasu, the founder and first Shogun of the Tokugawa dynasty, died, his son lyemitsu began the erection of the tombs and shrines of Nikko (Plate XXIII), the last word of religious architecture in Japan. With the temples of Shiba and TJyeno and Tokyo they form an episode in themselves, unhealthy, exotic, decadent. That they are in a way supremely beautiful is perfectly true they are the apotheosis of coloured and carved decoration; but it is beauty gone mad, and bursting beyond all bounds. It was precisely what was happening in the West, luxury [100] Temples and Shrines sucking the heart out of art, the fire of genius burning itself away in the enormous pageant of a palpitating aurora. The glory was un- speakable, but the ashes that remained were dry and dead. The fire had burned itself out. Then came the opening of the ports, the revolution, the restoration of the Mikado, the abolition of feudalism, the disestablishment of Buddhism, the rehabilitation of the Shinto anomaly, and the Constitution. Feudal and Buddhist civilization crumbled, and nothing permanent seemed to take its place. Occi- dentalism became a Black Death to the arts of Japan, and for a time the outlook was dreary indeed. Latterly, however, things are brightening a little. Buddhism is pulling it- self together and becoming aggressive. Shinto in its religious aspect is becoming little more than an edict. There is a healthy rebellion against Western canons of painting, and a few strong men are carefully gathering up the [ 101 ] ' Impressions of Japanese Architecture scattered shards of the past, nourishing the flickering fires of art that had not wholly died away. There is a strong revulsion of feeling toward the good artistic models of a few cen- turies ago. From this will result one of two things, either an archeological Frankenstein, soulless, dead, doomed to sudden extinction, or a knitting up of the raveled cord of history; a new lease of life for artistic Japan, a new era of esthetic glory. At present it is im- possible to say what will be the issue. [102] CHAPTER V TEMPLE GARDENS IN the dim gardens of moldering Buddhist monasteries one may still find, as in the temples themselves, hints of the old Japan. The sacred tradition that has preserved the original forms of eighth century architecture through a long sequence of structures built only to be consumed and again restored, has held as well in the surrounding gardens, and though nothing may remain of the ancient originals, save only the fantastic stones (far- sought and eagerly treasured), the curves of the walks are still the same, the placing of the shrubs and flowers and gnarled, dwarf trees unchanged, and even the patterns traced in the silver sand are the patterns of long ago. [103] Impressions of Japanese Architecture They are very fascinating, these temple gardens, and they have a character wonderful in its diversity. Sometimes they are nothing more than the necessary fore-courts of minor temples: a terrace, a few steps, a lantern or two (Plate XXV), a grinning stone dog or benignant image of Jizo "The Helper," and perhaps a crabbed tree or bush of scented box. Then they become solemn and ghostly graveyards crowded with ranks of gray and moss-covered monuments of strangely beauti- ful shapes, leaning, all of them, from the jostling of endless earthquakes; the newer ones yes, and some of those hoary with antiquity blurred by the thin smoke of burning incense sticks and fronted by sec- tions of bamboo holding freshly cut flowers. Again they blossom into the full glory of the stately and hieratic garden, the domain of nature glorified by consummate art, where rocks and sand and water, lotus, iris, peony, azalea and the royal fuji, box and maple, pine [104] Temple Gardens and cherry, are all blended into one wonder- ful setting for the scarlet temple that flames in the midst against its background of forest or serrated hill. Yet, whatever its estate, the temple garden is less a pleasaunce than a framework; it is like every good garden, a modulation from pure nature to pure art. In the old temple of Horenji at Shiogama (Plate XXIV), you may see how finely everything leads up to the lofty temple, and the effect must have been finer yet when the shrine was still Buddhist and before the Shinto priests who now control it raised the rather clumsy torii at the foot of the dizzy flight of steps. Again at Nara, rocks, box, lotus, palm, and pine are all placed just where they will do most honour to the temple itself, and together with this compose into the picture that is perfect and complete. A picture always, you must note: line, texture, form and colour, all are duly and delicately considered, and a space of garden [105] Impressions of Japanese Architecture is composed with all the laborious study that goes to the making of a screen or kakimono. How perfectly the whole thing composes at Narita (Plate XXVI), the curve of the bridge, the sharp angle of the steps, the convolutions of volcanic rock, the clean cleavages of the slate chased with exquisite ideography; and in colour, silver gray slate stones and lichened granite, green bronze, and the deeper green of cryptomeria leaves. Or again in the shrines of Uyeno consider how wisely the garden it- self is reduced to the simplest forms, gravel and flat stones and a few big bronze lanterns. Here the cherry trees are supreme and they are given full sway; flowers and shrubs are banished for they are unnecessary. The great trees do their full work; yet this is good gardening, and quite as legitimate as would be the case were all the flowers of the earth brought under requisition. A Japanese gardener can work with any- thing or almost nothing. [106] Plate XXVI. NARITA STEPS. Temple Gardens There is a legend of a royal garden, built long ago by a man who gave to the task, ten years of his life and half the wealth of a great daimyo, a garden that appealed to every varying emotion of the soul, and worked its will like a great symphony, where only one of the products of the earth was employed, and that was simply and only rocks. Even now these are sought carefully from every province, and some curious or beautiful speci- men is hoarded like a jewel. How valuable, indeed how quite indispensable these may be, can be seen, though imperfectly, from almost any of the illustrations, particularly from those of Ishi-yama-dera. (Plate XXVII.) The name of this ancient temple on Lake Biwa means simply, "The Temple of the Rocky Mountain," for there is a curious outcropping here of black and contorted basalt, and every crag has been used as part of a scheme of gardening. It would be hard to imagine anything more [107] Impressions of Japanese Architecture delicate and crafty than the manner in which the monks have built up their picture. Every native quality of the rock is emphasized and its effect enhanced by a clever and ingenious art. The smooth foreground of shining sand, the fluffy green of the forest, the soft verdure of delicate shrubs sprouting from rocky crev- ices, the smooth velvet of hinoki thatch and weathered wood, the clean angles of chiseled stone, all these things are handled like the colours of a painter's palette, they are placed with discretion, fused and blended, and finally composed into perfectly united wholes. Almost every temple garden has a peculiar quality, some one feature that is dominant and sets the keynote, as it were. Here at Ishiyama it is volcanic rock, in Uyeno it is the cherry, at Kamakura the lotus, at Nara the purple fuji, at Nikko druidic cryptomeria guard the shrines of the dead Shogun. At the Nishi Hongwanji in Kyoto, again, water seems almost to play the principal part, while [108] Temple Gardens at the gardens of the Ginkakuji it is white sand wrought into mounds and delicate pave- ment patterns. Here is "The Platform of Silver Sand" and beyond it "The Mound that Looks Toward the Moon" consecrated by the lordly Yoshimasa and still heaped as for the great Shogun's enthronement, though four centuries and more have passed since he became one with the gods. Whatever the keynote it holds throughout the composition, as at Shiogama the tall gray masts of the cryptomeria are echoed and emphasized by the vanishing lines of the enormous steps, the slim verticals of the white staffs, and the uprights of the granite torii. And how wonderful a thing in itself is this same consummate form of the torii. It is the noblest and simplest gateway ever devised and it adds a crowning touch to many a temple garden, though it is the sign of religious and philosophical primitivism. When scores of these vermilion torii are grouped together [109] Impressions of Japanese Architecture over gray stone steps in the midst of bronze- green cryptomeria, the effect is one of splendid colour hardly to be matched elsewhere. It is not around the great and famous temples that one finds the most alluring gar- dens, but in out-of-the-way spots, in forgotten valleys where foreign feet have seldom trod. Across the river from Uji I found one such garden in an hill temple I had never heard named before, Koshoji. There is a river road up to where the tumbling Ujigawa bursts through a cleft in the hills, and following this one suddenly comes upon a long straight path cut through dense black trees, rising steep from the river, and closed at the summit by a gleaming white Korean gateway. (Plate XXVIII.) As one approaches, nothing is visible but this same gate with its arched opening in the white plastered base, sur- mounted by the intricate bracketing of its curved roof, long, plastered walls reaching away on either hand, and above, the low [110] X Temple Gardens sweeping roofs of gray-green tile, and, in April, as when I saw it, a great cloud of pink vapour poised over all, the amazing blossom- ing of an ancient cherry. One comes out from under the white arch with a sudden catching of the breath. It is not a large temple, indeed it is hardly more than a toy, one of those still, little monasteries asleep in a forgotten eddy of the turbulent river of change; but it is the more charm- ing for all that. The Nishi and Higashi Hongwanji temples of Kyoto, the almost terrifying monster belonging to the latter sect in Nagoya, the complex and amazingly elabo- rate Obaku-san just a little way down the river, these vast and ceremonious structures crush one with the very majesty of their noble architecture; but for charm and fascination and keen appeal, one must search out tiny sanctuaries like this of Koshoji. One enters first a little fore-court sur- rounded by buildings on three sides, the Impressions of Japanese Architecture fourth being filled by the wall and gateway. (Plate XXVIII.) The hondo or preaching hall is in front, a low simple building; on the left is the residence, on the right the library and the bell cage. All the buildings are raised on low stone-walled terraces: there are few flowers, and the gardening is made up almost wholly of box and white sand. Of course there is the great pink tree, but its glory lasts for a short ten days in the spring, and for the rest of the year the scented box is supreme. Nothing could be finer than these great rounded masses of bronze green: they rise from the white sand like tropical islands from a phosphorescent sea, and their clean-cut contours come crisp and fine against the pearly plaster of the convent walls. In this fore-court all is trim and formal, but if you pass through a little gate in the farther left-hand corner, you come upon a very different scene. (Plate XXIX.) Here everything is wildly picturesque, though still Plate XXIXa. THE FORE-COURT, KOSHOJI. Plate XXIXfc. KOSHOJI GARDEN*. Temple Gardens on a tiny scale ; the monastic buildings wander off at all angles until they are brought up standing against the wall of a beetling hill from which the trees lean down, thrusting their twisted branches out over the tiled roofs with their long, keen curves. From under the very temple, it seems, springs a minute mountain torrent threading its way through the midst of the garden at the bottom of a Lilliputian crevasse. Toy stone bridges are flung across it, little trees twisted into most impossible curves and angles jut from its banks, velvety box runs along the mossy stone embankment, and strange little wild flowers seek the edge of the water. There are bronze lanterns and vases also, and on the farther side the moss-blackened grave- stones begin and lead one away over the flat stepping stones to the hill base, then up the slope where the whole forest is full of similar memorials of the dead. This Koshoji is full of some kind of en- [113] Impressions of Japanese Architecture chantment, once there one would never leave. We had heard each evening down at our inn at Uji (our inn that was built far back in .he days of Hideyoshi) the velvety boom of some enormous bell, a sound that seemed to draw one irresistibly to rise up in the still night and search for its source under the great, pale moon. In Koshoji we found the bell, and much more; a little oasis in the desert of steam trams and beer and liberal politics, and we wanted to stay there forever. The old Japan has this charm, and I think it concentrates itself and becomes really quite irresistible, in the form of a scented temple garden in some forgotten monas- tery, where the odour of incense mingles with that of box, where the patterned sand retains the lines of a thousand years ago, where tonsured bonzes in yellow robes move silently through the shed petals of a pink cherry, and a thunderous bell gives tongue at the rising of the moon. [114] CHAPTER VI DOMESTIC INTERIORS WHILE in public architecture, in paint- ing and sculpture, in the industrial arts, and even in the greater part of the domestic architecture of the better class, Japan is fast losing all national quality, the houses of the lower and middle classes still preserve the beautiful characteristics of the old art, so unique, so refined, so wholly ethnic and national. The nobles are making themselves un- comfortable and absurd in preposterous struc- tures designed by third-rate English and German architects, and the same agency is responsible for shocking public buildings, vast in size, fearful and humiliating in design. [115] Impressions of Japanese Architecture Each year exhibitions are held in Uyeno Park where the pitiful attempts of Orientals to copy European modes of painting are held up to the awestruck admiration of those that short-sightedly desire the death of Japanese civilization, and to the pity and dismay of such Westerners as feel the glory of the abandoned art and the futility and folly of the movement that aims to establish in its place a false theory, an alien ideal. Yet there are wise and philosophical men in Japan who fight strenuously against the foolish fashion of Westernism, and are made to suffer for it. Then there are architects who steadily refuse to have anything to do with foreign architecture in any of its forms. Such an one is my old friend, Kashiwagi San, whose house is a faultless model of native architecture, and who now and then builds some delicate and exquisite house for such of the nobility as are still unreconciled to