In the Ashikaga age (1335-1573) the best Japanese artists, like Sesshu and his disciples, for instance, true revolutionists in art, not mere rebels, whose Japanese simplicity was strengthened and clarified by Chinese suggestion, were in the truest meaning of the word Buddhist priests, who sat before the inextinguishable lamp of faith, and sought their salvation by the road of silence; their studios were in the Buddhist temple, east of the forests and west of the hills, dark without, and luminous within with the symbols of all beauty of nature and heaven. And their artistic work was a sort of prayer-making, to satisfy their own imagination, not a thing to show to a critic whose attempt at arguing and denying is only a nuisance in the world of higher art; they drew pictures to create absolute beauty and grandeur, that made their own human world look almost trifling, and directly joined themselves with eternity. Art for them was not a question of mere reality in expression, but the question of Faith. Therefore they never troubled their minds with the matter of subjects or the size of the canvas; indeed, the mere reality of the external world had ceased to be a standard for them, who lived in the temple studios. Laurance Binyon said of them: “Hints of the divine were to be found everywhere—in leaves of grass, in the life of animals, birds, and insects. No occupation was too humble or menial to be invested with beauty and significance.” Through them the Ashikaga period becomes very important in our Japanese art annals. Binyon says: “The Ashikaga period stands in art for an ideal of reticent simplicity. A revulsion from the ornate conventions, which had begun to paralyse the pristine vigour of the Yamato school, and fresh acquaintance with the masterpieces of the Sung era, brought about by renewed contact with China, after a hermit period of exclusion, created a passion for swift, impassioned or suggestive painting in ink, on silvery-toned paper.”

People, like myself, who are more delighted at the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square with, for instance, “A Summer Afternoon after a Shower,” or a “View at Epsom,” by Constable, and with “Walton Reach,” or “Windsor from Lower Hope,” by Turner, than with their other bigger things, will be certainly pleased to see “Temple and Hill above a Lake,” by Sesshu, or “Travellers at a Temple Gate,” by Sesson, representing this interesting Ashikaga period, exhibited in the new wing of the British Museum. You have to go there and spend an hour or so with the Arthur Morrison collection of Japanese art, if you wish to feel the real old Japanese humanity and love that our ancient masters inspired into their work. To be sure, none of the things exhibited there, small or large, good or poor, are so-called exhibition pictures, which are often a game of artistic charlatans. In real Japanese art you should not look for variety of subjects; but when you find an astonishing richness of execution, certainly it is the time when your eyes begin to open toward another sort of asceticism in art. How glad I am that our Japanese art, at least in the olden time, never degenerated into a mechanical art!

What a pity Sesson’s “Travellers at a Temple Gate,” this remarkable little thing, has been mended in two or three spots. If you wish to see the real power and distinction of great Sesshu, you might compare his “Daruma” in the exhibition with the other “Daruma” pictures by Soami and Takuchu also in the exhibition: the point I should like to bring out is that Sesshu’s “Daruma” is an artistic attempt to proclaim the spiritual intensity which shines within from the true strength of consciousness and real economy of force, while the others are rather a superficial demonstration.

There is no other Japanese school so interesting, even from the one point of style in expressive decoration, as the Koyetsu-korin school, the much-admired branch of Japanese art in the West. Although I was glad to see a good specimen of Sotatsu in “Descent of the Thunder God on the Palace of Fujiwara” in the exhibition, I hardly think that such a figure painting (a really good work in its own way) shows Sotatsu’s best art; while my memory of the Sotatsu exhibition at Uyeno of Tokyo a few years ago is still fresh, I am pleased to connect Sotatsu with the flower-screens and little Kakemono for the tea-rooms, now with a pair of rabbits nibbling grasses, then with a little bunch of wild chrysanthemums. You will see what an admirer I am of this school, since I have dwelt at some length on Koyetsu and Kenzan in this little book of Japanese art. I regret that I have to beg for some more time before I make myself able to write on great Korin; I am sure that Hoitsu, one of the most distinguished decadents of the early nineteenth century, and the acknowledged successor of the Koyetsu-korin school, would give us a highly interesting subject to discuss. Oh, those days at Bunkwa and Bunsei (1804-1830)! Dear, rotten, foolish, romantic old Tokugawa civilisation and art!

Two articles on Harunobu and Hokusai are still to be written for the Ukiyoye school; I know, I believe, that without those two artists the school would never be complete. I am happy to think that I have Gaho Hashimoto in the present book as the last great master of the Kano school; but I cannot help thinking about Hogai Kano, Gaho’s spiritual brother, who passed away almost in starvation.

Indeed, Hogai’s whole life of sixty years was a life of hardship and hunger; when he reached manhood, the whole country of Japan began to be disturbed under the name of the Grand Restoration. In those days, the safety of one’s life was not assured; how then could art claim the general protection? All the artists threw away their drawing-brushes. Hogai tried to get his living by selling baskets and brooms; his wife, it is said, helped him by weaving at night; their lives were hard almost without comparison. Following the advice of a certain Mr. Fujishima, Hogai drew pictures and gave them to a dealer at Hikage Cho, Tokyo, to be sold. After three long years, he found that only one picture had been sold, and so he gave the rest of them, more than fifty, to Mr. Fujishima, who, by turns, gave them away to his friends. And those pictures which were given freely by Mr. Fujishima are now their owners’ greatest treasures. Thus is the irony of life exemplified. It was thought by Hogai a piece of good fortune when he was engaged by Professor Fenellosa for twelve yen a month; this American critic’s eye discerned Hogai’s unusual ability. It is almost unbelievable to-day that such a small sum should have been acceptable; but it may have been the usual payment in those days, and the Professor’s friendship was more to Hogai than money. He received fifteen yen afterward when he was engaged by the Educational Department of the Government in 1884; how sad he could not support himself by art alone. And alas, he was no more when the general appreciation of his great art began to be told. Quite many specimens of Hogai’s work are treasured in the Boston Museum at present. How changed are the conditions now from Hogai’s day! But are these fortunately changed conditions really helpful for the creation of true art?

To look at some of the modern work is too trying, mainly from the fact that it lacks, to use the word of Zen Buddhism, the meaning of silence; it seems to me that some modern artists work only to tax people’s minds. In Nature we find peacefulness and silence; we derive from it a feeling of comfort and restfulness; and again from it we receive vigour and life. I think so great art should be. Many modern artists cannot place themselves in unison with their art; in one word, they do not know how to follow the law or michi, that Mother Nature gladly evolves. It is such a delight to examine the works of Hogai, as each picture is a very part of his own true self; the only difference is the difference that he wished to evoke in interest; his desire was always so clear in the relation between himself and his work, and accidentally he succeeded as if by magic in establishing the same relationship for us, the onlookers. It goes without saying that the pictures of such an artist are richer than they appear; while he used only Chinese ink in his pictures, our imagination is pleased to see them with the addition of colour, and even voice.

The subjects which are treated in the present volume are various, but I dare say that all the artists whose art I have treated here will well agree in the point of their expression of the Japanese spirit of art, which always aims at poetry and atmosphere, but not mere style and purpose.

Y. N.

London,
May 13, 1914.

THE SPIRIT OF
JAPANESE ART