the new era in Japan. Thanks to these men and [116] Domestic Interiors their colleagues, and thanks also to the strong conservatism of the middle classes, Japanese domestic architecture is still a vital art, strong with a life that may last even through the present inauspicious days, and form a basis for more logical work, when the times have changed and national self-confidence is re- stored again. The wonderful power and splendour of Japanese decorative art are a byword. The masterly sculpture of the seventh and eighth centuries is as yet rated only at a part of its value; native architecture is almost wholly unconsidered, or at least is dismissed as flimsy, erratic, undignified. I am sure this latter condemnation is wrong and that the national architecture is just as logical, just as firmly based on the enduring laws of art, as any other style in the world. It is the per- fect style in wood, as Gothic may be called the perfect style in stone. Considered as an ex- pression of profound and subtle artistic feeling [117] Impressions of Japanese Architecture through the mediumship of wood, it demands and must receive recognition and admiration. The great temples are the apotheosis of this system of building, but the private houses are its base, and in them one feels equally the logic of the construction, the clear knowledge of the essential beauty of the material. To the Japanese, wood, like anything that possesses beauty, is almost sacred, and he handles it with a fineness of feeling that at best we only reveal when we are dealing with precious marbles. From all wood that may be seen close at hand, except such as is used as a basis for the rare and precious lacquer, paint, stain, varnish, anything that may ob- scure the beauty of texture and grain, is rigidly kept away. The original cost of the material is a matter of no consequence; if it has a subtle tone of colour, a delicate swirl in the veining, a peculiarly soft and velvety texture, it is carefully treasured and used in the place of honour. [118] Domestic Interiors The same respectful regard is shown towards plaster. With us of the West plaster is simply a cheap means of obtaining a flat surface that afterwards may be covered up in many different ways; with the Japanese plaster is an end in itself, and well it may be! We ourselves know nothing of the possibili- ties of this material. In Japan it has the solidity of stone, the colour of smoke and mist and ethereal vapours, and the texture of velvet. Wood and plaster: these are two of the four components of a Japanese interior. The third is woven straw of a pale, neutral green. This is for the inevitable mats that carpet all the floors. The fourth is rice paper; creamy white, thin, and tough, stretched over the light latticework that forms the windows and the outer range of sliding screens (shoji), or covering the thicker screens ( fusuma) that form the dividing partitions of the rooms. (Plate XXX.) Now and then these fusuma [119] Impressions of Japanese Architecture are covered with dull gold and faintly traced with dim landscapes or decorative drawings of birds and flowers, or else they are wrought with great black ideographs; sometimes the paper is faintly tinted, or varied by an ad- mixture of delicate seaweed, but as a general thing, and except in a noble's "yashiki" or in some house of entertainment, the four materials remain : natural wood, tinted plaster, pleated straw, and rice paper. Not an ambitious collection of materials, and yet for refinement, reserve, subtle colour, and perfection of artistic composition and ultimate effect, I know of few things to com- pare with the interior of a Japanese house. For the extreme reserve that marks the architectural forms is echoed in the furnish- ings; they are few and of the utmost sim- plicity, nothing appearing except such articles as are absolutely necessary, and, inconsistent as it may appear with the common ideas of Japanese society, there is a certain austerity, [120] Domestic Interiors asceticism even, about the native character that reduces this list of necessities much be- low what would be acceptable to Western ideas. A number of thin, flat, silk cushions to kneel on, one or two tansu, or chests of drawers, andon, or lamps with rice paper screens, small lacquered tables a foot square and half as high for serving food, hibachi or braziers, several folding screens, a standing mirror of burnished steel, and dishes of lacquer and porcelain form the entire list, with the exception of cooking utensils and the beds that are rolled up and put away in closets during the day. Under ordinary circumstances, a living-room, even of the best class, contains nothing in the way of furniture except what appears in the tokonoma and chigai-dana. Cushions are produced when the room is in use by day, beds at night, small tables when food is served, and a brazier if the weather is cold, this last apparently as a formality for it has no appreciable effect on the tern- [121] Impressions of Japanese Architecture perature. One would say that the result would be barren and cheerless, but this is not the case, every detail of form and colour being so exquisitely studied that the empty room is sufficient in itself. There is something about the great spacious apartments, airy and full of mellow light, that is curiously satisfying, and one feels the absence of furni- ture only with a sense of relief. Relieved of the rivalry of crowded furnishings, men and women take on a quite singular quality of dignity and importance. It is impossible after a time not to feel that the Japanese have adopted an idea of the function of a room and the method of best expressing this, far in advance of that which we have made our own. From the moment one steps down from one's kuruma and, slipping off one's shoes, passes into soft light and delicate colour, amongst the simple forms and wide spaces of a Japanese house there is nothing to break [122] Domestic Interiors the spell of perfect simplicity and perfect artistic feeling; the chaos of Western houses becomes an ugly dream. Except in the state residence or yashiki of daimyo (Plate XXXI) the entrance to a pri- vate house was usually without distinguish- ing marks, and one alighted at any portion of the narrow veranda or yen-gawa that surrounds the house, but in more pretentious structures the vestibule was a dominant feature and nowadays this emphasis has been borrowed from yashiki and temple and is found in all houses of the better sort. This vestibule is a square porch, open in front, with a wide, curved roof. At the end is a narrow wooden platform from which a big door gives access to the grand corridor or iri-kawa that surrounds and isolates the state apartments. Opposite the door is a low, square, painted screen in a lacquer frame, usually most gorgeously decorated; some- times a dwarf tree stretches its gnarled [123] Impressions of Japanese Architecture branches athwart the burnished gold, or a great branch of blossoms in a precious vase gives a note of splendid colour. The iri-kawa (Plate XXXII) is a corridor from six to twelve feet wide that serves at once as a passageway and as a kind of anteroom to the chief apartment, called jo-dan and ge-dan. When it leaves these rooms of honour its name changes and it becomes the ro-ka or passage- way, giving access to the parlours or zashiki (Plate XXXIII), the anterooms or tamari, the tea-rooms or cha-dokoro. In addition to these rooms are the kitchens, baths, dress- ing-rooms, and servants' waiting-rooms, but no bedrooms as such, for any apartment serves this latter purpose and also that of a dining-room, the beds being made up on the thick floor-mats, the meals brought by the myriad servants to any part of the house and served on many little tables of red and black lacquer. Nor does the arrangement or decoration [124] Domestic Interiors of the rooms differ materially. Posts and beams of natural satiny wood, wonderful plaster of many subtle colours, ceilings of nar- row timbers and delicately grained boards, floors covered with straw mats two inches thick and always three by six feet in size, this is the inevitable setting. In all the chief rooms one end is formed of two alcoves called tokonoma and chigai-dana (Plate XXXIV), the former to hold the picture or kakimono of the day, the other to display the selection of artistic treasures made from the stores ordinarily concealed in the fire- proof kura or " godown." These two alcoves form the places of honour, and in feudal times the daimyo sat in front of them on the floor of the jo-dan, raised a step above the lower half of the room, or ge-dan where guests and retainers assembled to pay their respects. Now the guest is placed nearest the tokonoma while the host chooses a lower station. [125] Impressions of Japanese Architecture In the chigai-dana and tokonoma are con- centrated all the richness and decoration in the apartment. In the ancient palaces and yashiki they were of incredible magnificence, gold and lacquer, carving and precious woods forming a combination of almost un- exampled richness (Plate XXXV) ; but in the modern house, while they remain very beau- tiful they have become comparatively simple and modest. In every case, however, they show to perfection the wonderful artistic feel- ing of the race, for in line and colour and form the combination of picture, flowers, and bric-a-brac is beyond criticism. One picture only is exposed in each room and this is changed daily. Is the master going a-fish- ing? Then some appropriate kakimono is hung in its place. Is it cherry time or the time of chrysanthemums or peonies or any other of the wonderful flowers of Japan? Then this feeling is echoed in the kaki- mono and in the flowers that stand in front. [126] PL| Domestic Interiors The whole basis of artistic combination may be gained in a study of Japanese tokonoma, for in them one finds preserved all the matchless refinement of feeling, all the result of centuries of artistic life that raised the art of Japan to the dizzy height from which Europe and America are now engaged in casting it ignominiously down. In the ultimate analysis a Japanese house is seen to be simply a wide floor raised on posts two or three feet above the ground and matted with woven straw; covered by a low, tiled roof supported on many square posts and then divided into apartments by sliding screens of varying sizes. There are no win- dows as we know them and no doors. Around the outside of the narrow veranda run the amado or storm screens of solid wood, closed tightly at night but pushed back into pockets during the day. On the inner side of this yen-gawa is the sliding wall of trans- lucent rice paper screens, through which the [127] Impressions of Japanese Architecture light comes soft and mellow to the living rooms. Between the inner posts run the solid fusuma that may be removed alto- gether, throwing the whole space into one enormous apartment, should this be desired. In modern times, permanent walls of plaster have taken the place of some of the sliding screens, but the greater part of the dividing partitions still remain temporary and re- movable. Seldom more than six and a half feet high, these fusuma have a space between their tops and the ceiling and this is filled with openwork panels or ramma, often mar- velously elaborate in design, their delicate patterns coming black against the pearly light that glows through the white shoji. (Plate XXXVI.) Faultlessly cool, airy, and spacious in summer, a Japanese house leaves much to be desired in the cold winter of the north, for the wind filters through every crack and crevice and the only heat comes from char- [128] Domestic Interiors coal braziers, beautiful in design but wo- fully inadequate as heating agencies. But the Japanese are a strangely hardy race, and clothed in thin silks sit comfortably in a temperature that would chill an European to the marrow. Only in a bath is it possible for a foreigner to get warm, and here he is parboiled, for the temperature of the water ranges from 110 to 125. A bath in a pri- vate house or hotel in Japan is, at first, some- thing of an experience, for the bathroom is rather more public than any other apartment; in native inns indeed it is often open in front, giving, perhaps, on a court or garden, and it is possible for a guest to boil placidly in his tank and converse amicably with the other guests and the housemaids as they pass to and fro. But what it lacks in privacy the bath makes up in beauty, for it is often fan- tastic in design and elaborate in its decora- tion, with its walls of pierced woodwork, its lofty roof, and its floor of brilliant tiles. [129] Impressions of Japanese Architecture In plan a private house is irregular and rambling to the last degree. The corridors reach off into long perspective, the rooms open out one after another, full of varying light and subtle colour; here and there little gardens appear in the most unexpected places, giving wonderful glimpses of pale bamboo groves and dwarfed trees and brilliant flowers, with silver sand underneath and tiny water courses paved with round pebbles. Great stone lanterns and bronze storks and dark pools of water are arranged with the most curious skill, and from every room one can look always either out to the great surround- ing garden with its thick foliage and wander- ing brooks and curved bridges, or into the little enclosed courts, dim and damp and full of misty shadows. The world offers few experiences more novel and charming than a visit to a Japa- nese house of the better class. The nation itself is hospitality incarnate, and to see this [130] x X X Domestic Interiors at its perfection one has only to possess him- self of a letter of introduction to some con- servative old noble. From the moment his kuruma stops under the great porch he is made to feel that the house is his, the host but an humble agent who has long waited the return of the rightful owner. The 'ricksha rolls swiftly into the outer garden and the brown-legged kurumaya gives a long, wailing cry of warning. Hardly has the 'ricksha stopped when the vestibule doors are slid back and between them appears an old porter in blue-gray silk, kneeling and bowing solemnly until his head almost touches the floor. Shoes are slipped off in the porch, and following the noiseless porter one is ushered into an anteroom to kneel on silk cushions while his card is taken to the master. Presently the fusuma slide softly and a little maid enters, bringing fanciful sweetmeats in dishes of red and gold lacquer; kneeling to open the fusuma and again to close them, for [131] Impressions of Japanese Architecture it is an unpardonable breach of etiquette for a servant to slide the screens standing; she glides away only to return with tea and a tobacco box with its cone of glowing charcoal in fine white ashes. The silence is profound, and there is no sound except, perhaps, the ripple of running water in the garden without, or the splash of a leaping carp in the pool, dark under overhanging azaleas, or purple wistaria with its long racemes of flowers touch- ing the surface of the water. Finally the fusuma open and danna san is seen kneeling and prostrating himself in cour- teous greeting. He enters and, placing him- self on the cushion opposite, bows again with grave dignity and inconceivable courtli- ness. The long formalities of a preliminary conversation are proceeded with to the accom- paniment of tea and pipes, and presently, summoned by a clapping of hands, the maids slide the fusuma and we pass through the wide low corridors to the state apartments. [132] Domestic Interiors (Plate XXXVII.) Fusuma and shoji are wide open and all along one side of the room lies some magical garden, even though the house may be in the midst of Tokyo or Kyoto. One is seldom entertained in a private house, the clubs and restaurants serve this purpose, for there one can have amazing din- ners with music and geisha, but now and then specially favoured mortals dine with my lord in his own residence. Let us suppose this is to occur now. The master claps his hands, the screens open, and several little maids appear, bringing little tables, covered with bowls of porcelain and lacquer. Facing each other, host and guest kneel on their cushions and the tables are arranged between them, the maids placing themselves on one side to be of instant service at any moment, and to fill little cups with hot, aromatic sake. Soups of many kinds, thin flakes of opalescent raw fish, eels, lobster, and fish of every kind and cooked in every way, follow each other in [133] Impressions of Japanese Architecture bewildering succession, and finally rice ap- pears, served from a great lacquer box. Out- side the garden is full of shifting light and subtle colour, here where we are sitting the room is spacious and airy and at every point the eye is refreshed by the most delicate de- tail, the most refined tone, the most perfect repose and reserve. Presently, at a gesture from the master, every vestige of the feast vanishes and we are left to smoke and talk, more intimately now and without the many formalities that are unavoidable at first. When the time for departure arrives, the master himself comes to the door and ser- vants assemble from every quarter to kneel on either side of the platform while host and guest face each other and bow again and again, murmuring the formal phrases of leave-taking, each of which is centuries old and breathes all the courtliness and dignity of a dead epoch, when feudalism was a vital and glorious institution. Shoes are resumed, [134] Domestic Interiors the guest mounts into his kuruma, and as the circle of servants prostrate themselves, rolls away, bearing some gift commensurate with the rank of the host, and the more enduring memento of an unforgetable impression of refined living, courtesy, the product of im- memorial centuries, and hospitality that is genuine in impulse, profoundly grateful to the Western recipient. For the courtesy and simplicity of Japa- nese home life, the domestic architecture forms a faultless setting. It is absolutely frank and straightforward in construction, perfectly simple in its forms, and reserved and refined in its decorations; all the orna- ment is rigidly constructional, while the fur- nishings are of the simplest quality and only such as the nature of the life demands. There is no ornament for the sake of orna- ment, no woodwork or carving not demanded by the exigencies of construction, no striving for picturesque effect through fantastic irregu- [135] Impressions of Japanese Architecture larity, no overloading of unnecessary decora- tion, no confusion of furnishings, no litter of trivial and embarrassing accessories. The spirit of ornamented construction and no other ornament whatever that characterized Greek architecture finds its echo in Asia. As a result the effect is more reserved, refined, gentlemanly, almost ascetic, than is to be found elsewhere. No greater contrast to our own fashion could be imagined. With us the prime object appears to be the complete concealment of all construction of whatever nature by an overlay of independent orna- ment. With wainscot and marble and tiles, plaster, textiles, and paper hangings, we create a perfectly fictitious shell that masks all con- struction and exists quite independently of it. We pile up our immutable little cells in superimposed courses, cut narrow openings in the walls and fill them with flapping doors that are always in the way. We perforate the outer walls with awkward holes and fill [136] Domestic Interiors them with plate-glass in order that we may gaze on a narrow back garden or a narrower street where nothing that is worth seeing ever occurs. With wainscot and drapery and paper hangings we strive for an effect of pro- tection and then nullify it by our plate-glass windows that afford only a garish light, and, in most cases, a view of things not worth looking at. As a result the rooms are chilly and with- out sense of protection in winter, and stuffy and oppressive in summer. The Japanese house is a revelation of the possibilities of exactly the opposite course. It is a perma- nent lesson in the value of simplicity, of modesty, of frankness, of naturalness in art. In the inns and public houses of amusement we find the same qualities that mark the pri- vate house carried a little further. The form, the arrangement, the materials are the same, but with the greater size come also larger opportunities for artistic effects. The [137] Impressions of Japanese Architecture inns are almost always two stories high, never more, and the buildings enclose wonderful little courts surrounded by narrow galleries (Plate XXXVIII), or border on stone ter- races and wandering gardens. There is one hotel at Uji that is a vision of delight, as it climbs along the high bank of a river, with its terraces crowded with blossoming, sweet- scented shrubs that lean over the mossy stone paths and crumbling steps. There is an- other wonderful inn at Hikone that was once the summer pavilion of the great li-Kamon- no-Kami, and its garden is famous through- out Japan. It is only one story high and rambles for an apparently illimitable distance up and down and away at surprising angles, its last outworks perched on the great wall over Lake Biwa, its scores of apartments opening on marvelous views that almost make one forget the beauty of the architec- tural surroundings. The Shukin-ro at Nagoya (Plate XXXIX) has no views, except of its [138] Domestic Interiors own inimitable little courts, but it is the per- fect type of a courtly and hospitable inn, every room being a work of delicate art. All the true Japanese hotels are practically the same as a private house, so far as planning and construction are concerned, and in them a guest has the same privileges as in a dwell- ing, being at liberty to wander anywhere and even change his apartments every day if he like. In accordance with universal practice he eats, lives, and sleeps in the same rooms; if he prefers, and the inn is not crowded, he may choose any vacant room he pleases for his meals, or for his sleeping apartment. The so-called "tea-houses" and restau- rants are of course innumerable, for the Japanese, reserved, silent, even dogged when occasion demands, are by nature a gay and gregarious race, demanding relaxation and amusement and taking it frankly and simply at frequent intervals. In general it is of the [139] Impressions of Japanese Architecture most innocent sort, flagrant immorality being no more prevalent than in any other type of modern civilization. Domestic etiquette holds the home a personal, even sacred possession, and except amongst the ultra-emancipated classes, a guest is seldom received there for any entertainment. For the high aristocracy, the many and exclusive clubs furnish the means of showing courtesy to the friend or the stranger, but the middle classes resort to hotels and restaurants, while the "tea-house" receives every one, high and low. A typical Japanese dinner in some exquisite restaurant on the edge of the river at Kyoto or over- looking the waters of Shinobazu in Tokyo, with delicate food, the music of samisen or koto, unearthly but bewitching songs and the magical dancing of silken geisha, is as be- wildering an experience as usually falls to the lot of man. No less redolent of strange aloofness is rest and refreshment in some country or suburban "tea-house" draped [140] X Domestic Interiors with violet wistaria, showered by cherry petals, or half hidden in fantastic trees and smothering, blossoming shrubs (Plate XL). Here the architecture is, of course, of the simplest, as it is in the thatched farmhouses that crown every province of the Empire (Plate XLI), but it is direct, spontaneous, ethnic, better in fact from the standpoint of art than some of the splendid new examples of an adapted "palace style" of building, examples of which I have shown in Plates XXXIII, XXXIV, XXXV, XXXVII. In another class of public houses the varia- tion from the domestic type is more marked, for they tend to pile themselves up to the loftiest heights, even five and six stories being not uncommon. In these there is usually one great inner garden with hanging galleries and dizzy bridges curving themselves across the void from one side to another. At night when the whole fabric glows with pale light through latticed rice paper, and blood-red [141] Impressions of Japanese Architecture lanterns droop from the gallery roofs, while the air is sweet with the scent of flowers and full of the sound of plashing fountains and the tinkling of samisen, the effect is almost unimaginably dreamy and poetic. But whatever the nature of the structure the same qualities always express themselves. There is always a perfect frankness almost naivete of plan; there is airiness and space and a constant variety of view, but quite with- out affectation or striving after effect; there is a faultless blending of subtle colours, a constant composition of delicate line and graceful form. Above all, there is a soul- reviving simplicity that is infinite in its dig- nity and reserve. [142] X CHAPTER VII THE MINOR ARTS AT the close of the nineteenth century we stood as on a height of land whence we could look backward along the path of human development: a larger view, one more comprehensive and complete, was possible than ever before, and we were permitted to see many things, establish many relation- ships not recognized in the past. Amongst them was the position of art in its relation to what we are pleased to call civilization. The wider view we were then enabled to take gave, I think, something of a shock to our self-satisfaction, for we saw very clearly that the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries had witnessed a steady and un- [143] Impressions of Japanese Architecture broken decline in all the arts but one, the art of music, and also that this decline, vary- ing slightly in the periods of its duration, had extended over the entire world. Retrogres- sion there had been many times in the past, one or two or all the arts had suffered now and then and here and there, but the result- ing inferiority had been relative always be- fore; with us it was absolute. By this I mean that by the middle of the nineteenth century we had sunk to a point lower than ever in history, excepting only in music and in a measure in literature, but even here the loss was actual and measurable, for the great results achieved had been at the hands of isolated individuals and in spite of the general enmity of the great mass of the people. For the first time in the annals of the world art as an instinctive thing, as an heritage of hu- manity, had reached its term. We had sold our birthright, perhaps, though this is heresy, for a mess of pottage. [144] The Minor Arts The consciousness of this startling con- dition came first to the few, and even before the nineteenth century had covered half its allotted course. These few began a feverish search through all the world for the vivifying flame that had flickered and died in the West. They found it at the antipodes, in the then unravaged East, and in one spot, in a little group of hermit islands, in the most ancient and glorious Kingdom of Japan, they found it burning with yet unhindered brightness and they announced their treasure trove with exultation. That was less than fifty years ago, but now the flame has been extinguished also in this its latest sanctuary, and the lamps hang empty of oil and void of light. In the history of the gradual extinction of the artistic impulse Japan stands as the last of nations to forsake its heritage, as it also stands as the first of the nations that now exist to assume these rights and privileges of [145] Impressions of Japanese Architecture civilization. While Europe was wallowing in the banalities of the pagan Renaissance, in- sulting intelligence with the architectural cru- dities of Palladio and Maderna and the pic- torial imbecilities of Guido Reni and Salvator Rosa, Japan was building the shrines of Nikko and painting the palace temples of Kyoto with immortal decorations. Later by two centuries, while the West was producing black walnut and haircloth, plated silver ice-pitchers, and chromo-lithographs, Japan was quietly creating lacquers, cloisonne and embroideries, ivory carvings, screens and kakimono, any single example of which would honour a contemporary museum of art. So also at the beginning the architecture and sculpture of the seventh and eighth centuries in Japan was inconceivably in advance of the rough brutalities of the Europe of that time, then just emerging from barbarism, and so it was to remain for almost five hundred years. The great art of the West is comprised in two brief [146] The Minor Arts periods, one of some three hundred years ending with the Christian era, one of a similar space of time dating from the crusades to the Reformation: the art of Japan lasts un- broken from the middle of the seventh cen- tury to the middle of the nineteenth, a dura- tion of twelve hundred years. It is the most prolonged art-record in the world, and though it passed through many vicissitudes, it never lapsed, remaining always vigorous and true. At different times it expressed itself through different modes, sculpture, architecture, paint- ing, decoration, and "arts and crafts," each in turn serving its purpose as a vehicle of ex- pression for a passion for beauty that never failed. Japanese civilization begins with the year 552 when Korean missionaries brought from the mainland the vivifying spirit of a most exalted religious system, though actually the conversion of Shotoku Taishi, the Constan- tine of Japan, some forty years later, marks [147] Impressions of Japanese Architecture the permanent establishment of Buddhism, that noble union of religion and philosophy that was to be the inspiration of a civiliza- tion and an art destined to endure for almost thirteen hundred years. Art marked the birth of this great civilization as it marked its close, and the temples of Horiuji still stand in enduring record. The architect was a Korean, and the style is the purest Chinese; Chinese also are the painted frescoes of the walls, with a slight Hindoo cast, and the superb sculptures, preserving, through all their orientalism, hints of Hellenic influence. China has always been to Japan what Athens was to Rome; the first influence towards culture, learning, and art came from her, and down even to the sixteenth century there was a constant reference to her on every subject. She remained the perfect standard in letters, philosophy, religion, sculp- ture, architecture, painting, and music, but she was always a guide, not a model for [148] The Minor Arts narrow copying. The germ of every phase of civilization emanated from her, but these germs developed independently, and as a result, while Japan never quite achieved the astounding height of perfect development that was achieved in Hangchow in the twelfth century, she yet produced a more persistent and lasting civilization than was granted to her great mother. All the art of Japan is therefore primarily Chinese, but it is marked by a certain search- ing vitality, a mobility and an almost nervous eagerness that are all her own. As I have said, the first architecture, painting, sculpture, and poetry were Chinese or Chino-Korean, but almost immediately, so fertile was the soil, so powerful the impulse of Buddhism, native Japanese arose to carry on the work and on their own lines. The unknown architect of the Yakushiji pagoda was undoubtedly a Japanese. Tori Busshi, though of Chinese blood in part, was born in Japan early in the [149] Impressions of Japanese Architecture seventh century and was the first of the great sculptors, while Akahito and Hitomaru, who flourished about the year 700, were the first of the famous poets. Kose-no-Kanaoka was the first of the painters; he was much later in time, living during the second half of the ninth century. Komachi, a third great poet, was his contemporary. An hundred years later came Eshin and Jocho, sculptors, and Murasaki Shikibu, the first and greatest of the novelists of Japan. All these were products of the great Fuji- wara period, the first essentially Japanese manifestation of governmental possibilities. The old and primitive patriarchal system had been reorganized on the Chinese bureau- cratic plan in the year 600, but seventy years later the Fujiwara family usurped almost all of the soveregin power and remained domi- nant for four hundred years. This was artistically a period of architecture, sculp- ture, and poetry, and the results were amazing [150] The Minor Arts in their perfection. The sculpture of Japan is almost unknown, but Horiuji, Nara, and Kyoto bear witness to the fact that it ranks with the most perfect in the world; in point of finely studied line it has no superior. Nearly all the Fujiwara architecture has perished, but the exquisite Ho-o-do of Byodo- in still remains a marvel of refinement of proportion and exquisite decoration. Following the fall of the house of Fujiwara came a long period of political anarchy when the rival houses of the Taira and Minomoto struggled for the mastery. During this epoch architecture contrived to develop, but the other major arts languished, nor did they regain any degree of brilliancy under the Ho jo Shogun. Towards the middle of the fourteenth century the Shogunate passed into the hands of the house of Ashikaga, and with the beginning of the fifteenth century came the great burst of artistic genius that, after the early sculpture of the first years, is [151] Impressions of Japanese Architecture the great esthetic glory of Japan. Josetsu was the first of the great school of painters, Chodensu its most famous representative, and these immortals were quickly followed by Sesshu, one of the greatest landscape painters of all time, Shubun and Kano Motonobu, the first of a famous line and a decorative artist almost without a rival. Unkei was meanwhile restoring the glories of the Chinese and Fujiwara sculpture. In the second gen- eration came Iwasa Matahei, Kano Eitoku, and Kano Sanraku. Then the Napoleonic Hideyoshi strode on the stage, overturning the foundations of all established systems, and when he passed like a dying meteor the Tokugawa family assumed the Shogunate. Now came a change, though painting still remained the chosen mode of artistic ex- pression. For a time Korin and the later painters of the Kano family preserved the classical traditions of the Ashikaga school, but in 1750 Okyo and his great pupil Sosen [152] The Minor Arts founded the Shijo school of avowed realists and fixed the popular style that was to con- tinue to the end. In the meantime how had fared the "arts and crafts," the art, that is, of all the people, the art that was the sign of joy in life and in- dustrial vitality, and the proof of the depth to which the current civilization had permeated ? Well, we know that from the very first whatever had been made by any workman had been beautiful. Of course much, nearly all, indeed, that dates from the earliest period, has perished. We know that the arts of the potter, the weaver, and the metal worker had come from China with the sixth-century missionaries, and for the following eight cen- turies had followed the progress of the major arts closely and intimately. But when feu- dalism became an established system at the beginning of the thirteenth century, then came the opportunity of the minor arts, and under the Ashikaga these developed to such [153] Impressions of Japanese Architecture a degree that they themselves actually be- came major arts ; lacquer, porcelain, cloisonne, wood carving, screen painting, embroidery, goldsmithery, metal working, ivory carving, each and all became exalted to a marvelous height, and remained there until the fall of the old regime. The art of Japan falls easily into four great periods : first, the Chinese and Fujiwara epoch lasting from 600 to 1100, when the chosen arts in their order of precedence were sculp- ture, poetry, and architecture; second, the Kamakura period, when architecture alone maintained and even increased its glory: this kind of interregnum lasted three hundred years, from 1100 until 1400; third, the Ashi- kaga epoch, the golden age of art when paint- ing became unrivaled in its perfection while sculpture and the industrial arts followed close behind; fourth, the Tokugawa regime, when architectural decoration, together with the industrial arts, leaped to the front in a [154] The Minor Arts blaze of unexampled glory, architecture show- ing signs of decadence, and painting suffer- ing from the realism that the followers of the Shijo school exaggerated into a prominence that would have shocked its founders. Then Commodore Perry opened the ports, and like a house of cards the marvelous dream- fabric crumbled into ruin. The Shogunate was abolished in 1868, feudalism was de- stroyed in 1871, the wearing of swords was prohibited in 1876, in 1889 the Mikado pro- mulgated the Constitution, and a civilization that had endured for thirteen centuries, a civilization that had produced a national character of singular nobility and an art of almost unexampled beauty, passed away for- ever. Japanese art is now history; as a vital and contemporary power it has no existence. I am supposed to talk to you about the Arts and Crafts of Japan, but if by this is meant a certain few of the minor arts of a people, the task is an impossible one, for in [155] Impressions of Japanese Architecture this sense the arts and crafts do not exist in Japan; there was never really any distinc- tion between the major and the minor arts, a poem, a devotional picture, a statue, a temple is just as much a piece of craftsman- ship as a netuske, or a lacquer box, and a carved ramma or a bronze incense koro is just as much a vehicle of the highest esthetic and spiritual expression as a kakimono by Cho-densu or the Dai Butsu of Kamakura. It was all art; that is, the achievement of the highest visual beauty, the expression of joy in life and exultation in well-doing, and the communication of spiritual and emotional enthusiasm. Art is simply the symbolical expression of otherwise inexpressible ideas, and the Japanese, living in a beautiful land, inspired by an exalted form of religion, and ultimately ennobled by a splendid feudalism that enhanced every inborn trait of honour and chivalry, simply did this better than almost any other people in the world. Art [156] The Minor Arts should be at least the voicing of health, joy, the delight of work, and the conviction of a beautiful religious faith. When conditions are such that all the people are blessed with the possession of these things, then the arts and crafts will flourish, and no hard line will divide them from what are called the major arts. In Japan every man, whether he were daimyo, samurai, or peasant, lived practically out of doors all the time and all the year round, he bathed at least three times a day, and, except at the luxurious close of the Kamakura period when tea-drinking and incense-burning ceremonies tended to pro- duce sloth and effeminacy, every man was active and vigorously busy. Under feudalism this vitality of action became characteristic of the entire race, and as a result there were universal health and perfect joy in We. Japan has always been either an absolute monarchy, a powerful aristocracy, or a splendid feudal- [157] Impressions of Japanese Architecture ism; therefore the principles of law and order except during the Kamakura anarchy have always been universally accepted, and honour, faithfulness, and personal devotion have been supreme. As a result there was an unusually high standard of government and industry of all kinds flourished, so there was general content and a greater continuity of good civil conditions than can easily be found during any similar period in Europe. Finally Buddhism was supreme and its noble ethical system, its profound philosophy, and its intense religious quality worked together to build up strong character and to incite the imagination and the emotions of the people to the highest pitch. No other result than that which actually followed could be predicated from these con- ditions: namely, a kind of life, a mode of thought, a quality of action that made artistic expression inevitable. For art of any kind is not a commodity, it cannot be bought and [158] The Minor Arts sold, it is a result that follows inevitably from certain conditions, and these conditions held in Japan for thirteen centuries as they held in medieval Europe for three centuries. The Japanese were clean, brave, honourable, religious, loyal, and art followed like the blossom and fruitage of a tree. The minor arts, like the major arts, were simply the proper expression, as I have said, of a healthy delight in doing everything just as well as it could possibly be done. Bud- dhism, chivalry, and unflinching loyalty to the King and to the dead, all taught the lesson of faithfulness in small things as well as great. Whatever any workman did, he did as well as it could possibly be done. Ugliness was then, as it is now, a sin; carelessness and cheapness of workmanship were then, as they are now, a crime. The fact that a thing was humble in its function was no reason why it should not be perfect in form and fashioning. The Japanese knew that art [159] Impressions of Japanese Architecture was not an amenity of life, a mere prettiness, pleasing, perhaps, but decidedly a luxury; they knew that it was the mark of the man, the proof of his character, the pledge of his civilization, and therefore they were ashamed to do anything that was not beautiful. This is really all there is to be said about Japa- nese arts and crafts. The forms are new to us, the methods singular, the patterns strange and foreign, but these qualities are super- ficial. Essentially there is no difference but one of degree between the arts of Japan and those of medieval Europe. Unbroken civili- zation, a continuity of tradition, and an ab- sence of religious heresies resulted in training the eye and the hand of the Japanese artisan to a point never attained by his brothers of the West; but the impulse, the motive was the same, and it is this impulse that must be incited again if we are ever to attain once more proficiency in the arts. I said at the beginning of this paper that [160] The Minor Arts with the close of the last century we stood on an eminence from which we could obtain a general view of the recent past impossible to us before. In this view lies a certain space so arid, so desolate, that in a way it cuts us off from the ancient tradition that is ours by right. The second and third quarters of the nineteenth century will stand forever as a kind of Babylonish Captivity, an epoch of horror that isolates us from the past. During that time we sank lower in industrial art, in the art of the race, than ever before in re- corded history, and as a result the mental attitude of the world was seriously changed. We have simply to start all over again, and by the grace of God we will start properly with the industrial arts; but we cannot start from them immediately, we must achieve first of all the industrial, economic, political, and spiritual conditions that will result in- evitably in some form of artistic expression. How we are to do this is not for me to say, [161] Impressions of Japanese Architecture but it must be done, for if we do not express ourselves artistically in all we do, then we are barbarians. In a curious old book written some forty- five years ago by Sir Rutherford Alcock, I find this delicious estimate of Japanese art : "There is much, especially in the province of art properly so called, to which the Japa- nese cannot make the slightest pretension. They cannot produce by an effort works to be compared with the noble specimens of repousse carving from the chisel of a Vechte, a Morel Ladeuil, or a Monti, which the great International Exposition showed : yet the Japa- nese bronze castings are, some of them, scarce inferior in skilled workmanship and mixture of metals to anything we can pro- duce of the same kind. No Japanese can produce anything to be named in the same day with a work from the pencil of a Landseer, a Roberts, or a Stanfield, a Lewis, or a Rosa Bonheur." [162] The Minor Arts To compare the "repousse* artists" Vechte and Morel Ladeuil, whoever they may have been, with Okyo and Hidari Jingoro, and Roberts and Lewis with Sesshu and Kano Motonobu, would be idiotic were it not so laughable; but poor Sir Rutherford will serve very well to show how truly we had sunk in the middle of the century into the pit of perfect barbarism. Later the worthy Eng- lishman tells us why the Japanese are so inferior to Vechte and Morel Ladeuil. He says, "I should say that there was a material civilization of a high order in which all the industrial arts had been brought to as great perfection as could well be obtainable with- out the aid of steam power and machinery." I have quoted thus at length from the ad- mirable Briton just to show how great are our grounds for encouragement to-day. Forty years ago nine men out of ten would have agreed with him, to-day he would stand alone. We know now that steam power and ma- [163] Impressions of Japanese Architecture chinery destroy and not create art, and this is the first battle; but there is yet another and a greater fight that must be won before the way is clear before us, and that is the fight against the heresy that we can have art at any time if we are willing to pay for it, in other words, that art is a commodity, not a result. Ten years ago the Arts and Crafts movement began in England: five years ago its results were the only truly good industrial art in the Western world. To-day the move- ment has spread all over the continent with deplorable results, and in England itself exaggeration, affectation, and artificiality are taking the place of the first true arts and crafts. The Art Nouveau of France and Belgium is worse than haircloth and black walnut, and Birmingham is making arts and crafts furniture by "steam power and machinery." We are building on shifting sands, we are beginning at the top, not the bottom, and we [164] The Minor Arts are playing with a pack of cards. Japan teaches us one lesson besides that of the in- efficiency of steam power as an incentive to art, and that lesson is that healthy living and joyful labour, just economic conditions, good government, a chivalric mind, a fine sense of honour, and a deep religious faith must come first as the rocky base whereon we may build our fabric of noble art. [165] CHAPTER VIII A COLOUR PRINT OF YEIZAN With some thoughts on Japanese painting T is necessary to exercise the tmder- standing in painting, or, as it were, to carry the mind at the point of the brush. To introduce too much is commonplace, and the artist must exercise his judgment in omitting everything superfluous or detri- mental to the attainment of his object. It is the fault of foreign pictures that they dive too deeply into realities and preserve too many details that were better suppressed. Such works are but as groups of words. The Japanese picture should aspire to be a poem of form and colour." (From an eigh- teenth century Japanese essay on painting). "Amongst pictures is a kind called nat- uralistic, in which it is considered proper that flowers, grasses, fishes, insects, etc., [166] A Colour Print of Yeizan should bear exact resemblance to nature. This is a special style and must not be de- preciated, but as its object is merely to show forms, neglecting the rules of art, it is commonplace and without taste. In an- cient pictures the study of the art of out- line and of the laws of taste were respected without attention to close imitation of form." (Shuzan, 1777.) This is not a masterpiece by some giant of the fifteenth century: it is signed by no Sesshu, Korin, or Motonobu: it is a cheap coloured print struck from wooden blocks in the last century, but it says much, per- haps all we can ever understand, of the pictorial art of Japan. # 4* # # $ 4 # Art is absolute beauty: without this there is no art. It is also much more, but this is the beginning, even if it is not the end. What absolute beauty is, Western philosophy does not define, but sane civilization has always recognized it, even if intellectual [167] Impressions of Japanese Architecture demonstration has been wanting. Why one line, or combination of lines, should be beautiful, another repulsive; why one musi- cal phrase should be exalting, another de- basing; why one colour composition should satisfy absolutely, another repel, these are mysteries not even St. Thomas Aquinas can solve. A Bodenhausen "Madonna" and a Japanese kakimono; a march from Faust and the "question motive" from the Ring of the Niebelungen; Bouguereau, and Botti- celli: antitheses, yet why? The philosophy of the East gives a hint: absolute beauty is dual in its nature: mysti- cal manifestation, through unconscious but inevitable selection from myriad lives (for- gotten yet operative), of the failures that were partial only, and that therefore through process of selection and discrimination be- come visible evidences of the best thus far achieved. The best, not of one life, but of millions; higher, therefore, than the best of [168] A Colour Print of Yeizan one. Karma, in a way, yet a Karma that is always good, for it is not humans alone who weave this cord of destiny, but all nature, animate or (as we call it) inanimate: all mental and spiritual forces, art as much as you or I. Also is it, in another aspect, mystical foreknowledge of the final Abso- lute to which we all are tending through incarnation and reincarnation; not only the subliminal composite of the good of all the past, but a leaping on by force of achieve- ment to heights yet unachieved; Karma and Beatific Vision in one. So beauty is some- thing that never was in the past, nor is now, but shall be hereafter, the last resid- uum from the winnowing of experience illuminated by the aura even of Nirvana itself. We may or may not accept the solution of Eastern mysticism: the fact remains that beauty, absolute, never was, and is not now, and is to be found neither in nature nor in [169] Impressions of Japanese Architecture life. If in either of these a thing is dis- covered which seems absolutely beautiful, the fact of discovery proves that it is not absolute, but partial only, and therefore to be accepted merely as material from which beauty by psychological or mystical processes may be evolved. In other words, what we call nature is no more perfect than man himself, but is constantly developing, and imitation or copying of nature is not the registering of beauty, but of the imperfect. Art, therefore, being at least the record of the search for absolute beauty, must, if it is good, avoid the replication of natural facts, since these are in themselves beautiful only in a transitory and ephemeral way. Beauty, then, which we may call the In- timation of the Absolute, is the first requi- site of all art. In this respect nine tenths of all modern "art" fails completely; it is imitation, ingenuity, photography, a record of objective and sociological and psycholog- [170] A Colour Print of Yeizan ical data what you will but it is not art in any true and universal sense. In the pictorial arts beauty is of many kinds: beauty of line, form, colour, light and dark, space composition. You may grow weary searching through the Luxembourg, or any Salon or Academy exhibition before you find a picture possessing all, or even one of these primary notes of true art: you cannot take up a common colour-print made in Japan before 1880 that does not show them all. Again, art is good workmanship, the per- fect adaption of means to an end ; no boggling with uncertainties, no prodigality of effort, everything direct, instantaneous: such work- manship as that of which Velasquez was supreme master, and Michelangelo and John Sargent. Here every Japanese painter is master. Note in the print the swift, sure lines of the scroll, the curves of the sleeves of the woman's gown. The hand of a Japa- [171] Impressions of Japanese Architecture nese is trained like the hand of a clever surgeon, his eye like that of a master mariner, his brain answers as instantly and clearly as that of a great general. Finally, art is the manifestation of the tmattained, the communication of the in- expressible. Without sacrilege, we may say that it partakes of the nature of a Sacrament; it is both a symbol and a medium between the finite, the conditioned, and the infinite, the unconditioned. To revert again to East- ern philosophy, the mind, physical in its nature, deals with those things that fall within the span of a single life, it is built up of experience, of the happenings between the cradle and the grave, it records no more, it can express no more: it is a physical func- tion and this only. But in the second place there is a superior mind, a sublimated con- sciousness, that is the concatenation of myriads of incarnations. It is an attribute of the inextinguishable Karma, it is to the physical [172] A Colour Print of Yeizan mind what man is to the mollusk. In it are fixed to all eternity the records of an infinite past, the seeds of an infinite future. To it are added, life by We, all that is precious and of moment in a sequence of existences. It is the source in man of all imagination, dreams, and visions; of aspirations and ex- altations; of honour, self-sacrifice, devotion: of love, poetry, and religion. We may, if we like, call it the immortal soul. Therefore it is the essential element in man. Art of every kind is its sole means of expression, and while art as art may exist independently of its function as a mode of super-mundane expression and inter-com- munication, it finds, nevertheless, its highest manifestation in this unearthly and sym- bolical language. Man is a plexus of aggregated individuals, yet he has two general natures correspond- ing to the dual mind; the one that is the physical product of a single existence, the [173] Impressions of Japanese Architecture other that is the concentration of millions thereof. The language of the first is the ordinary spoken and written language of a people, that of the second is art. What, it may be said, has all this tenuous theorizing to do with a colour-print by Yei- zan? We of the West, who in looking at a picture search for its qualities of truth to facts as we know them, facts of nature, facts of history; who are taught that cor- rect anatomy is the first requisite in figure drawing, correct archeology in historical work, correct delineation of character in por- traiture, we, on turning suddenly to a Japanese print or kakimono, find nothing of these at first, and argue, therefore, igno- rance on the part of the painter. The photograph and the anatomical chart being our criteria, we find at first nothing but grotesqueness and wilful disregard of patent facts. In other words, we have Muybridged [174] A Colour Print of Yeizan our minds until artistic perception is no longer possible. For actually great Japanese painting pos- sesses all the elements named above; it is in a greater or less degree, varying with the painter, an approach to absolute beauty, of line and line-composition, of colour and colour-composition, of design and of space- composition. Also, in a greater or less de- gree, it approaches technical perfection. The Kano did not "splash at a ten-league canvas With brushes of comets' hair," but they did, so far as was possible to man, achieve complete directness, instantaneous certainty. They knew to an hair's breadth what they were to do, and exactly how they were to set about doing it. The space covered is comparatively small, but in the sure spring and exact touching of the goal Michelangelo himself could not better them. [175] Impressions of Japanese Architecture Finally, there is every reason to believe that in the highest reaches of art, in subtle re- minder and re-creation of the accumulated past forbidden to earthly memory, and in the dim foreshadowing of a future equally forbidden to the physical mind, the painters of Japan far excel those of our own race whom we can know and understand Leo- nardo, Giorgione, Botticelli, Durer, Rossetti. I say there is every reason to believe this, for actually we cannot know, we of the West to whom they of the East are as of another planet. In so far as beauty is in itself a showing forth, and an incentive to, mystical memory of accumulated experience, either of the individual or the race, Japanese art is opera- tive in our own case. When, after long study of a picture or a print, we begin to see how every line, every space, every compo- sition of line, notan, form, and colour is in itself beautiful, then we feel that unmis- [176] .v- H ;'* . Plate XLII. A COLOUR-PRINT OF YEIZAN*. A Colour Print of Yeizan takable thrill, that wistful call from the abyss of the forgotten that declares the half awakening of the mysterious power, our- selves, yet more than ourselves, that hears the cry of the universal and answers, half believing yet half afraid. But for that other attribute of art, the prophecy of the Beatific Vision, here we are on different ground. Leonardo we can under- stand, and Wagner, and Browning. They speak our tongue though through different arts. But the Japanese painters speak in a language and to a consciousness whereof we have neither part nor parcel. Therefore, we can only assume and believe their art to be at least equal to our own in this respect; the tangible proof is wanting, and must ever remain so. Yet even omitting this, we have enough left on which we may found a judgment of Japanese pictorial art. How much of the painting of our own race becomes a vehicle [177] Impressions of Japanese Architecture rather than an end in itself? Not one in an hundred painters assumes the prophetic office, not one in ten of the pictures of those that do is in any sense a revelation: yet the art is good if it is really art, and to be this it must be an expression of absolute beauty, and, if possible, a manifestation of masterly craft as well. The pictorial art of Japan possesses these two qualities in the highest degree. Pure beauty is a prerequisite, good workmanship an almost unfailing accompaniment. For a time there was an attempt on the part of many to discriminate against Japanese paint- ing as "decorative" and therefore not pic- torial. This was necessary if we were to retain a few shreds of admiration for the vast mass of modern painting which pos- sesses no single element of beauty and is in no sense "decorative." It was supposed to be art, however, hence the discrimination. Now, as a matter of fact, every great pic- [178] A Colour Print of Yeizan ture of the past has been primarily "decora- tive." If it had not been, it could never have ranked as a great picture. Tintoretto's "Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne," Michel- angelo's Sistine ceiling, Botticelli's "Spring," Titian's "Sacred and Profane Love," Rem- brandt's "Night Watch," these and an hun- dred other masterpieces are such because they are "decorative," in other words, are masterpieces of pure beauty, either of draw- ing, composition, colour, or of all of these qualities. Each has many other splendid attributes, but it is not the anatomical power of Michelangelo's bodies, the atmosphere of Titian's golden dream, the vital charac- ter in Rembrandt's heads, nor yet his mas- tery of the mysteries of light, that make the pictures great: it is simply and only that they are all manifestations of beauty in some of its noblest modes: all things else are but acts of supererogation, or at best added virtues that are cumulative in their import. [179] Impressions of Japanese Architecture The beauty of a Kano Motonobu, a Sesshu, a Korin, is essentially the same, the beauty in this print of Utamaro is close kin to the beauty in a Filippo Lippi or a Bernardino Luini: the spacing of the lights and darks, the composition, the individual and com- bined lines, the sheer beauty of form in each individual part, all are infinitely studied* perfectly competent, final as far as they go. A Giovanni Bellini may appeal to us more, and it certainly should, for it is of our own race, but this is an accident of blood and has no bearing on the quality of the work in the abstract. Again, we stand in awe before the tech- nique of Velasquez, Tintoretto, Sargent, and well we may : they are past masters of painter- craft, but so are the Japanese; the same test that justifies them of the West vindicates them of the East: it is one impulse, one genius, one achievement. I am not arguing that the arts of Japan, [180] A Colour Print of Yeizan and the pictorial arts in particular, should appeal to us as does the art of our own race: the gulf between East and West is impas- sable. The sculptors of Greece, the painters of Italy, the builders of France and England, were men of our own race, their history is ours, their tongue our tongue. No other art can possibly be to us as this which is our own, but if we isolate ourselves in our Western insolence, denying, for example, the name of art to all pictures not painted in oil, or tempera, on panels or canvas, and framed in carved and gilded wood, then we stamp ourselves barbarians, shut ourselves away from the possibility of an esthetic experience not to be found elsewhere. Nor is condescending patronage a whit less vir- tuous. "A very high type of artistic pro- duction indeed, for an Asiatic race." "Ad- mirable decoration, perhaps the very best, but hardly what one would call pictorial, or High Art." "Wonderful artisans no doubt, [181] Impressions of Japanese Architecture with a marvelous sense of the decorative, but curiously limited in their knowledge of anatomy, modeling, and perspective." Phrases such as these are worse than a frank and brutal denying of the very name of art to the work of the painters of the great Japa- nese schools. Asiatic civilization was for some centuries the highest to be found on earth. There is no "High Art" that is not permanently decorative. If any quality of anatomy, modeling, or perspective has been banished from a Japanese picture, it is merely because this quality, perfectly well understood by the painter, has been deleted simply because it was not necessary to the attainment of the end in view. Those are the replies to the three strictures quoted above. Come back again to the colour-print (Plate XLII): what would it have gained had the head been modeled like a crayon draw- ing from the cast; had the bones declared [182] A Colour Print of Yeizan themselves through the muscles, the muscles through the gown; had the figure been bathed in accidental lights and had it stood before us surrounded by atmosphere, a wonder of perspective? Nothing, so far as pure beauty is concerned, for this lies in its rhythm of line, in its calm, clear spaces, in its juxta- position of lights and darks. The elements it lacks may be assembled to produce equal beauty, the point is that they are not the only Divinely ordained means whereby this may be attained. The East has found others of equal potency; the result, the manifesta- tion of absolute beauty in visible form, is the same. The object, then, of the Japanese painter is the attainment of pure beauty. To him, nourished as his fathers before him for un- numbered generations, on the fundamental doctrine that thought, will, desire, the uni- verse itself, all are illusion, all visible and tangible things are no more than the emana- [183] Impressions of Japanese Architecture tion of rudimentary mind, therefore utterly imperfect and unworthy of perpetuation. He does not search far and wide for a fairer type of face or form, a nobler natural pros- pect. He does not ransack his memory or his sketch-books for notes of pose, gesture, accessories: his pictures are not built up of beautiful elements gathered from many sources and through long periods. This is the method of the West, is now at all events, in the case of such work as possesses any claim whatever to the qualities of true art. Instead he takes any subject, however outwardly commonplace, and then applies to it three processes: Selection, Emphasis, Idealization. Almost instinctively he chooses the essen- tial lines, elements, and qualities, throwing all else away. Of these he lays stress on those that play into his hand for beauty, minimizing the others, and then, either, as we should say, by the exercise of his infallible [184] A Colour Print of Yeizan good taste, or, as he would say, controlled by that mystical elder memory that tests all things by the standards established through myriads of forgotten lives, he goes on to translate his chosen details into terms of the beautiful. Here we return to the first proposition in this, I fear, incoherent essay, that the nature of Absolute Beauty is undemonstrable outside the mazes of oriental psychology and metaphysics. Yet whatever it is, the Japa- nese attains it. In painting, as in architec- ture and in the earlier sculpture, beauty is as omnipresent as it is in the art of Greece and that of the Middle Ages in Europe. Yet it is absolutely impossible to demonstrate this fact in words. If any one can show clearly and scientifically just why St. Mark's is beautiful, St. Peter's hideous, he will do well; yet there is the fact, and here is the fact of consummate beauty in Japanese painting. [185] Impressions of Japanese Architecture And it is this that is all-important. The art of Japan is the art of pure beauty. How achieved, and why, are questions beside the mark. We may by careful study discern wherein this beauty lies; in what kind of lines and what combinations of lines; in what spacing of lights and darks, in what systems of rhythm, echo, and development, in what arrangements and combinations of colour. We may even discover the under- lying laws, if they exist, but for my own part, I am inclined to think that these laws can never be formulated in terms comprehensible by man. Art does not exist by law, at all events by law man-made or uttered by man. It is an inevitable result: if it exists, good; if it is absent no power on earth aimed at its direct creation will avail in the smallest degree. And here follows, as a moral, the story of the Chinese painter, Wu tao-tsz. [186] A Colour Print of Yeizan "Lord," said Wu tao-tsz, prostrating him- self, "my labour is at an end." The King regarded him with scant favour. "Behold," he said, "how the curtain that has hung before the wall of my palace, hiding all sign of your work, still insults my vision. Will you deign to remove it?" "Even so, Lord," and at a touch the cur- tain sunk to the ground. The King started, then stood silent gazing on the wonder before him. It seemed that the wall of the palace had melted away, and in its place was a wide window giving on a land such as no man in earthly life had ever seen before. A wall of pale jade, in- tricately wrought, lay in front, pierced by a gleaming doorway of coral lacquer and closed by gates of chiseled gold. And above, reach- ing off into limitless distance, lay a radiant country of trees and flowers, with cascades of silver water, mountains of marvelous shapes, and clouds like visible dreams. [187] Impressions of Japanese Architecture Temples of ivory, amethyst, and gold flamed in the amber air, and for a moment the King believed he could hear faint chanting and mystical music, scent the perfumes of un- known incense mingling with the odour of rose gardens and jasmine. Finally he spoke. ; 'You have done well, Wu tao-tsz, for you have painted, not this earth, but the very heaven of heavens that is the emanation of the Lord Buddha." "Not so, Lord," and the painter pros- trated himself once more. "This that you see, you have seen before, but only as you have seen the single dew-drops which, gath- ered together, become the immeasurable sea. This is but the veil of what shall be, a poor symbol of the smile of the Ineffable One. Beyond " He knelt, prostrating himself now before the gates. Then in a breath they swung open. Wall, gates, portal dissolved and faded away and for one instant of time lay [188] A Colour Print of Yeizan revealed a land of such wonder and majesty that the vision Wu tao-tsz had wrought seemed but a mean and sordid desolation. The King fell to the ground covering his face with his sleeve, but before his eyeballs were seared by the glory of the Utterly For- bidden, he saw Wu tao-tsz rise and pass into the Vision of the Absolute, saw him melt into the unspeakable radiance of the smile of the Blessed One. When, after long abasement, he ventured to raise his eyes, the gates were closed, nor when he touched them were they other than painted silk. And Wu tao-tsz no man saw ever again on earth. [189] CHAPTER IX A NOTE ON JAPANESE SCULPTURE OF all forms of artistic activity in this most artistic and active of lands, I suppose sculpture is really the least known, the least considered, except in so far as the term might be applied to the work of the industrial artists, the many and nameless masters of the minor arts. Yet in actuality the sculpture of Japan, the plastic or chiseled work, that is, which possesses the universal elements of monumental art, is at least as noble and admirable and as worthy high place beside the achievements of Western art, as are the painting and the industrial arts whose position is now so nearly assured. We admit at last that the Japanese schools [190] Plate XLIII. KOREAN STATUE, NARA. A Note on Japanese Sculpture of painting are worthy of equal honour with those of the Early Renaissance in Europe: the racial impulse and the religion were different and the results are widely sundered in their superficial aspects, nevertheless we know now that the supreme tests of great painting may be applied as safely to the pictures of Cho-densu, Shubun, and Kano Motonobu as to those of Leonardo, Botti- celli, and the Bellini. We are beginning to appreciate the fact that Japanese architec- ture is not a sport of Asiatic barbarism, but a style as logical, articulate, and highly de- veloped as those of Greece and France and England. Of the major arts sculpture alone is left out of the reckoning. Mention the word and nine out of ten men will think at once of the Dai-butsu of Kamakura and the Ni-o that scowl at one from the main gates of the Buddhist temples nothing more. Every one is impressed by the sacred solemnity of the gray-green Presence in the Kamakura [191] Impressions of Japanese Architecture valley, every one is delighted by the grotesque violence and the savage exaggeration of the Deva Kings, but few stop to analyze the artistic elements of the great Buddha, and still fewer realize that back of the threaten- ing wardens of the gates stretches a line of sculptured masterpieces reaching even to the sixth century of the Christian era. Nevertheless this is the case; some day a man will come who will penetrate the dusty gloom of Horiuji, Horinji, Todaiji, Kofukuji, Kofkuji and all the other treasure houses of central Japan, dragging into the light the wonderful examples of sculpture hidden there, search these lines and masses, point out their qualities of everlasting nobility, and add to human knowledge another indeed several other immortal schools of sculpture. For my own part, I have only peered for a moment into these forgotten shrines, brushed a little dust from odd statues here and there, gathered I fear by stealth and [192] Plate XLIV. AX ARM IDA OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY. A Note on Japanese Sculpture the doubtfully justifiable generosity of some good Japanese friends a few poor and faded photographs of two or three out of scores of works of art utterly unknown ex- cept to Japanese students. The impression is lasting, however, and prompts a few random notes, not as a con- tribution to the sum of knowledge of this so little known field of Japanese art, but only, if it may be, to pique the curiosity of others and so lead them to search still further into a field that promises much. Earliest in point of time is a bronze figure formerly in Horiuji but now in the Nara Museum (Plate XLIII). It is of the sixth century: pure Korean, or, if not that, then the earliest of all Japanese work and exe- cuted under Korean orders. In any case, it is Korean in style, and absolutely priceless to any student of the historical development of art. It is a strange, sexless figure, tall and slim, mysterious and baffling to a de- [193] Impressions of Japanese Architecture gree. The drapery is formalized and deco- rative, conventionalism raised to the nth power, but the type and the modeling of the head and hands are almost classical. The pose too, while reserved and formal, has yet a certain suave grace that is most appealing. There are an hundred reasons why this Korean figure is absolutely in- valuable. Not only is it a fine type of pure and law-abiding sculpture, full of beauty and spiritual calm, but it is a priceless ex- ample of that amazing Asiatic modification of an Hellenic norm which proves a rami- fication of classic influence, a persistent sur- vival of the Greek idea, in lands and among people severed from the primal source by almost the whole diameter of being. The influence of Athens on the art of Asia was as great as in the case of Medieval Europe, and the man who will undertake to trace the devious course of this influence from Hellas across the whole width of Asia [194] Plate XLV. A SEVENTH-CENTURY BHODISATWA. A Note on Japanese Sculpture will have a new field full of great possi- bilities. He will also have the certainty of a tedious task, for of the myriad connect- ing links between Phidias and Tori Busshi nearly all have perished. Persia, India, China, and Korea have been swept clean of artistic records, and if we may judge from this single statue in Nara the loss is irreparable. What must have been the art of China, for example, during the first cen- turies of the Christian era, if a thing like this came to a mission station in a comparatively barbarous land from a country that was not the source of civilization, but only a recent triumph of missionary enterprise on the part of China herself, the great mother of civiliza- tions ? Again in this work we see the models on which Japan was to build her art of national scuplture, as in the monastery of Horiuji we see the prototype of her architecture. This sixth-century work in and around Nara is [195] Impressions of Japanese Architecture the beginning of the art of Japan, and its value is correspondingly great. A century later Tori Busshi begins the great line of Japanese sculptors, though himself of Chinese descent and Chinese or Korean training. In his work and that of his seventh -century school, we find exactly what we should have expected: conven- tionalism, or rather formalism, carried into every part of the work, into the body as well as into the vesture ; at the same time an access of decorative quality in line and mass. Ex- cept in the exquisite formalism of the drap- ery little classical feeling remains, and even its vestiges have taken on a cast as Oriental as the faces and figures. As studies of line, pure and consummate, I know few things in sculpture more nearly ultimate than these seventh-century statues of Horiuji and Yakushiji. (Plates XLIV and XLV). With the eighth century we come at a bound into an era of Japanese sculpture, [196] > A Note on Japanese Sculpture national, ethnic, perfectly developed. The first formalism has worked itself out, tra- ditions have been discounted so far as their accidents are concerned. Japan has found herself and announces that fact in perfectly audible phrases. In religious sculpture these traditions still persist, the composition and the lines of the drapery hark back to the early Korean or rather Asiatic mode, the faces have stupefied into conventional ex- pressionlessness : dogma is steadily conserv- ative. On the other hand, even in official sculpture, here and there the bonds are breaking, a certain realism is creeping into the poses and the details, while now and again in the faces, character, typical and un- mistakable, begins to show itself. More or less portrait statues begin to appear in the shape of apotheosized warriors and incar- nations of heroism and force, and here we come at once into a full-fledged school of vital sculpture. Figures such as those in [197] Impressions of Japanese Architecture Plate XL VI are the very embodiment of force, with power and ability in every line. Consider the poise and dash of such a splen- did, sinewy thing as the Incarnation of War, the spring and sweep of the body, the tensity of nerve, the howling savagery of the distorted face conventionalized like a Greek mask; or again, the rigid alertness, the power, concentrated and controlled, in Plate XL VIII. In all of these the bodies are fully articulated, the faces, particularly the last, unmistakably portraits, yet portraits that are more than the effigies of individuals, they are amalgamations of a race, manifesta- tions of national character. Note also the superb armour, almost classical in its lines, without fantasticism or exaggeration, clean- cut, splendid in line, noble in its surface. These are great statues, all of them, works of the highest art: nothing better was ever pro- duced in Europe after the fall of Rome. Plate XL VIII a, also, is a wonder of por- [198] Plate XLVII. THE INCARNATION OF POWER. A Note on Japanese Sculpture traiture, indeed I doubt if anything more full of individuality and character has ever been wrought than these last two heads of the eighth century in Japan. All the work thus far considered has been of the Nara period; of the Kyoto period, which covered the next four centuries until 1192, I have been able to obtain no photo- graphs of the work of the earlier years, but of the tenth century we have such keenly characteristic work as the two portrait studies in Plates XL VIII b and XLIXa; one of a Buddhist priest, the other of a young daimyo. In these we find the same intensity of per- sonality, together with a progressive develop- ment of Japanese qualities, both racial and artistic. The little noble in particular is a perfect masterpiece of sculpture, intimate in character, real to a degree, both in type and detail, decorative in its arrangement of line and the minutiae of its modeling. The old priest, also (Plate L a,) which is of the [199] Impressions of Japanese Architecture eleventh century, is inimitable. Realism is rampant, both in the closely modeled head and hands, and in the minutely studied drapery, but note that this realism, unlike that of the present day, sacrificed nothing of the general to the particular; the statue is an eternal type, not an evanescent photo- graph, yet a portrait withal, intimate and intense. In the Kamakura period, that is, the thirteenth century, all schools seem to meet and yet preserve their identity. We have the hieratic type represented in Plate XLIX b and in the supreme wonder of the Dai- butsu; the school of force and action shown in the two Ni-o from Kofkuji (Plate LI); finally the school of portraiture, an example of which may be seen in the study of a priest by Unkei (Plate L6). This last is just as notable in its closeness to nature as the work of the Kyoto period, and higher praise cannot be given. I think [20011 A Note on Japanese Sculpture the two Ni-o are simply the most marvelous examples of power, action, and Me mani- fested without the smallest sacrifice of sculp- turesque quality I have ever seen. Anatomi- cally they are marvels and show a closeness of observation and a power of selection of significant details that are amazing. And what could be better than the sweep and rush of the drapery, what more perfectly rhythmic and decorative than the composi- tion and drawing of the component folds: this is art, and art of the highest. In a way, however, it is in the hieratic manifestations of religious faith, in such con- summate triumphs as the great Buddha of Kamakura (see Frontispiece), that this period, if not all Japanese sculpture, reaches its culmination. Vast as the statue is, no less than fifty-two feet high, every detail except such as are absolutely necessary is eliminated, and the result is the triumphant apotheosis of the abstract and the universal. As one [201] Impressions of Japanese Architecture comes suddenly before this vision of brood- ing calm, shrined in the green calyx of the everlasting hills, the impression is almost overpowering. It is a lesson in the perfect adequacy of simple means to the greatest of all ends, a final proof that Japanese sculp- ture is a component part of the greatest sculp- ture of the world, a vindication of the claim that may be made for the nameless statuaries of Nippon to stand with those others, who in Europe wrought such masterpieces as the Victory of Samothrace, the King Arthur of Insbruck, the St. Mary of Notre Dame. Long before the Pisani began chiseling out the restoration of sculpture in Italy, back farther before the unknown artist wrought his wonder of Our Lady of Paris, farther still, even before, and centuries be- fore, the Englishman, the first of all the way- breakers of sculpture in Europe, drew from his innermost consciousness the beautiful beginnings of art so long forgotten it was [202] PL, A Note on Japanese Sculpture really new, the Japanese, trained by their Korean leaders and driven by the vitalizing spirit of Buddhism enlivening the embers of an immemorial ethnic religion, were build- ing of themselves a school of sculpture from which no element of greatness was lacking. Enough remains to make possible a recon- struction of the whole wonderful period from the founding of Horiuji, to the fall of Kamakura, eight centuries of progressive greatness. A virgin field, clamorous for the student and the constructive critic. May his advent be no longer delayed. [203] CHAPTER X THE FUTURE OF JAPANESE ART WITH the close of the nineteenth century art as a vital thing, a racial attribute, came to its end in Japan. For thir- teen hundred years it had been an essential part of a varied but unbroken civilization. All true art, all art, that is, which is more than sporadic and episodical, is a component part of the culture of a race. It cannot be cre- ated, it is doubtful even if it may be fostered, consciously at any rate. It is a sign of whole- some life, of the acceptance of high ideals, and of an honest effort, whether successful or not, at putting them into practise. It has never existed without religion of some sort as its supreme impulse and its ultimate goal. [204] The Future of Japanese Art The art of Japan, like the art of Hellenism and of Medieval Christianity, was the natural and inevitable expression of this plexus of conditions and tendencies. It was one of the first fruits of the Buddhist mission of the sixth century, and as that mission within two hundred years fixed a permanent type of lofty civilization in Japan, so did art follow step by step. For another thousand years this civilization continued through many vicissitudes, though never lapsing into, or even tending towards, barbarism. The art history was identical, the modes of its mani- festation were various: now architecture, now painting, then literature, sculpture, the drama, or again the industrial arts. Note, however, that nothing intrinsically bad was ever done, all was good, better, or best. The religious inspiration of Buddhism and the overmastering loyalty of Shinto fixed a type of character, chivalrous, honourable, self-sacrificing, that has persisted without [205] Impressions of Japanese Architecture visible weakening or failure until this day. The same impulses, or the racial character they created, established a standard of art and gave the power of production, that con- tinued also without lapse or halting, not until this day, but until within the memory of men still young. Japanese character is one of the very great forces in contemporary world-civilization: Japanese art, the intimate and exact expression thereof, has ceased. The motive continues; the noble qualities that are clamorous for voicing are growing even nobler, if that were possible, but their great artistic exponent is a thing of the past. The last great racial art has perished from the earth; the chapter is closed. But is the chapter closed? So far as we can see, yes; inexorably: but if so it is a catastrophe compared with which the de- struction of the Alexandrian libraries, the coming of the Goths and Vandals, the sup- pression of the English monasteries, were [206] The Future of Japanese Art but unimportant episodes. From the be- ginning of the sixteenth century in Europe, art as a mode of civilization has been sink- ing lower and lower by successive stages, reaching about 1850 the lowest point recorded in history. Since then, while there have been fitful and sporadic instances of splendid recovery, they have been personal only, never racial (unless we except music amongst Teu- tonic peoples), and the communal nature of art, the only sense in which it is of pro- found importance, was farther from the possibility of restoration than ever before. In Japan, however, communal art, the art which is the heritage of all the people, and is their highest mode of self-expression, had continued unmitigated and undefiled almost a century and a half after it had become extinct in Europe and America. Fifty years ago, when we were prostrate in unexampled artistic barbarism, Japan was still artistically intact: her civilization was [207] Impressions of Japanese Architecture therefore complete and well rounded and might still serve as the cherished flame for the rekindling of the dead fires of the West. No one can say this now. In three cen- turies we have sold our birthright for a mess of pottage. Japan bartered hers in less than forty years. Yet again, and because of the terrible significance of the fact, we must ask, is the chapter closed forever? So far as we can see, yes: inexorably. Architecture has fallen into the hands of tenth-rate German bunglers and their native imitators, who copy so cleverly that their productions are almost as bad as those of their teachers. Painting is now running in European lines; students devote themselves to studies from the cast, the nude, and still life, ultimately learning to turn out exceedingly clever imitations in oil and water colours, which would be credit- able as exhibits in the Royal Academy and the Salon. Sculpture is now purely imita- [208] The Future of Japanese Art live and valuable from the standpoint of the forger. The industrial arts are prosti- tuted to the most pitiful ends, and the cloi- sonne, lacquer, porcelain, and embroideries that now flood the auction rooms of the West are valuable only in their dexterity, and as showing how keenly and quickly a crafty people can grasp and adapt itself to the demands of artistic savagery. The love- liest landscape God ever created is made horrible by rank on rank of ghastly and insolent signs that would raise a howl even in the Midland counties of England, and the bare reaches of Connecticut and New Jersey. "Marching through Georgia" has become a musical favourite with the people, our plays are being translated into Japanese, and the national costume, beautiful, economical, per- fectly adapted to racial type and climatic conditions, is being discarded for trousers, dress skirts, picture hats, aniline coloured fabrics, and derbies. [209] Impressions of Japanese Architecture Is the chapter closed? Yes, so far as we can see, inexorably. And yet a hope remains, for this extraordinary cataclysm has not carried with it the corresponding crash of ethical and spiritual standards. If we found the government of Japan honeycombed with venality and graft; if its industrial system had become an organized oligarchy of in- timidation and spoliation; if the trust and corporation were supreme and implacable, yet accepted by the public with a grin half of envious admiration, half of careless in- difference; if the sanctity of domestic life had crumbled away in corruption; if un- earthly superstitions were doing duty as religious convictions and each was finding hordes of dupes, ready for the bleeding; if war brought protests from high finance and vested interests because their pockets were touched by the blow in self-defence, whilst the ranks of the armies could only be filled by conscription and refilled on account of [210] The Future of Japanese Art desertions, if these were the accompani- ments of the death of art, then indeed we might say with truth, the chapter is closed. These things we have not found, nor any one of them, therefore we are permitted to hope; for the extinction of art in Japan is the result of other causes than the collapse of racial character. There is no canker that has eaten the heart out of Japanese civi- lization, making art no longer a possibility : it is just as sound and wholesome and honour- able and true as it was a century ago. If art is a result, not a product, then the gen- erative conditions are just as vital as they were under the Ashikaga or Tokugawa Sho- guns. For once art may occur again as the result of conscious volition; the question is, will it have the chance, may we expect this as one of the fruits of victory? It is possible : more than this, of course, no one can say, but Japanese character, as it [2111 Impressions of Japanese Architecture is discovering itself to us, makes the thing conceivable. When the ports were opened a curious situation developed: two civilizations con- fronted each other, of equal antiquity, yet utterly diverse. To the East the West was barbarism, and vice versa. The latter was contemporary, therefore immeasurably the stronger. The former was perfectly con- scious of its own superiority in many things, but it found itself absolutely unable to meet its giant tyrant on anything approaching equal terms. The languages were different, therefore the weaker, the cloistered recluse, set himself to master the tongue of the power- ful spoiler. Since the day of the by courtesy called "Battle" of Shimonoseki, one object has been before the Japanese as the goal of every thought and every act: to meet the West on its own field and win recognition for themselves as one of the Great Peoples and one of the Great Powers. [212] Plate LIT. A VISION OF FUJIYAMA. The Future of Japanese Art Pride, national self-respect, is the heritage of every Japanese: this people was deter- mined to prove its equality with any people of the West. It has achieved its object in less than half a century, and by so doing written in history one of the most amazing and romantic records of all time. The method adopted was far different to that in vogue in the West. No effort was made to crush the fact down the throats of the scoffers : this would have resulted simply in extinc- tion. Instead, and the story is too well known to need detailed repetition, Japan quietly assimilated every quality of the West, except its religion and its political corrup- tion; no task was too great; first failure only meant second attempt and victory. One by one all the methods, and some of the manners, of nineteenth-century Europe and America were taken over, assimilated, and made a part of what may be called exoteric Japan. Everything but the fundamental princi- [213] Impressions of Japanese Architecture pies of the race was discarded, and even those were sometimes masked and hidden away. Finally the monstrous treaties were revised and the first victory was won. The war with China promised a second victory, recognition as an equal, the end and aim of it all, but, at the very moment of final achieve- ment, three nations leagued themselves in a shameful bond, not only to rob the victor of the signs of victory, that were a small matter, but to humiliate a triumphant na- tion and deny to her once more admission amongst those who thus proved, not that Japan was their inferior, but that she was what she had never claimed, immeasurably their superior. The fact was clear to all but Russia, Ger- many, and France, but sentimental recogni- tion was not enough, so Japan set her teeth and went to work again. For ten years she prepared to fight Russia, just that and nothing more. We knew this in Japan [214] The Future of Japanese Art eight years ago, but in the West no one really thought this supposedly "little country" could dare such a thing. Well, the truth is sufficiently evident now, and if defeat should happen to follow again, unless the race were utterly exterminated preparations would continue for twenty years, or a cen- tury. In the end one result only is possible. The great contest may end in final victory to-day or to-morrow. If so, if Japan at last steps forward, one of the great civilized Powers of the earth, recognized as such by all the world, what will be the result ? Many things in which no man could avow his faith and escape the stigma of insanity; but there is one that may develop and this may be said fearlessly, and that is the absolute sloughing off of the absurd habiliments of Western and Westernized art, and the re- birth of the art of Japan in all its original splendour. As I have said above, if the outward trans- [215] Impressions of Japanese Architecture formation of Japan had involved the de- struction of character, the loss of ideals, this could not be said, but Japanese charac- ter is intact. It has been overlaid by many thicknesses of strange vesture, but these may prove only defensive armour, protecting the wearer from the blows of a novel and unfamiliar assailant. Commercial trickery, political liberalism, free thought, and atheism, these are evils that exist, and there are many others; but it is well within the range of possibility that all may prove merely tem- porary expedients, since they are not natural evolutions from the psychological history of the people, but have been assumed arbitrarily, and, unless they have instilled a fatal virus into the social organism, an assumption for which there is no justification in fact thus far, may be as arbitrarily cast aside. The politician who argues of "natural rights," the slender aristocrat who wears tan shoes and a derby hat, the shop-keeper [216] The Future of Japanese Art who cheats one smilingly and with exquisite taste, the geisha who demands champagne rather than sake, the peasant woman who clothes her child in a knitted woolen jacket made in America and dyed a poisonous magenta with aniline dyes, the soshi who spits contemptuously as you pass by all these are of one ilk, they are all varied mani- festations of a national movement for national recognition. They may go no deeper than this: to those who know the first rudiments of Japanese character and few can know more it is perfectly conceivable that every itemized Westernizer in the nation is secretly scornful of the things he outwardly glories in, and laughing meanwhile within himself at the credulity of the innocent foreigners who do not see that it is all no more than a rather unsavoury, but also indispensable, means to an end. Japan has borrowed much from the West that she well never throw away, but these [217] Impressions of Japanese Architecture are the solid materialities: steam and elec- tricity and industrial machinery; medicine, surgery, sanitary systems; the organization, maintenance, and utilization of an army and navy. Civilization of a noble type is more nearly possible with than without these, therefore Japan has made them her own and established her title through a better use of them than was made by those who brought them into being. But the waste and slag and refuse of scientific and industrial civilization, the nox- ious emanations of our great seething ferment of life, these are of no use to Japan when her victory is won, and these the hope shines out again may go. We have destroyed three fourths of the valuable things of life through misusing the mighty engines we have fashioned, now these marvelous creations fall into new hands: is it madness to believe that in Japan may be solved the problems of making science [218] The Future of Japanese Art and industrialism minister to the noblest ideals, not to the meanest; create beauty of thought and life and conduct instead of working against it? I believe that the morrow of victory will show the beginning of a new dispensation. Nothing of Westernism that is fundamentally good will be discarded, but instead there will be a swift and startling recrudescence of nationality, of "Yamato Damashii," test- ing every new thing, not by the measure of opportunism, but by the standards of sound, religious, and beautiful civilization. Japan is effectually disguised, but Japan is there, underneath, and in due time the disguise will be thrown off. When this day comes, there will occur certain changes that will be very shocking to our sensibilities, for a time at least. Many of them will be radical and superficially reactionary; they will appear in the laws and the Fundamental Law, in education, in commerce, in manufacture. [219] Impressions of Japanese Architecture Japan will say to the Powers of the West, "Gentlemen, I thank you; you have forged for me the weapons with which I have justi- fied my claim to be considered a great, civi- lized Power. In many ways, however, I consider my own civilization as superior to yours, and I shall now revert to these better ways, after an experience which, if not always savoury, has been invariably instructive. Though I have already paid your price (a heavy one) for all you have sold me, I have no grounds for complaint, and you are heartily welcome to learn of me as I have learned of you. Particularly shall I be glad to demonstrate to you that liberty necessarily destroys neither manners nor laws; that the whole is greater than the part, and that chivalry and self-sacrifice are the founda- tions of the State as well as of society; that beauty, whether of act, or custom, or costume, or handiwork, is a means of discriminating between a civilized man and a barbarian. [220] The Future of Japanese Art Finally, I shall be glad to show you that knowledge does not destroy faith." Is the chapter closed ? Yes, but not, perhaps, inexorably. We are dealing with a non-Aryan race, with a type of mind of which we know almost nothing, with a civi- lization untouched by any of the influences that have molded our own; anything is possible. At the same time there exist cer- tain fundamental qualities which mark the whole human race, while into the considera- tion comes an immemorial ancestor wor- ship, reverence for the dead and pride in racial achievements that must influence very radically every action of the Japanese people. For those reasons, I believe that racial in- stinct and moral conviction will result in a sudden and amazing return to all that was good in the old Japan, including, of course, its art. There are signs of this even now. The laws compelling the assumption of European dress on certain occasions have [221] Impressions of Japanese Architecture been greatly relaxed. Professor Okakura and men of his great stamp are fighting for the conservation of national ideals in painting. There is a visible revolt against the shock- ing architecture that in the name of Euro- peanism has defiled the land : in spite of occa- sional absurdities of fashion the drama and music are still comparatively sound. A word from the right source, the one supreme source, the Mikado, would send the whole ridiculous card house of Western art and Western manners crumbling into instantane- ous collapse. Will the word be spoken? I firmly believe so, for the Emperor Mut- suhito has shown himself always, not only a wise sovereign, but the very incarnation of the spirit of Japan. He knows even better than we of the West how infinitely his coun- try and his people will gain by a dignified and self-respecting resumption of much that for the time has been cast away. Such a course would fix Japanese civilization as an The Future of Japanese Art indestructible entity for another period, and world civilization would gain thereby. Finally, it would command the respect and frank admiration of the West, and no one could say again, "The Japanese are clever, but only as imitators." When the hour is ripe, I believe the word will be spoken. [223] INDEX Absolute beauty, Eastern solu- tion of mystery of, 168; first requisite of art, 170. Architecture of Japan, mis- J'udged, 25; example of per- ect development, 27; one of great styles of the world, 28; Chino-Korean style of, 81; classical traces in, 36; destruc- tion of early, 39; becomes merged in decoration, 52; curve composition in, 54; modern domestic, 62, 115; modern domestic, debasement of, 63; critical estimate of, 65; lessons to be learned from, 66; proportion in, 66; simplicity in domestic, 68; use of natural woods in, 69; sense of pro- tection in domestic, 70; classi- cal traces in, 79; spiritual im- port in, 83; primitive Shinto, 85; destruction of early, 90; perfect style in wood, 117, 118, Architectural styles, sequence of, East and West, 82. Art of Japan, fundamentally one with that of Europe, 18; based on communism of her civiliza- tion, 20; greatest when most conservative, 21 ; standards established by, 23; Western discovery of, 145; last to be extinguished, 145; and that of Europe in the eighth century, 146; and that of Europe in the sixteenth century, 146; prima- rily Chinese, 149; four periods of, 154 ; fostering conditions of, 156; carelessness a crime in, 159; ugliness a sin in, 159; ludicrous nineteenth century estimate of, 162; lesson of, 165; technical perfection of, 171; selection, emphasis, and ideali- zation in, 184. Art, the fall of Japanese, 208. "Arts and crafts" in Japan, 153. Ashikaga, fall of the, 50. Ashikaga period, 46; artistic supremacy of, 152; great artists of, 152; architectural style of, 94. B Bathrooms and baths, 129. Buddhism, incentive power of, towards art, 158. Buddhist civilization, downfall of, 101. Castle architecture, 56. Castle-keeps, construction of, 61. Chigai-dana, 59. China, the inspiration of Japan, 148; resumption of inter- course with, 47. Chino-Korean architecture, colour of, 34; essential ele- ments in, 84. Chino-Korean style, 78. Chion-in, temple of, 44, 56. Civilization or Japan, 80; artistic expression of, 97. 225 226 Index D Dai-butsu of Kamakura, the, 201. Decoration, the development of, 98. Dual mind, the, 172. E Empress Suiko, reign of, 30. Enryaku style of architecture, 93. F Feudalism, architectural expres- sion of, 95; fosters industrial art, 153. Fires in Japan, 62. Fujiwara period, 41; architec- ture of, 91; artistic eminence of, 150; great artists of, 150, 152. Furnishing of Japanese houses, 120. G Ginkaku-ji, palace-pavilion of, 50, 92; gardens of, 109. H Higashi Hongwanji, Kyoto, temple of, 64; Nagoya, temple of, 54. Hikone castle, 56, 62. Himeiji castle, 56, 61, 62. Hokiji, pagoda of, 36. Ho-o-do, palace-temple of, 26, 41, 90. Horenji, temple gardens of, 105. Horiuji, monastery of, described, 26, 31, 77, 148; norm of all Japanese architecture, 32; pa- goda of, 37; sculptures at, 196. Inns and hotels, 137. Iri-kawa, 60, 124. Ise, shrines of, 85. Ishi-yama-dera, gardens of, 107. Japan, the vortex of the East, 22. Japanese and Greek art, parallel- ism of, 21. Japanese civilization, fosters every art, 158; persistence of, 22. Jo-dan and ge-dan, 59, 124. Kakimono, display of, 126. Kamakura period, establishment of, 46; architecture of, 47; sculpture of, 200. Kasuga temples, Nara, 94. Kinkaku-ji, palace-pavilion of, 50, 92. Kofkuji, sculpture at, 200. Korean bronze statue, Nara, 193. Koshoji, gardens of, 110. Kumamoto castle, 56, 62. Kura, construction of, 63. Kyoto, removal of court to, 41; palace-pavilions of, 50, 92. Kyoto period, sculpture of, 199. M Missionaries, mistakes of Protes- tant, 89. Modern art, failure of, 170. N Nagoya castle, 56. Nagoya, Higashi Hongwanji temple in, 54. Nara, city of, in eighth century, 39; temple gardens of, 105. Nara period, architecture of, 32; sculpture of, 197. Nikko, shrines of, 26, 43, 53, 55, 100. Nishi Hongwanji temple, Kyoto, 56. O Obaku-san, temple of, 48, 53. Index 227 Painting in Japan, great period of, 97. "Phrenix Hall," see Ho-o-do. Plaster, Japanese use of, 119. Proportion in Japanese architec- ture, 66. Provincial castles of Daimyo, 61. R Residences, vestibules of, 123; plan of, 124, 131; construction of, 127; artistic refinement of, 135; contrast between Japa- nese and Western, 136. Rice-paper, Japanese use of, 119. Royal palaces, type of, 60. Ryobu-Shinto, 88, 94. San-ju-san-gen-do, temple of, 91. Sculpture of Japan, largely un- known, 191 ; classical influence on, 194; Tori Busshi, first master of, 196; portraiture appears in, 197; grandeur of eighth century, 198; during Kyoto period, 199; during Kamakura period, 200. Shiba, temples of, 26, 43-55. Shjnyakushiji, temple of, 40. Shinto architecture, 85, 87. Shiogama, gardens of, 109. Shoji and fusuma, 119. Shokonsha, shrine of, in Tokyo, 56,64. Temple gates, 95. Temple interiors, splendour of, 44, 64, 99. Todaiji, temple of, 40. Tokonoma and chigai-dana, 59, 125. Tokugawa period, 50, 51; archi- tecture of, 27, 43, 92; feudalism during, 51; Confucian revival during, 51. Tori Busshi 149, 196. Torii, 88, 109. Toshodaiji, temple of, 40. U Uyeno, shrines of, 26, 55. W Wall-painting, Indo-Chinese, at Horiuji, 35. Western art, nineteenth century degradation of, 161; extinction of, 143, 144. Westernism, Japanese revolt against, 101, 116. Wood, Japanese reverence for, 118. Wutao-tsz, the legend of, 187. Yakushiji, pagoda of, 26, 37, 86, 196. Yashiki, arrangement of, 57; gates, 57; plan of, 57. Tea-houses and restaurants, 139. Temple architecture, earliest types of, 32. Zen missions and Chinese in- fluence, 47. Zen temples, described, 48. Zojoji, Tokyo, temple of, 56. 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